A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

A.k.a. Robin's birthday party!

We had absolutely perfect weather for a picnic (making up for the rainy one in the spring, at least), and met a handful of new people that showed up, which was nice . (No, I can't remember any of their names offhand...)

(ETA: oh and yes I did finish Robin's birthday bonnet! And forgot to take any pictures of it so I guess I'll have to wait to show it off til she wears it LOL.)

I didn't take ANY pictures (sensing a theme here), because everything took slightly longer to get together in the morning than I anticipated, so we were running late, and then when we got there I thought everybody looked much nicer than me, and regretted that I hadn't worn the red silk dress instead as I think that's much more impressive (but need to find scraps of that silk and make a placket, because it's an inch too small in the waist now, ahem)...so didn't really care about bothering to document anything I was wearing! It's all old, anyway, except for the pelerine, and that's really just a big doily.

And Tom was having a bad day with his ankle so he stayed planted at the picnic site and just wanted to nap, so I abandoned him to wander around with the birthday girl and then felt vaguely guilty about it.

Still a very pleasant time, though, and I do love Winterthur - if we lived a little closer I'd go over there for walks every weekend the weather was decent! Perfect place for a costume picnic...and nice that they're ok with people coming in costume! (Ahem, Longwood, ahem.) And I stole everybody else's pictures, so at least there's that.

Sharing a couple here because I always enjoy a good picture post. :D

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An event! I took no pictures! You're all very surprised!

We met at the Village Teahouse in Lansdale - it's in a Victorian house and is very charming. The owner came out and told us how nice it was that we dressed up for tea, and she loves when people visit dressed up. Good tasty food, and we (accidentally) stayed a few minutes past closing time because they were too polite to throw us out right on the dot. Also was about $10 more expensive than the average market rate for an afternoon tea in our area. (IMO worth it, but also not necessarily my new default tea house. Well, it's also an hour-plus from me!)

I made Tom take a few pictures when I got home to prove I wore something, and bless his heart, he got the compost tumbler in all the pictures. Oh well. xD (We have a good-sized yard but every side looks like shit in some way for costume pictures background! The compost tumbler made it in frame because the kids jumping into the above-ground pool just on the other side seemed like a greater evil, I guess lol)


Mildly less dorkface pictures posted on Insta



Sunday was running around and doing errands, and acquiring more old furniture from FB Marketplace that I GUESS we didn't really need but yes, we totally did. (And now I'm really not allowed to get any more antique furniture apart from a nicer desk for the sewing room, and a bed frame, because this house is not that big.) The listing was for a china-cabinet-type thing for $50 - we've been on the lookout for one for a liquor cabinet, because Tom wanted an upgrade from the cheapass particle board microwave cart, which I felt was fair. Guy had it out for us, and then said that he had a bunch more pieces he was trying to get rid of in the garage, and did I want to look at them?

(The garage door was open and Tom was with me; this was not the beginning of a Lifetime movie plot.)

O ho ho, did I ever. They were mostly china cabinets, and we already have a china cabinet, but I spied a pretty Something, a little more fine-looking than the other pieces, and a little smaller. Hello, my pretty, you appear to be a secretary desk! I think I need you. How much, sir? $75? Negotiable?  Honeeeeeeeey...can I buy another big piece of furniture? Where am I going to put it? Who cares! In my sewing room if I have to!

Reader, I did not negotiate, I zipped right off to that Wawa ATM and gave that man $80 because the ATM only gives out 20s! (Also because he helped us transport the pieces home in his enormous Lincoln towncar trunk when the bigger bases wouldn't fit in either of our wee cars. He's only about half a mile away from us, and he offered, for $10 more. Sold, sir!)

We haven't exactly decided where to put the secretary yet - a distinct down side to a previous owner having open-concept-ed the downstairs as much as they could means there are no goddamn walls to put furniture against! - but here's one I found online. It's early-to-mid 20th-century, mahogany, Hepplewhite-style, by the Maddox furniture company, and although it's certainly not pristine, it's in nice used shape. AND it's pretty! AND it was $75!

Now I guess I have to do my lesson planning at my secretary to justify having bought it LOL.

Good lord, that guimpe took FIFTY-SEVEN times longer (approximate measurement) to make than I thought it would. THREE DAYS. Lots more hand-sewing than really intended, mainly because the fabric's so wifty. It is now done, however! I think the bodice will be less fussy than the guimpe, actually. Once hopes, as I want to wear this on Saturday ha ha haaaa.

Did a basic mockup of the bodice for the shoulder/neckline fit, and will just pleat the fabric down into tucks one the front shoulder/neckline and hope it ends up fitting into the pattern pieces. Living life dangerously! As I was completely making up the back, I just put a little box pleat/tuck at the CB that will mostly be hidden under the collar anyway, and called it a day. Up to the point of putting the tucks in the front pieces; did it once and didn't like it, so unpinned and decided to call it a night for now.

If the blue linen bodice crashes and burns, I could honestly probably wear the guimpe as a shirtwaist on its own, just with a wider belt as it's a little shorter than the blue bodice will be! The sleeve heads are gathered in pretty sloppily since it's not intended to be seen...but I've worn things that looked way worse, so.

I have to got to the shoe repair place tomorrow morning and pick up the shoes for this outfit that needed new heel caps, and pick up spray starch for the guimpe collar (it's interfaced but I know it'll look better starched)...and then sew like the wind!

Finished sewing the skirt panels on the linen print dress today. Oooo ahhhh.

We didn't float away, surprisingly!

Lucked out on Saturday with weather in the 60s and no rain, but it rained every other day and that field is a damn mud pit after that much rain! We bailed on Sunday and drove home after breakfast. I will be very surprised if nobody parked in a field rather than the small paved lots had to be hauled out at the end. And camping through that seems like a terrible time, more power to the people who want to do that.

Still, Saturday was very nice, we saw people and did shopping (home base was in Amber and Cait's tent, and we were occasionally marginally helpful rather than in the way). I didn't buy a ton, but I did buy some Dames a la Mode earrings (unnecessary) and a 5-yard-length cut of one of Amber's cotton print fabric (even more unnecessary).

Unpacked almost nothing yesterday,  except my soggy-ass leather 18thc shoes that I wore on Friday. Lili helped me unpack the molasses cookie that I bought at lunch on Saturday, put in my basket, and forgot about until this morning ("what are you sniffing?").

I brought it to school and ate it with my cup of tea this morning, it wasn't as stale as you'd have thought.

As you may have noticed from Instagram, I didn't finish the pink dress... when it wasn't almost done by Wednesday night, I tossed that idea and wore the plaid wool closed gown instead. It's nice enough! Pink wool isn't TOO far from done,  but is far enough that a late night panic sew wouldn't have done any good anyway!

Robin and I are planning on going to a New Castle event in late May, I'll see if I can finish it for that!

Me:
I'm going to focus on slowly but steadily working on the Gilded Age dinner dress so I can actually finish something, and have time to get to the embellishment I want to do!

Also me:
Ooooh I had so much fun wearing my 1920s outfit to "Retro Day" at school that I want to make a new 20s dress to wear to the open-themed costume tea that's happening towards the end of March!

*peruses patterns online*

*skims fabric stash inventory lists*

*buys two PDF patterns because I can't decide*



Made a deal with the devil myself that if I can make it this weekend, from stash materials, to coordinate with shoes and hat I already have, I'm allowed to make the dress! We, uh, shall see.

I got a lot done on the Welsh outfit today, although I didn't take any pictures; I was wearing stays and petticoats for a good part of the day for fittings, and so was gently sweating all day - and looked like it! No selfies today, thanks.

I'd started the top petticoat yesterday, and got the panels sewn together and the hem bound, so today I wanted to at least finish that petticoat, which I did. I completely forgot to split the back panel so I could have a CB closing on a seam and didn't realize until I was pleating the petticoat into the waistband today. Oops - guess it's gonna have a side-fastening! (Most of the extants seem to close at CB, but I didn't care enough to unpick any hand sewing to fix that!)

Found my 1840s corset, so was able to put the fastenings on both petticoats, and then figured while I had it all on, I might as well mock up the bodice. I started with one of my 1770s gown bodice patterns, since the type of gown I'm making is pretty much a late-18thc-style bodice!

Why the 1840s corset, then? Basically I'm splitting the difference. 1 - the eponymous "Welsh hat" doesn't appear until the 1830s, 2 - there are  very few accounts of what Welsh women wore under their gowns, but there are a few late 18thc/early 19thc accounts that mention Welsh workingwomen not wearing stays, 3 - "Welsh traditional dress" hadn't crystallized as such until later in the 19thc, so it's really kind of a toss-up as to who actually wore this style of dress and on what occasion. 1830s-50s seems the most likely timeframe, and this kind of dress is mentioned as potentially being middle-class "Sunday best" for countrywomen during that time frame. And...they may have been Welsh, but I suspect middle-class women would have been wearing some kind of stays by the second quarter of the 1800s, at least for "dressing up".

Regardless of guesswork, plausible or otherwise, it's WAY easier to fit things over a foundation, so that's what I'm doing. ;)

Not to put too fine a point on it, fitting an 18thc bodice over an 1840s foundation kind of sucks! I'm used to being able to get an 18thc bodice pretty much wrinkle-free (apart from the "hey, I'm a body that moves and breathes, therefore there are some wrinkles" ones), but that wasn't happening for this bodice. They're not quite as tightly-fitted as 18thc bodices, though, and judging by the few actual visible bodices on humans (everything's covered with shawls!), theirs were a bit wrinkly too.

So I got the mockup to a "not too offensively wrinkly" point, cut the paper pattern from the mockup pieces, and left it at that. Will pick up there tomorrow!

Still kicking, just not posting! The first couple weeks after Covid I had just enough extra energy to either sew or post about it, not do both, so I went with the sewing. :)

( cut for nattering )

Apparently I felt very inspired yesterday. I had set myself a stern requirement that I finish that charcoal grey wool jumper before I get into the Italian Ren dress, but...guess how that went. Well, sewing in a zipper sucks, and starting a new project is fun!

And I was also very productive at it, which probably means I won't pick it up again for the next six weeks or so, but whatever. Also I took like three progress pictures but haven't uploaded them yet, and my phone's all the way over theeeeere, so...uh, maybe later. I'm out of practice with documenting costume progress.

Anyway. I decided to mock up the bodice for the undergown over my mid-1790s stays - the bodice will be self-supporting but I figured 1790s were my best place to start for a relatively natural bust shape and a high waist. (Example of just how high a waist is below!)



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Also - a funny thing about the navy-and-gold shot taffeta I bought for the undergown - it ends up looking kind of mossy green at most angles. Always a risk buying shot silk without getting a sample...I'm fine with green, I just chose that fabric because it looked more blue online and I already did green with the orange fabric for the overgown, with the 1790s accessories! Clearly the fates say that this orange silk prefers to coordinate with green and who am I to turn them down lol.

(Tom says it looks like an ugly Army green tarp, but his opinion is invalid when it comes to fabric! I asked if you thought it looked more green, not whether you liked it, SIR.)

After digging through the Stash last weekend (like, actually physically digging...which involved moving a lot of bins, so you should be impressed) I couldn't find anything I liked that went with the orange shantung, so I, er, ahem, bought a length of navy-and-gold taffeta from Silk Baron.

Now I should, like, ACTUALLY make this dress, eh?



(Somewhat in my defense, I sat on it for almost a week, with the tab open on my phone, and when I still wanted it after the work week, decided I'm allowed to get it! And I'm using it for the underdress which won't have a train, so I can squeak by with four yards rather than five! Totally solid defense...)