Christmas at Allaire
Dec. 14th, 2015 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mandie_rwYesterday was our excuse for our two-week 1830s dresses - Allaire Village! We've threatened for ages to make Allaire-appropriate things (they're primarily set in the 1830s) to visit ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
misspeachum, and we finally all managed to squeeze it in.
And it was 72 degrees yesterday, so it did not feel at all Christmassy, despite decorations, jingly horses, and the like...but at least no one had to worry about outerwear?hiraimi made a bonnet the night before, and sewloud finished putting her dress together the morning of - but I think they looked very smart.
There was a Wawa picnic when we first arrived - which lots of people got pictures of. Yes, you can take my picture; no, I'm not taking my plastic Wawa bag off my lap. Or my sammich out of my mouth.
We ended up spending most of our afternoon waiting for the carriage (ahem, wagon) ride, which we probably won't do again - the ratio of wait time to ride up the hill was not quite satisfactory. The poor horses were overheating a bit too, as it was so warm - so they had to take longer breaks in between hauling people up the hill, which made the wait time longer. Claire and Rosie, lovely draft horses. One of them is a rare something-something breed I don't remember, but there are fewer than 500 left in the world, which we thought was very interesting.
Also we took a mini-tour of the "big house" in the village, which would have been a lot better if someone hadn't insisted on keeping her screaming three-year-old on it the whole time. Clearly neither you nor he is getting much out of this docent's spiel...take this poor child home! He is SO DONE. Before Robin turns to him and says SANTA IS NOT COMING THIS YEAR FOR YOU. We missed getting anything from the bakery, which was a bummer, as they have yummy things. And we did get to hang out with Tessa for a little bit, once we escaped the carriage line and screaming childen!
I'm a little underwhelmed with my dress. I'd give it a solid C, if I were grading! The bodice ended up a little big, and the sleeves are vaguely wrinkly and dumb. I did say I would fix the sleeves before another wearing, but I don't even know that I'd wear it again, so I'm certainly not going to bother thinking about doing it now!
My corded petticoat is a little too much for this dress - obviously. Not inclined to make a new late-30s one as opposed to a mid-40s, though! (Late 1820s, I'm considering for the future. Three corded petticoats is too much for one person to own, though!)
I like Alice's butt bow!
And Robin's dress is just the winner. Come on. I still don't know if I want to stick those sleeves on my own arms, but it's such fun to walk around with and poke on someone else. :D I'm fairly sure I want to do some sort of 1830s for New Castle next year...
LOOK AT THOSE SLEEVES.
Robin bought a bird (we christened him "Throckmorton") to do double-duty of perching in her hair and later on her tree. ;)
Rosie and Claire's butts (or Claire and Rosie? Sorry girls, I forget.) Apparently lots of stupid people had been standing in the way on the road all day, as seen here. Are the jingle bells and clopping not enough of a clue? We told the driver he should probably just run them over. All sympathy, that's us.
And we found an actual, working, pay phone in the wild on the way out. How entertaining!
On the way out we also encountered the most disgusting bathroom I've seen in quite a while. Congrats, you guys. I expressed a happiness I was not wearing anything with a train at that point. Ewwww.
I think the part of my outfit I was most pleased with was actually the chemisette.
Because I am nothing but charm and class, you guys.
Poke.
That does show off my hair nicely though, which I was pretty pleased with. The smooth loopies don't seem to have really been popular til a couple of years after my dress; the side-curls that Alice did would have been more fashionable I think. But I very much didn't feel like dealing with curls, so I didn't! I found a very few non-curly mid-late 1830s portraits, and I maintain that real people had to do their hair in 1837 too! Curls are a pain in the butt. ;)
Even if that hair did put me squarely in Jane-Eyre-territory.
Which reminds me, the old lady Tessa was in the shop with, insisted we looked just like Jane Austen. Robin tried to argue the point with her...I couldn't because I was laughing too hard. "I'm pretty sure Jane Austen was DEAD by this time, but OKAY." Somebody also thought we'd fit right into the 30s and 40s. The NINETEEN-30s and 40s, mind you. We were a little too baffled by that one to make any argument.
And! We were apparently fascinating to the attending members of the Asbury Park Press. We chatted with the woman for quite a while while waiting in line for our carriage ride.
We made it into their article (where I've lifted the photo from). We threw out a whole bunch of things to make ourselves not sound completely derp-tastic (research! material culture! social history!) but naturally they went with Robin's " 'We’re just kids who never grew up,' said Coccagna, who handcrafts costumes from a variety of centuries. “At the end of the day, we want to play pretty, pretty princess.' " THANKS ROBIN. ;) The woman even got our contacts because she thought we might be interesting enough to do a piece on - to which I say, only if it's a MASSIVELY slow day in Asbury Park, but we'll talk at anyone for a long time about this hobby if you let us.
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And I think that's everything of importance from yesterday - now I just have to do the blog writeups for my dresses (and take pictures of my satin ballgown so I can write said blog post, ugh) and I'll be caught up. I even cleaned up my costume bits from the weekend and most of the mess from making the cream poplin dress.
Unless I have some sort of brilliant idea (one can never rule that out!), I'll probably mostly be sewing on odds and ends from now through the end of the month. I bought a novelty Chistmas print I want a 1950s dress out of (that looks like a tablecloth but I don't care), I want to sew a few more fichus etc for the IKT, and I need to work on shop things. Oh, and I probably want a little more trim on my striped 1770s silk anglaise, as I'm probably going to wear that to the Trenton ball. So there will be sewing, but not any massively exciting new projects!
Unless I'm vry good about shop sewing, then I might let myself do that not-plaid wool anglaise for First Night at the IKT. We'll see.
misspeachum, and we finally all managed to squeeze it in.And it was 72 degrees yesterday, so it did not feel at all Christmassy, despite decorations, jingly horses, and the like...but at least no one had to worry about outerwear?
hiraimi made a bonnet the night before, and sewloud finished putting her dress together the morning of - but I think they looked very smart.There was a Wawa picnic when we first arrived - which lots of people got pictures of. Yes, you can take my picture; no, I'm not taking my plastic Wawa bag off my lap. Or my sammich out of my mouth.
We ended up spending most of our afternoon waiting for the carriage (ahem, wagon) ride, which we probably won't do again - the ratio of wait time to ride up the hill was not quite satisfactory. The poor horses were overheating a bit too, as it was so warm - so they had to take longer breaks in between hauling people up the hill, which made the wait time longer. Claire and Rosie, lovely draft horses. One of them is a rare something-something breed I don't remember, but there are fewer than 500 left in the world, which we thought was very interesting.
Also we took a mini-tour of the "big house" in the village, which would have been a lot better if someone hadn't insisted on keeping her screaming three-year-old on it the whole time. Clearly neither you nor he is getting much out of this docent's spiel...take this poor child home! He is SO DONE. Before Robin turns to him and says SANTA IS NOT COMING THIS YEAR FOR YOU. We missed getting anything from the bakery, which was a bummer, as they have yummy things. And we did get to hang out with Tessa for a little bit, once we escaped the carriage line and screaming childen!
I'm a little underwhelmed with my dress. I'd give it a solid C, if I were grading! The bodice ended up a little big, and the sleeves are vaguely wrinkly and dumb. I did say I would fix the sleeves before another wearing, but I don't even know that I'd wear it again, so I'm certainly not going to bother thinking about doing it now!
My corded petticoat is a little too much for this dress - obviously. Not inclined to make a new late-30s one as opposed to a mid-40s, though! (Late 1820s, I'm considering for the future. Three corded petticoats is too much for one person to own, though!)
I like Alice's butt bow!
And Robin's dress is just the winner. Come on. I still don't know if I want to stick those sleeves on my own arms, but it's such fun to walk around with and poke on someone else. :D I'm fairly sure I want to do some sort of 1830s for New Castle next year...
LOOK AT THOSE SLEEVES.
Robin bought a bird (we christened him "Throckmorton") to do double-duty of perching in her hair and later on her tree. ;)
Rosie and Claire's butts (or Claire and Rosie? Sorry girls, I forget.) Apparently lots of stupid people had been standing in the way on the road all day, as seen here. Are the jingle bells and clopping not enough of a clue? We told the driver he should probably just run them over. All sympathy, that's us.
And we found an actual, working, pay phone in the wild on the way out. How entertaining!
On the way out we also encountered the most disgusting bathroom I've seen in quite a while. Congrats, you guys. I expressed a happiness I was not wearing anything with a train at that point. Ewwww.
I think the part of my outfit I was most pleased with was actually the chemisette.
Because I am nothing but charm and class, you guys.
Poke.
That does show off my hair nicely though, which I was pretty pleased with. The smooth loopies don't seem to have really been popular til a couple of years after my dress; the side-curls that Alice did would have been more fashionable I think. But I very much didn't feel like dealing with curls, so I didn't! I found a very few non-curly mid-late 1830s portraits, and I maintain that real people had to do their hair in 1837 too! Curls are a pain in the butt. ;)
Even if that hair did put me squarely in Jane-Eyre-territory.
Which reminds me, the old lady Tessa was in the shop with, insisted we looked just like Jane Austen. Robin tried to argue the point with her...I couldn't because I was laughing too hard. "I'm pretty sure Jane Austen was DEAD by this time, but OKAY." Somebody also thought we'd fit right into the 30s and 40s. The NINETEEN-30s and 40s, mind you. We were a little too baffled by that one to make any argument.
And! We were apparently fascinating to the attending members of the Asbury Park Press. We chatted with the woman for quite a while while waiting in line for our carriage ride.
We made it into their article (where I've lifted the photo from). We threw out a whole bunch of things to make ourselves not sound completely derp-tastic (research! material culture! social history!) but naturally they went with Robin's " 'We’re just kids who never grew up,' said Coccagna, who handcrafts costumes from a variety of centuries. “At the end of the day, we want to play pretty, pretty princess.' " THANKS ROBIN. ;) The woman even got our contacts because she thought we might be interesting enough to do a piece on - to which I say, only if it's a MASSIVELY slow day in Asbury Park, but we'll talk at anyone for a long time about this hobby if you let us.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And I think that's everything of importance from yesterday - now I just have to do the blog writeups for my dresses (and take pictures of my satin ballgown so I can write said blog post, ugh) and I'll be caught up. I even cleaned up my costume bits from the weekend and most of the mess from making the cream poplin dress.
Unless I have some sort of brilliant idea (one can never rule that out!), I'll probably mostly be sewing on odds and ends from now through the end of the month. I bought a novelty Chistmas print I want a 1950s dress out of (that looks like a tablecloth but I don't care), I want to sew a few more fichus etc for the IKT, and I need to work on shop things. Oh, and I probably want a little more trim on my striped 1770s silk anglaise, as I'm probably going to wear that to the Trenton ball. So there will be sewing, but not any massively exciting new projects!
Unless I'm vry good about shop sewing, then I might let myself do that not-plaid wool anglaise for First Night at the IKT. We'll see.
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