Category: 18th century

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I put one costume away, I take it back out…

So, bad news but not horrible — the ball at Vaux-le-Vicomte has been cancelled.  This is what I get, karma-wise, for trying to so something this fabulous without Trystan and Sarah!  Apparently they didn’t sell enough tickets (not well advertised, price was really high, start time really late).  I’m disappointed but not traumatized, as my first thought when I heard something had gone wrong was that the whole thing (ie the Sunday Journee costume event) had been moved to another date and/or cancelled, so I was initially relieved that at least Sunday was still on.  But, now we’ve found out that we’re still going to get to do the costumed dinner, and there will be some kind of evening entertainment, and apparently they light the chateau with candles at night, so who cares, we’ll have fun!  I put away the polonaise thinking I’d only need one costume and pulled some of the trim off my hat to re-trim it to match the francaise — now I need to pull the polonaise back out, and put the original trim back on!  Such is life.

In other news… I leave Friday!  EEK!  I am busy getting organized and will start packing today.  EEP!  EEK!

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New pockets!

My old one was getting dingy and the opening ripped, plus I’d only ever made one, plus it was long enough that I often needed to do unladylike maneuvers to get things out. Now I’ve got a new, shorter, wider pair!

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Getting Ready for France!

So I leave for Paris in one week — EEK!  I realized this the other night and thought I’d better get my butt in gear in getting everything ready.  I’m not making anything new, but because these should be the Best Costume Events Evah! I want to have some great accessories.

I’m putting together a couple of elements for the ball, but I didn’t have any ostrich feathers in colors I liked.  Quelle horreur!  I did have some gold ones, but when I held them up with some white for contrast, they suddenly looked all natural/beige-y, which is not a look I wanted.  I remembered that you can dye feathers with Kool-Aid, so off to the grocery store I went!  Here’s what I ended up with — original gold color on the left, the same gold covered with Black Cherry Kool-Aid:

I also want a fabulous hat for the day event.  I’m bringing a really huge pouf because, hey, it’s FRANCE!  And I don’t have any good hats that fit over that.  So I took the hat that SHOULD have been made to go over a 1770’s pouf, but got sidetracked into a 1780s style — and which I have never worn.  Obviously it wasn’t meant to be!  So I pulled some of the trim off and reshaped/retrimmed it.  I had a HARD time figuring out colors.  It’s going with the red & white polonaise, and the only things in my stash that worked were blues or greens.  I ended up going green — it’s not perfect, but I wanted something a little more pastel because that’s what feels appropriate.  The vintage glass berries are there to tie in with the dress — hopefully it will work!

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Maja waistcoat – mockup #3

Okay, third mockup with an angled flap!  I spent some time drawing out the spangle pattern for the waistcoat, although I still have to do the facing (which folds over).  I ordered sequins like 2 years ago from MJ Trim in oyster white and matte black — and looking at them today, I realized — duh, these are supposed to look like metal!  Matte black totally doesn’t work.  Now I checked their site and it doesn’t look like they have the color I need in the size I originally ordered (8mm), so I may need to order more in 6mm.  Luckily, they’re not too expensive!

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Maja waistcoat: aha!

I was peering at the copy of this painting in “Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” and it’s actually a slightly clearer copy — and what I noticed there, which you can’t see in the scan I have on my site, is that there is a very faint line of the spangle decoration that angles up from the top of the bottoms & loops to that folded back corner.  Aha!  So it IS angled, and I think actually closes a bit further over than I currently have it — off to monkey with my current pattern.

And, thank god for protractors — even so, drawing the wave pattern for the spangles has been waaaay too fiddly!