A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I've been poking away at the trousers over the past couple of days, and now they're almost done, except for hems...mainly because I was too lazy to go find the boots I'm going to wear with it to make sure I hemmed them the right length.

I find them extremely amusing; I put them on today and just started giggling. Probably doesn't help that my butt is stuffed with my chemise! Not uncomfortably stuffed, but definitely ridiculously stuffed.
 
(I have managed to cut off my feet in photos but as the trousers aren't hemmed anyway, that's no great loss.)

Please admire that none of my plaids line up anywhere, including the seam that I needed to get a piece long enough for the pattern shapes! Ummm, non-matching plaids are period?? xD (I really do actually match plaids on modern skirts and stuff, I swear.)
 
Does this make my ass look big? (yes. definitely.)

Admire the lovely totally-period (not) green cotton broadcloth lining...

And the somewhat-improvised lacing. The pattern called for a buckle and tab, of course...but the only little metal buckles I can get at work are the shitty vest buckles that don't have any real teeth, so there would be zero point in hoping one of them would hold my trousers up. Needle and Thread, of course, sells them, but I don't want to order a bunch of stuff I don't need just so they'll ship a buckle to me, nor do I want to wait til I actually go to Gettysburg to get it. So. Lacing and rings it was! At least I know linen tape will keep my trousers up. ;)

I'd like to get the trousers and short skirt hemmed tomorrow, then that'll leave me Friday and Saturday to finish a modern lemon-print skirt (another thing that's been laying around unfinished for waaaay too long) and figure out my bedgown pattern, which I think is what I want to bring to the stitch-n-bitch this weekend.

I fitted the mockup of the trousers today, which I then used for lining. Surprisingly they weren't too horrible to re-fit...mainly because the back of the waistband has that buckle and tab thingie going on, so the finished trousers will still be adjustable. Good.

I took a pretty big wedge out from the outside seam, from waist to hip, and pinched out about 1.5" all the way down on the inseam, but that was it. Helps that '60s men's trousers seems to be fairly dumpy anyway (not to mention late Victorian women's riding trouser patterns I've seen are hella dumpy) so there's no great need to try and make them flattering anyway, LOL.

Got the wool pieced together - since it was in two pieces, there wasn't one that was long enough for trouser legs. Which is fine, since the seam will be hidden by the short skirt anyway. Also good because I didn't bother lining up the plaids. xD I'm hand-basting all the lining and wool pieces together - honestly I'm so lazy it's not something I'd usually do with wool and a cotton lining since they're usually "sticky" enough to stay, but trousers are a whole new realm of Ways To Mess Up, so I'd rather things not be able to shift anywhere! About 1.5 pieces basted currently.

I let myself work on whatever the heck I felt like today, which resulted in working on both 1860s and 18thc, and not really getting a whole lot of either done. I did hem up a striped linen kerchief I found in the accessories box while I was perusing my peasant options last night; I really thought I went through a while back and hemmed the couple kerchiefs I'd been sneakily wearing for years unhemmed. Apparently missed that one.

Also made up most of a cap from one of my Country Wives patterns from some fairly coarse linen...I want to try out a couple variations from their patterns (I've been buying them somewhat compulsively for years and I think have now acquired all the ones I want. I think they're nice patterns!) for Peasanty Unfashionable Caps options. It's so much less work than a fancy cap that I don't at all making more than one to see which I like best! (Stitches that would fill me with horror on a fine linen or silk cap can't even be seen on this weave of linen; I can hem so much faster! It's great. Feels very naughty.) Plus I bet I can unload any I decide not to keep on the unsuspecting Local Suspects. xD

I'm STILL MIFFED THOUGH. *makes rude gesture towards Belvidere planning committee*

I got the rational dress basque-bodice mockup about half-fitted before hearing the Belvidere news, which put me out of the mood fro dealing with fiddly mockups! It's going in the right direction but I need to cut out another one to get the waist in just the right place. It's been a while since I had to really do a lot of work on a mockup so I'm out of practice with the amount of patience I need!

So, shifting gears a bit - I went back to the fancy dress costume instead. Hoop has to come first - even though I've decided (sadly) that I can't do the Hell Dress justice this go-round (maybe next time we go!), my main interest in having a fancy-dress costume at all is the totally absurd short hoops that many of the outfits have. So the hoop really has to come first!

Way back when I started planning, I was just going to cut up a cheap ebay hoop - then it got here and I realized what a truly awful shape it had, plus who really wants to wear trash bag fabric to a ball? ugh, sweaty - so then I was going to use the boning and a lot of twill tape and copy the shape of my current cage as closely as I could - and this week I decided that would require more brainpower than I wanted to use, so I decided to just make a fabric hoop skirt instead. I prefer cages in general, but this won't get a whole lot of wear, so, eh, that's alright.

I've had the Laughing Moon hoops and bustles pattern for ages, but hadn't had occasion to actually use it nor closely look at it til yesterday - and you guys, what is up with the "bell-shaped hoop", view A? It's got two steels right up on the hips! Call me crazy but that reminds me more of RenFaire than CivWar...anyway, I decidedly do not want shelf hips, and it's pretty narrow anyway, so I looked at the pattern pieces for the elliptical. But it's really too elliptical for what I have in mind, so I went back to view A, stared at it, squinted, and decided I could probably redraw a couple of lines and make it Close Enough.

So I mercilessly axed the hip bump, and ended up adding about 10" to the hem width, which I cut off at knee-level. So the circumference ends up being around 100", which is fairly close to my 108" cage, but since it's that wide up at knee-level it looks entirely ridiculous. Even more so than a regular hoop. ;) I stuck a bone in the channel at the hem as soon as I put that on, to double check this plan hadn't gone entirely awry...I think it'll be presentable. Won't have quite the nice backward thrust (ahem) of the cage, but I'll stick a bumpad in there to hold it out and call it good enough.

It's made of a vaguely ugly shade of olive green cotton broadcloth, as I had that on hand and it was one of the few fabrics I didn't pick up and instantly think, "but I want to use this for this other purpose!" (This is why I buy $1.50 fabrics when I see them, yes.) It's not especially exciting without pictures, but I promise it's not especially exciting with pictures either, at this point! Fairly busy tomorrow but maybe I'll get the rest of the twill tape channels sewn on, and then I'll get a boring picture of it.

Just finished binding the long skirt to go with the rational dress (so, the less-rational part of the dress? haha). I know I should be using wool braid, but I'm still too cheap to shell out for it, so I've continued the tradition I started with the plaid silk dress, and just used strips of wool fabric on the straight. I know it won't wear as well but my 1860s dresses really don't get that much wear, so. It's strips of a weird, sort of ugly, waffle-weave blue-and-brown mid-weight wool that I probably will never actually use so I don't mind devoting some of it to hem binding.

And I got my FFC wools today, woot woot!
Navy and white check: very nice! Would be hard to resist starting on the early '80s dress I want to make from it right now if I wasn't still dead chuffed with how the beige print turned out; thankfully that temptation isn't overpowering.
Blue and ivory lightweight stripe: reasonably nice for a blend. It didn't give percentages but burn test says it's definitely more wool than poly. Probably 60, maybe 70% wool. It doesn't pleat nicely though, just from scrunching it up in my hands, so I may not do the "sack" back variation of the tea gown. Will have to mull that over. Definitely adequate for my tea gown for Belvidere though.
Midnight navy flannel: is...not flannel. I'm not sending it back, because it's a really lovely, deliciously soft and drapey lightweight wool that I may or may not be cuddling with at this very moment...but it's decidedly a plain twill, not a flannel. I haven't quite decided whether to use it for the bathing costume yet...pros: it is a nice lightweight 100% wool that won't itch at all, and this is already bathing costume fabric length #2, cons: but it isn't flannel! I really wanted flannel! might be too nice for a bathing costume that's going to get abused by the salt water and sand, I'd hate to ruin such a nice wool. Hmmmmmmm.