A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

You may (or may not) remember that I was waffling about what to do with the fraying trim on my 1770s striped dress, as I wanted to wear it to the Francaise Dinner . I solved that problem by ignoring it completely, and deciding to wear something totally different! A majority of attendees wear a sacque/robe a la francaise to the dinner (unsurprisingly), as I always have, but it is open to anything 1750-1800, so I thought I'd go a bit later this year. (Watching The Duchess as I cut out pieces for something else had no influence on my decision, I'm totally sure.) I have a striped silk gown that I made for Costume Con in 2011, and while it's great fabric, it was never one of my better efforts. It never made it onto my 18thc page for a reason, haha. I meant to have a matching petticoat but ran out of time, and the sleeves were always bad. So last week I decided to drag it out and see what I could do with it! It was very wrinkly.

I thought bunches about sewing, does that count? No? Fine. I poked at the trim on the striped 1770s dress, as I think I want to wear that to the Francaise Dinner next month...but the red silk is fraying like nobody's business, and I'm not sure I'll be able to leave it on for another wearing. So I gave that up in disgust after stitching one piece of sleeve trim on. Should worry about that now, but I won't. Laters. I also made a modern skirt. "Modern" apparently equals 1950s around here... I used the skirt of B5707 (OOP now), mainly because the fabric was a remnant and I just looked through my patterns til I found something that would fit on the fabric! Werry high-quality photo. I'm starting to suspect I may have to replace my poor little camera... The fabric's just under a yard of blue-and-black wool suiting - I got it when remnants were 75% off, and suitings were on sale...so I ended up paying less than $3 for it. Not Bad. It's line...

Yesterday I went to Longwood with some friends, which was the original excuse to make my 1879 dress. I don't do much late Victorian, so this was a bit of branching out for me, and I thought LG was a nice setting for it! (Strictly speaking it doesn't quite match in time period; 19-teens would be more accurate for the gardens. Details...) It's not as exciting as it is in spring or summer - but my birthday isn't in spring or summer, so there.

 I'm going to be wearing this next weekend for my Birthday Outing, but I'll be wearing a coat over it then (because the forecast is Very Cold! I still need to make said coat...), so I wanted to get photos of it today. I'm pretty pleased with it! It's fun to wear - anything with a train is fun to swan around in, really. (And it's already filthy.) There are some wrinklies around the shoulders, and I really should have padded the front shoulder-to-bust to smooth it out. I'll fall back on my old I'm-so-not-a-tailor protest there. And it's warm! I was toddling around Haddonfield in 38F weather this afternoon to get pictures, and I was pretty happy! I'll be even happier when I locate my fur-lined gloves for next weekend. I do love wool. Winter clothes are the best clothes! Historical or otherwise. I got a ton of pictures (see aforementioned swanning: fun), so here you go.

Progressing nicely! Though I'm really not as far along as I'd like to be; I need to have it finished before the weekend so I can get pictures. Here's where it is now. Terrifyingly unimpressive. Pinning the fronts together for a picture would have been helpful, but too late now...

So! I have been sewing, a bit. Mainly hat-making, actually. I do have a tendency to make the hat to go with a dress before I've done the dress...which sometimes means I don't have a dress, but means I always have a hat! :D Did a mockup of the dress bodice last week, cut out all the pieces, and started sewing them together, then got distracted this week by the hat. Not based on any one particular hat, but inspired by a whole slew of fashion plates 1878-81. I used TV550 , which was lovely to put together (as always! Truly Victorian patterns are great). Wired buckram base, covered in flannel then navy silk. Fairly slubby dupioni, which is not ideal, but I really needed to keep to the stash for this, and it was hard to pick something to go with my blue and pink dress! I have a lot of red scraps apparently...

At least for me! I love late Victorian on everybody else (so many of you make really fabulous things!), but I've never been able to get excited about it. I have that one rather ratty striped cotton early bustle, but it never thrilled me, and I've started a couple other dresses that have been abandoned (oops). I even started and mostly finished a natural form corset last year, then abandoned that too (oops). But last week I somehow got a bee in my bonnet that I wanted to dress Victorian for My Birthday Outing - it's an excuse to play dress-up in whatever era I want, shhh - in early February. More specifically, natural form, as an illustration in Patterns of Fashion had caught my eye. And most importantly, I already had most of the underwear. So I've spent the last few days finishing my 1876 corset, and it's pretty okay. It will definitely do the job, anyway! I'll never make gorgeous perfect corsets like some people (ahem, Before the Automobile , ahem), but it...