A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

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...)

We moved probably 85% of my worldly goods to the new apartment yesterday - the remainder is a few odds and ends of crafty stuff, along with whatever random crap's left in the attic (including whatever Christmas decorations I get custody of).

I have waaaay too much hobby-related stuff, you guys. I can't bring myself to throw any of it away yet, but holy wow.

Related: I am tired. (My 9:30 student is absent, so I should be catching up on work, but I'm sitting here posting on DW and having tea instead. Zzzzzz.)

Also related: deciding to do this Regency weekend was stupid, on my part. I'd already paid for it by the time we finalized moving dates, in my defense. We still have to buy a sofa, not to mention settling in a couple of cats this weekend! Trying to decide how much I care about being out the money, and how disappointed my roommate will be if I don't go!

Belvidere Victorian Days was this weekend...or, rather, Day, singular. They of course didn't have it last year, and decided to put on a single-day, scaled down version for this year. Understandable, but a bit of a bummer for us, as Mick & Co. didn't want to set up their usual entire encampment (that takes several hours to put up and down) for one afternoon, and it meant there wasn't an opportunity for a nice catered dinner like we did a few years ago.

The day seems to have been a success, though (one of the organizers stopped by our group and thanked us for coming out and supporting their event and dressing so nicely for it), with plenty of vendors and attendees...so hopefully they'll go back to the full weekend next year, if at all possible! Jessica and I spent our breakfast hour this morning cheerfully planning a very optimistic wardrobe for next Belvidere!

It was just the two of us from the Usual Suspects (I think she and I are really the only ones left that plan to keep doing this costuming thing!), but Mick knows approximately a billion people from all the years he's been in the hobby, and there was a nice group of about ten other people hanging out at the "encampment" as well. They were very well dressed, lovely to talk to, and I forget almost all of their names.

We did the round of vendors - not too much that was thrilling to me, although I did pick up a few random pieces of costume jewelry from a vendor that had literally trays and trays of it! (Only three pieces, as they weren't that good a deal...a necklace of faceted black glass beads, an enamel rose pin, and a not-too-bad-and-still-probably-pretty-old fake cameo!) And a vendor selling bouquets and floral-y-type things came over with a box of her leftover unsold tussie-mussies and gave them to all the ladies of the group at the end of the day, which was very nice of her! They smelled lovely too...mint and rosemary and lavender and other herbs with baby's breath and rosebuds! I saved mine and brought it home in the plastic hotel cup and now it's sitting on my bedside table.

And I took zero pictures! Well, zero pictures of me. I took a picture of a chamber pot a vendor had for sale and sent it to Robin for yucks. But nothing of me! I wore the old beige dress and the old straw hat (which was dented a bit on one side from sitting on that side for...uh...years), so I didn't feel the need to bother.

Although I did end up having to wear the new Redthreaded corset rather than the blue spoon busk one, as apparently that one's started exploding its boning, which I found out when I tried it all on Friday afternoon (which is why I try it all on BEFORE the event!). Thankfully it all fit over the new corset as well, although not quite as well as over the corset it was intended to fit (shocker)! I have more hip in the spoon busk corset so there were a few extra wrinkles, but I doubt anyone would have noticed if I hadn't told them. I'd like to remake that corset before next year if I can, though; I really liked the shape it gave (okay, all the hip and bust padding lol).



Sewing this week will probably be limited to glaring at my pile of cut-out mask pieces and thinking about what I can wrangle for a November Regency event that's happening in Delaware in November!

Me: I'm going to update more!

Also Me: Doesn't update anything.

I posted one or two IG posts, but nothing here, oops. I've mostly been working on the 1780s stays, as I felt most inspired to do that, I guess! I stopped at Home Depot on the way home from work and picked up more cable ties, so got the stays all boned as of tonight. Basted one half of the pieces together for a try-on and decided I was tired. Unless I'm super distracted, I can probably finish basting and try those on tomorrow at some point after my couple of morning classes.

I did also get my box o'dirndl fabric fun over the weekend, along with one of the Burda patterns I ordered, so after I check the fit of the stays I'll probably switch to dirndls for a bit (provided there isn't any awful fit crisis with the stays. I'm going to a small stitch-n-bitch on Saturday so I would like to have the stays at an "easy to sit and and sew for a few hours" point by then).

Also I stopped into my (former) Joann's for glue and somewhat accidentally came out with some fabric (and many half-serious pleas to come back and do sale sets please! Ha ha ha, sure, if you want to match what they pay me at school)... I grabbed a few quarter yards of fall & Halloween fabrics for new masks for this school year, but also I was absolutely unable to resist the skeleton cats! Unable to resist to the point of placing a pickup order for another local store to grab on my way home tomorrow, because Cherry Hill only had 1+ yard, and I NEED a dress out of this, you guys.

(Will I actually make it for this season? Doubtful. But I LOVE IT AND NEED IT.)

Well, sort of. Maybe. At least think very hard about sewing all the things? As I mentioned in my last post, I think, I'm feeling creative (it's a nice feeling!), and this is perfect timing, in the few weeks between "summer classes are winding down" and "time to start fall classes again!"

And as we know, I'm not one of those nice efficient people who can work steadily on one project from start to finish; I have to have a bunch of them going at the same time so I can bounce around! Currently in the workbasket:

- Late 1790s-1800 squiggle print outfit. The one to go over those new transitional stays! The one I sewed the petticoat skirt panels for in, like, March, and then wandered away. I don't have an event for it, but soft goal is to finish it in time for early fall, as there's a local historic farmhouse (that's no longer a farm, of course, but has a big community garden and apple trees) I want to take pictures at before everything dies off. I finished the petticoat over the weekend, except for hooks & bars on the bodice, which I want to suit up for and then work on a mockup for the short gown bodice, so as not to waste a suiting-up! This will require a solid chunk of sewing time that I haven't managed to set aside yet. Possibly tomorrow or at least Thursday, I think I can manage that.

- 1780s "Augusta" stays. I was hemming and hawing over what, if anything, to make for a 1780s-90s/ chemise gown event at the end of September - I vaguely had Ideas of making the black 1790s round gown I've wanted for a few years and have fabric for, but after some discussion with the hostess it seems it's mostly going to be white gowns. I already have a white chemise gown and feel no need to make another one, as they're nice but not my Favorite Thing Ever, so I can focus on accessories. And, er, stays are accessories, right? Well...I could use a new pair of 1780s stays - my old ones are still wearable but they are very old (2009 or so? yikes), and I bought the Augusta stays pattern a while back with the intention of eventually replacing those elderly ones. Now seems like a good time...especially since if I don't finish the new stays in time I can still wear the old ones (or my newer green linen 1770s stays, for that matter)!

I'm trying to be good and use materials I have on hand, so I'm using a piece of "cimarron" taffeta from the scrap bin for the outside, and am dismembering a (different) very old pair of stays for the cable ties. After having switched over to German plastic whalebone as my default boning a few years back, cable ties look pretty clunky to me now for visible boning channels, but...it's available and free? I tried splitting one tie in half, which makes for a much nicer, narrower width, but...cable ties are very resistant to being cut vertically! Not practicable for boning an entire pair of stays! So I'll just resign myself to relatively clunky channels, it's fine. I may have to buy something for the binding anyway, as I want something nicer than chamois, and do want to actually bind rather than doing that whole turn-the-edges-in thing. Will have to decide soon; if I need to order something I should do it within the next week or so.

- Dirndl(s). And now I, somewhat randomly, have a new obsession with German tracht, or folk costume, specifically the dirndl. Background to this: my maternal grandmother's family was all early-20thc-German immigrants (not uncommon in Northeastern cities!), so when I was a kid we usually went to the Labor Day weekend Cannstatter Volksfest Verein at a big German club in Philly. And you will be shocked to know I always wanted a dirndl, as many many people dressed in tracht, and more than one booth had racks of it for sale! They're expensive, though, so I never got one. Years passed, we mostly stopped going, but this year my sister and mom want to go again (Covid willing, of course), and it finally occurred to me that I now have the skills to make my own damn dirndl!

Oh, right, I sew, that's a thing.

I did some initial Pinterest/Google research - just enough to find that any actual historical/ specifically regional dirndl research is in German and therefore out of my league...but as a folk costume that's evolved into both an actual if niche/regional fashion and a "sexy Oktoberfest barmaid" costume, I can make whatever the hell I want and it doesn't have to be "historically accurate"!

Still not using a zipper, though. Zippers suck.

So, this is the project with my first "due date" - Labor Day weekend. I'm being good with my stays project, therefore I'm allowed to be bad with my dirndl project (fabric hoarder logic). Plus I have a nice wool I could use, but...I want to practice with a less-nice cotton print, and I really don't have many of those. So I ordered some quilting prints from fabric.com this morning! At least the nice thing about dirndl is that the bodice and skirt and apron are all separate pieces that don't have to be made of the same fabric although they can be. At least, they were separate pieces originally; more of the ready-made dirndl are constructed as a dress (which makes sense for off the rack purchases, but hi I'm making this custom-fit, plus making separates will make it more versatile!). So dirndl fixin's are all ordered, including a pattern because why reinvent the wheel when it comes to a bodice...and I'll work on that when it gets here.

I ended up staying up stupidly late last night playing with a new template for my blog - I realized I hadn't changed anything about it materially since 2011 or so, and it did occur to me that some of the more recent templates are shinier and prettier and also maybe more mobile-friendly! - so continuing to play with the blog won out today. Still fine-tuning (I don't like change, she whines), but I've mostly got it the way I want it, so now it can stay with this design for another decade!

So, to that effect, post on the transitional stays linked here!


They're unexciting little things, but I'm pretty pleased with them! I put them on after lunch for pictures, and just left them on all day while I wrote the post, went back to sewing til my Panera dinner was delivered, and then sat in the backyard eating my dinner and reading til dark. So that's about eight hours - still comfortable!

(Also I answered the door for my food in my 1790s petticoat and a kerchief over top...I'm pretty sure that guy thought I was a barefoot and pregnant sister-wife...)