A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I started this last summer/fall for a steam train ride event, ended up not being able to go, and thus abandoned it partway through. I'm resurrecting it now for the Laurel Hill Cemetery picnic we're going to do in mid-October this year. Laurel Hill is a wonderful site and would be perfect for a mourning ensemble of any era, which I did spend some time contemplating...but the voice of "how about you finish one of your half-finished dresses, idiot" won out, which is probably a good thing.

Also my Late Victorian Redthreaded corset is one of the only corsets that still fits me, so it would probably be smart to do something late Victorian...

I mean, a brown silk and velvet dress also feels very autumnal!

I'm basing it on this dress in KSU's collection, dated to the second half of the 1880s:
  

I'm not copying it directly, but I liked the silk and velvet combo, the shades of brown, and especially the cutout velvet overskirt (or apron, or whatever you want to call it). I had a roll of brown and cream mini-checked drapery silk and a brown cotton velveteen that work well together, so that's what I'm using for mine, with the checked silk as the main fabric and the velveteen for the contrast.

Last year I finished the underskirt with all the pleated flounces - they're not especially fun to make but I really like how they look! Made the top drapery/swags although still need to put the ties in the back panel to pull it up.

Also made the basic velveteen overskirt and (thankfully) worked out all the cutouts. I couldn't (and still can't) think of any better way to finish the cutouts neatly than by hand - turning the edges in towards each other and hand whipping them down. I've done similar edges with a regular machine-sewn-and-turned facing, and the lining always rolls to the outside, and I hate it. Binding might be an okay other option, but I didn't want a visible binding on this, so here we are!

Good thing I like hand sewing.

I didn't start the bodice at all last year, but with the weight I've gained over the last couple of years that's probably a good thing. I've fit the bodice before skirts enough times in my early sewing career that I've learned not to do that over things with multiple waistbands, lol. I have the TV 1884 French Vest bodice pattern, which should work well enough. 

But, skirts first! I got a good start on the cutout skirt hem at sewing day this past Saturday, and have left the travel sewing bag in the living room since, so I can grab that easily when I have some hand-sewing time, and don't have to go dig it out of the hot sewing room every time I want it. If I can finish the skirts this week (?) I maybe have an actual chance of finishing both this and the 1810s dress for the September event - more on that later.

This isn't at all what I should sew first, mind you, but it's occupying brain space so I'll write a post up for it and make a DW tag, and maybe it'll go away!

You know, I know, we all know that the height of Romantic style in the late 1820s-early 1830s hasn't really been my jam. I think it's delightfully ridiculous on everybody else and I love seeing people make it, but I've avoided making a big-sleeved 1830s dress for Robin's Young Victoria dinner for years. I made a few 1830s dresses years ago when the trend first came out here, and I've sold them on because I've never liked them. Too frou-frou, and I don't actually enjoy feeling like a giant ridiculous doll.

But! There is a Costume in Detail dress that I've had half an eye on for years, and it is in fact dated 1830-33.
 

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...since Tom woke me up at 3am coughing (guess he's got another plague). I very rarely have trouble getting back to sleep when awoken at ass'o'clock, but apparently this morning my brain was like NOPE WE'RE AWAKE NOW YAY GOOD MORNING!

D:

I laid in bed for about 45 minutes and then decided, this is stupid, may as well get up and do something. Tom had gone downstairs to sleep on the couch so as not to wake me up (ha ha) and I didn't want to wake him up, so was restricted to whatever was in the sewing room (cross stitch was downstairs or I'd have done that...we have VERY creaky stairs), quiet, and easily available.

Which meant I got a nice lot of sewing done on the green silk 18-teens undergown that I put aside a couple of weeks ago! Nothing like fitting a back closing bodice on yourself at 4:15 am. Lots of wriggling.

Just have to do the hem now, which I'll probably knock out this evening so as to feel very accomplished. Technically it's only about 85% done, as it doesn't have sleeves yet...but I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with the sleeves on the overgown so I'm not going to make the base sleeves til I figure that out. Probably a small short-sleeve puff to support whatever the overgown sleeve is, but it's possible I might not want a sleeve on the undergown at all, so may as well wait on that!

No more sewing this weekend, although I did unpack both bags of crap from sewing day yesterday, so that is definitely still an accomplishment.

Also cleaned the house for visiting in-law relations (should have people over more so I'm inspired to be less of a slob lol). Not a deep clean by any means but at least all the stray cat hair tumbleweeds were vacuumed up! Cats fled from the noise of the kids - they're Tom's cousin's kids and they're well-behaved but not especially quiet, and the cats just aren't used to that decibel level hahaha. The five year old really wanted to be Orange Tuna's friend. Orange Tuna hid under the entertainment center and watched him suspiciously. Lili and Ferd fled to the recesses of the basement and under the bed, respectively. Poor kid just wanted to pet the kitty LOL.

After laying the spotted net out on the green fabric and against the brocade, I think that the white is too white, annoyingly. I think it may be too HEY LOOK AT ME bright white. I'm going to leave it sitting out on the ironing board for the week slash wait for the beaded net to show up so I can see how that coordinates with everything to decide. It's nylon net so I'll have to get acid dye for it...I'll stop by Joanns to see what they have once I decide. I don't particularly want to make an order from Dharma Trading for one TINY container of dye, but I infinitely prefer Dharma's product quality, plus the Joanns color selection of dye is fairly limited, so...we'll see.

I suppose technically I didn't quite make my sewing goals for the week as I wanted to at least start putting the flounce on the underskirt, but I did all the rest of it (prep for sewing day, get the seam allowances tacked down, bind hem) so I still feel fairly accomplished!

Goal for this week is modest; it's Tom's birthday this upcoming weekend, and although we don't have any big plans we'll probably do something! (Which will take away from my precious sewing time haha. So rude!) Also I'm scheduled for some dental work on Thursday (ew) so that may affect sewing inclination too!

- Dinner dress underskirt: pleat up and baste to waistband OR attach hem flounce. (Both would be even better, but, again, being modest.)

- Add back lacing to lining of old cream sack jacket to embiggen. I've settled on wearing my red quilted petticoat and cream silk 1760s sack jacket to the 18thc costumed tea in February, and the jumps that go with it if they're remotely wearable. Hooray for historical comfy clothing! The jacket sleeves still fit, thankfully, and although I made it with a fitted back lining it's the easiest thing in the world to slash the center back and put some eyelets or ties in. I don't think there's too much else to get this outfit wearable, but I should start adding bits and pieces to the weekly sewing list so February doesn't sneak up on me!

Some sewing progress was made over the weekend! We'd planned to go to Longwood Gardens on Saturday night with my mom to see the Christmas lights (final weekend for the lights), but there was some Unpleasant Weather (about two hours of light snow starting around noon, then rain rain rain) so we all decided to nix that. So I got most of a day to have sewing time in pajamas, which was nice!

Goal for this weekend was to get as much done on the 1880s petticoat as possible, along with stitching the hook onto the corset to hold the bustle waistband in place. The latter was accomplished first, of course, with much more fussing than I wanted (oh, you have to cut the waistband smaller, because now with the hook instead of tucking the ties under the corset edge it's too long, etc etc), but the bustle/corset interaction is now 99.9% done, I just want to coat the ends of the twill tape ties so they stop fraying.

(They don't deserve to be hand stitched, so they'll get either a thin coat of glue, or clear nail polish, whichever I find first!)

Decided to use a length of I Can't Resist This Good Deal silk from a previous Silk Guru order, because 1/ I want a swishy petticoat to wear with the dinner dress, and 2/ it's ugly enough that I'd neverrrrr use this fabric for anything but underwear or lining - a really unappealing warm gold and bronze irregular stripe. (Okay, it might be fine on the right person, but on my skin tone and to my tastes it's just ugly.) But I still buy ugly silk that's a very good deal...because I like it for linings on outerwear, etc.! Plus if it's ugly then I won't be tempted to save it for a "real" project LOL.

I didn't get quite as far as I was hoping (story of my life), but am still satisfied with my progress, considering I'm not doing a completely crappy job and have been flat-felling all the seams, since it's a moderately-shreddy home-dec-shantung-type. I wouldn't look too closely at the actual stitching, but.

Used the front and side panels from TV261 - cut my own backs because my butt is too big for the pattern as-is! And this is why we measure before cutting, haha. Petticoat was as much a trial run for the dinner dress foundation skirt as anything else...happily I seem to have competently measured, and made it even all around.

Got as far as sewing all the panels together, gathering up the back panel, fitting the darts (sure, they're fine, whatever), pinning the whole thing to the waistband, checking the fit to make sure I hadn't completely screwed anything up (didn't. yay!), and then doing the ugliest machine-stitched hem ever.

I intend to make a flounce as well, but that will have to happen either in sewing time after work this week (ambitious) or next weekend (more realistic).

Next weekend's sewing goals are:
- Finish ugly bustle petticoat if not done during the week
- Take pictures of bustle and ugly petticoat (on me) for social media
- Post the above
- Choose & prep whatever hand sewing I want to bring to Robin's for stitch'n'bitch day on Saturday the 20th. Not that I can't bring a machine, of course, but I tend to prefer getting comfortable and curling up with a cup of tea to getting up and down to machine sew and iron and all that!

Two weeks off from school, and I shall do all the things!

(Or more probably, none of the things. But that's ok too.)

(I was going to make a concerted effort to do at least one Visible Home Improvement-y Thing over break, but now the paint I want isn't on sale any more, and the peel-and-stick wallpaper I want for the living room accent wall to cover the ridiculous giant yellow square from where we removed the mirror, is sold out til the end of January. Will order the wallpaper now anyway, but obviously won't be doing that over break!)

Time to think about all of the costuming for next year, right? Of course right!

As always, I reserve the right to do absolutely none of this, but it's damn entertaining to plan, so here it is.
( Planning is fun )

With my last week of vacation marching steadily away, I'm increasingly suspecting that that new linen dress for Robin's picnic won't get made!

She says, as if somebody else is responsible for it and she's just an interested bystander...

Which is fine, really - technically it doesn't even add to the UFOs because it was already a UFO heh heh heh.

And I did fix up my lavender bonnet yesterday, which was the only thing on the Must Do list! It got a little squashed in storage (I made it for daywear for our 2019 Young Victoria Dinner), and Pip chewed off some of the paper flowers/stalks when I let it sit out for a while. Oh, cats. That's on me though, they seemed like perfect cat toys LOL! I also discovered I hadn't actually lined it when I pulled it out yesterday.

( Cut for peektures )

Back in the day...I would keep sewing until 2am or even later because this is going to be wearable, dammit!

These days...I like getting a reasonable amount of sleep, and it's technically wearable...dammit?

The bodice is at a place where I could totally get it 85% done and 100% wearable if I wanted to stay up that late, but I'm sleepy enough that I know I wouldn't be doing my best work. Or, like, halfway decent work, honestly.

I decided this about an hour ago, and spent the intervening hour leisurely collecting all the bits I need for tomorrow, ironing things, and starching the collar of the guimpe. All set to go, except I can't find my bag of "daywear" costume earrings, which is vaguely annoying, because I only keep costume jewelry in one box, and if it's not in that box I have no idea where it is! Oh well, I'll pull from the normal jewelry box!

Tea house is about an hour away, but it's not til 1pm, so thankfully I don't have to get up at the asscrack of dawn, like I do for some events! Plenty of time to have a hair meltdown (hm, I wonder what I usually do for 19-teens hair...).

Popular opinion, both here and on FB, was solidly in favor of the 1916 linen dress for tea, so that's what I...didn't work on over the weekend! (Spent time with husband instead. Also a valid use of time, probably. He wanted to hang out with me, so the most sewing-related thing that got done was a decent bit of the cross-stitch cat Christmas stocking that I couldn't find after we moved and just unearthed recently! Can hang out with husband while cross-stitching on the sofa; can't hang out with husband while fitting mockups in sewing room.)

I worked on the guimpe today, which seems possibly counter-intuitive, as the under-blouse-thing isn't quite as important as the dress bodice that goes over it, but I always prefer to fit over all the layers, so under-bits it was!

My inspiration for this dress (in case you don't remember from when I started it in 2018 LOL) was the following illustration, dated 1916:


Miss Second From Left with the horizontal stripe on her skirt.

I'm not trying to recreate it exactly - the lace I used for trim is relatively wider than the illustration, and I don't love the collar as-is, plus the tiny back view shows that the bodice is almost tunic-like in the back. I have no interest in puzzling that out, plus I do like the idea of still being able to wear a shirtwaist with the skirt if I want, so I'm going to construct the bodice like a waist - have it close at CF and make sure there's enough length to stay tucked into the skirt.

I also decided to make the guimpe like a full shirt with collar and sleeves; I probably could have made just the collar/dickey piece and then sewed the long sleeves into the dress armsyces, but this way makes for easier fitting! I'm making it out of a lightweight linen from the Stash - very nice and light weight, but a little wifty and loosely woven for hanky-weight historical stuff. Like making little hand-rolled hems on 18thc caps would be an exercise in frustration. (Actually I bought it for curtains, two apartments ago. I cut the panels and never sewed them up, because making curtains sucks and is super boring.) Not too picky to use it for a mostly-machine-sewn 20thc guimpe, though!

Primary accomplishment for today was probably putting the buttonholes in the wrong side of the CF. Oops. Even if it was the dress bodice I probably wouldn't care, and since it's the guimpe I definitely don't care! At most the top button will be visible, and possibly not even that.

Other accomplishments include going out and setting up/moving around the sprinkler in 19-teens underwear. Along with taking out the trash. Well, I was fussing with the fit of a guimpe, I wasn't going to take it all off every time I needed to go out and move the sprinkler! If the neighbors don't know I'm a weirdo yet I haven't been doing my job.



Tomorrow:

• finish guimpe - collar and sleeves
• mock up and fit dress bodice
• cut out bodice pieces and sew basic seams

Ze plans for ze next "big" outfits! As I said previously, not counting modern/vintage or UFO sewing. Heh. But this is a Fun Planning Post!

Which does not include Regency for Bath next year, because right now I'm not going to count on it. Will revisit once the medical debt is straightened out, but I'd rather think we're not going and then be pleasantly surprised we can manage it after all!



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And now, this post has taken way too long to write, I need to go feed Pip!