I just uploaded my (few) pictures from the first Duchess of Devonshire tea. Sadly my camera died on me pretty early in the event, so there aren’t very many!
There’s Been Lots of Sewing
But not a lot of posting! Mostly it’s because I have been slowly slowly working on binding my 1780s stays, but also because I’ve been working on Michael’s 16th century trunkhose (but they keep seeming to stay in a not-excitingly-photographed condition – update soon!).
I think red is my color of the moment, because that’s the theme here…
First, I made the Costume Close-Up cloak for the Lumieres seaside stroll. I was worried about freezing to death, so I took some lightweight red wool, fulled it, and made up the cloak — which I have to report is SUPER easy, because of the fulling… you don’t have to finish any of the edges! I debated and debated what to line the hood with — I wanted to do something solid so it would work for any era (because how often do I make cloaks?), but the only thing in the stash that worked was a green & red 18th c.-style indienne print. Oops! Guess it’s not going to work for 16th century! Also, a report — according to the book, the hood is cut large to accomodate the big hairstyles of the period. Well, obviously they don’t define “big” the same way I do — there is no WAY that hood was going to fit over my hair! So I’ll have to make another version at some point with a bigger hood, and this time of some heavier wool so it will work for REALLY cold events. Luckily, although we expected rain, we had a beautiful day, so it worked out just fine.
Next, I went to the GBACG Duchess of Devonshire tea, which Cynthia and I organized. We had planned one tea (obviously), but it sold out so quickly we added a second date the following weekend! I didn’t want to stress myself out by trimming my hat at the last second, so planned to wear something else… but then got the wild hair the night before to wear the hat. Silly costumer! So I put some burgundy ribbon and a burgundy feather on it, all with straight pins, and called it good. I had experimented with using green ribbon, as in the original fashion plate, but it just looked like a Christmas hat.
I finished binding my 1780s stays in time to wear to tea #2 (ie late the night before). I really wanted to wear them because — hey, they’re new! Plus I wanted to find out how comfortable they’d be. I handsewed ALL of the binding, top and bottom, both sides, because I really wanted it to look good. And while I’m not 100% happy with it, I think it’s my best binding job so far. The petersham worked well and I think it looks good — I was worried it would scream “petersham!” but I think it just looks like a ribbed ribbon. I did discover some cosmetic changes I want to make when I do version #2, mostly that the side tabs are shorter than the back tabs, and I’d like to even that all out. Also, I don’t have a back picture, but I want to make the line of the straps at the top back of the corset merge more. I’ll post really REALLY final photos once I have the right color ribbon on hand to lace them with — I had to just use what I had on hand, which meant the straps are tied on with black, and the back got laced 1/2 with burgundy and 1/2 with green! I wore it under my chemise dress, which is the only dress I had that (because it’s gathered) fit — all the rest of my dresses are too small in the bust and too big in the waist to fit!
I haven’t yet posted my photos from the first tea, but I’ll do so very soon! I do have photos from the Devonshire tea #2 up. Both teas were lots of fun — yummy food, good conversation, and we had lots of fun playing forfeits!
Gwendolen – Done, Worn, Yay!
So I had two things left to do on this project before I wore it:
1) The skirt. I made it to have a long train, which was great for Costume College (carpet!) and not so great for Dickens Fair (gross Cow Palace floor complete with sawdust!). So I put the bustle, petticoats, and skirt on my dress form, grabbed a lot of safety pins, and started pinning up the train. I futzed with different options and basically ended up making the “pouf” part of the skirt bigger. I tried to mostly pin it to the ribbon tie, but that didn’t totally work so I pinned it to the top petticoat as well, and then just put those on at the same time. I also cut off the ribbon ties and made an actual attractive pieced bow, rather than the hastily tied bow from the first wearing — altho you really can’t see it in the pictures!
2) The bonnet. I had the time for once to indulge my seldom indulged love of millinery. I’m not terribly good at it, but I like it! So I made Lynn McMasters’s Mid-Victorian Winter Bonnet. It all went together swimmingly — there were a few confusing steps in the pattern instructions, but they were relatively straightforward construction elements so it all worked out fine.
The difficulty was in choosing the covering/trimming. I constantly pick up bits and pieces of ribbon, flowers, feathers, etc. thinking, “This will be perfect for hat trimming!” But I don’t really get around to hat making/trimming often enough. So I REALLY wanted to make this out of things from my stash. However, normally I try to avoid the matching hat, as I feel like it looks too costumey (most historical women probably wouldn’t have had a hat to match every outfit). But looking through my stash of leftover fabric and possible trims, I couldn’t find anything else to use. Plus, I had this FABULOUS purple and white striped ribbon that would go so perfectly — the purple was a darker shade, and the stripes were narrower, but that made for interesting contrast. So I sucked it up and covered the hat with the leftovers of the dyed velvet. Then I used a lot of the purple/white striped ribbon and some ivory plush velvet to make a bow and other fiddly bits. It wasn’t quite working until I sucked it up and went to Joann’s and found the white soutache-y trim — until then, it was just this huge expanse of velvet with a bow on the side! I also bought some short ostrich feathers, which I wired together and curled using Lynn’s instructions.
I really like the finished hat, except when I went to wear it, I found that it really needed a LOT of flat head on which to sit. Which meant that my hairstyle, which normally would have crossed the top of my head to carry the weight, had to really hang off the back of my head giving me an instant hair headache (yes, I made anchoring buns!). Oh well, we suffer for fashion, right?
Thanks to Sarah for a lot of these final pictures! You can see my other photos from our trip to Dickens Fair on Flickr.
An Excessively Halloween-y Weekend
I had an excessively Halloween-y weekend the weekend AFTER Halloween. On Friday night, we had the Lumieres occult dinner, which was spooky & lovely — mediums and aristocrats mingled over yummy French food, champagne, and candelight. I went as a medium — Mlle Marie Anne Lenormand, who was more Napoleonic than Rococo era but who’s double checking! I wore my gaulle, which I accessorized with lots of black — black sash, jewelry, and hair ribbons.
On Saturday night was the PEERS Ball des Vampires, which is about 10 min. walk from my house – yay! I went with Bridget & Katherine — we had great Italian food beforehand (and scared the locals), then walked over to the ball. There were lots of fabulous costumes (lots of Victorian & 18th century, one sparkly Edward who I had fun teasing, etc.). I spent most of my time downstairs in the goth-y DJ room (they played Hong Kong Garden, so I got to have my Marie Antoinette masquerade moment!) — only did one-half of one waltz! I don’t know, I just wasn’t in the mood to jockey for partners. It does make me want to make the effort to hit the ball scene a bit more frequently (altho that means talking some of my friends into going too) — it’s a great chance to dress up and socialize, even if you’re not in the mood to dance. I was feeling very “this old thing” about my black francaise (the other option was Nell Gwyn, but it didn’t feel terribly Halloween-y) so I resisted the urge to attempt to make anything new, and focused my time and styling a new wig and making wig accessories. I ended up making a “cake,” and my rockin’ husband made me a guillotine out of balsa wood (the man is a talent!), plus giving me a scary guillotine-d neck scar. Jenn absolutely took the cake (ha ha) in her gorgeous black & orange francaise, with black wig that had a jack-o-lantern that LIT UP. It ROCKED.
A preview of photos is below — you can find the rest of my Flickr account (which I’m going to be using from now on for event photos) — here’s the Lumieres occult dinner and the Vampire ball.
Costume College Report & Pics
Right! Costume College! I went! I taught some classes! I went to parties! I dressed up! I didn’t sleep much! I kicked people out of my room at ungodly hours!
The longer report: the classes I taught went well — I ran out of time to do an actual GOOD styling job in the wig class, but it seemed like people were happy with getting the theory. Phew! I taught “Turkish Influence on 18th Century Fashion & the Zone Bodice,” “Draping the 18th c. Robe a la Francaise,” and “1770s Big Hair – How to Style a Wig into a ‘Pouf.'”
I only managed to sneak in a few classes: “Stays and the Body” was quite interesting, especially as I haven’t studied early 18th c. stays very much. Looking at the changes in silhouette and patterning was quite interesting. Sally Queen’s jacket lecture touched on some of the points I made in my 18th c. Turkish class, plus listening to her talk is ALWAYS great. And Trystan’s Macaroni class was fabulous — I love men in crazy late 18th c. costume! – even if I almost fell asleep at the end from lack of sleep.
The socializing was, as always, fabulous, altho everyone at my gala table was ready to fall asleep (too much fun the night before, plus the snoozerific music didn’t help — hello, it’s dinner at Versailles! Ever heard of playing 18th century music??), but once we got up and started dancing things improved. It was lots of fun to wear my Nell Gwyn costume, even if as soon as I put it on I had an overwhelming desire to be wearing jeans. Besides that costume, I really didn’t dress up (okay, wore the 1920s dress on Friday, but didn’t bother on Sat. & Sun.). Too tired!
All in all, it was fun if not 1000% fabulous… but that was mostly my burnout from Costume Con. However, as you can guess from my last post, shopping was great and I have tons of ideas for this year’s costumes!
And, most important – pictures!