A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Sort of! I tacked the puffs of china silk onto my cap - planning to do my shoot of the chintz dress Friday morning so I wanted to get that out of the way...even though it's got enough powder and pomatum on it from just one wearing to be kinda icky already. Mostly because said powder is pink. ;) I feel precisely no inclination to add onto/fix the tucker right now, but maybe tomorrow I'll decide that's an awesome idea? Seems doubtful. Photos can still go ahead sans tucker, so, whatever.

Also dug through my bin of "everyday" fabric and was moderately ruthless in culling to put up in the shop. Took pics of all of them, and measured half of them (ugh, so boring), so hopefully I can get at least five of them listed tomorrow. Probably nothing to excite anyone here, but I sold all the ugly little pieces of silky poly fairly quickly when I put them up! So hopefully these will move too, because the piles are getting dangerous!

Plus I'm making a deal with myself that I can't buy fabric for the Currently Secret But Probably Not Secret Once I Get the Fabric Project til I sell a few things on etsy! ;)

(Somewhat related: it occurred to me that if I don't finish the Hell Dress, this project would be fine for the "fancy dress" ball as well. This is a terrible justification, but I think I'm taking it.)

Done, actually! I'll get pics of it tomorrow in daylight. It's fairly ridiculous and looks vaguely like a wedding cake. You know that "fluff" isn't really my thing, but I'm enjoying this hat, I admit!

Now I guess I should probably get back to trimming that dress...

Working on the hat seemed like the path of least resistance today, haha. And I got my paper roses in the mail so I now have everything I need for it! I didn't get a whole lot of actual sewing done, but I did a lot of hemming and hawing and peering at the hat while I laid various things on top of it, so it counts as productive to me!

And I did get one of my strips of organza gathered up and pinned on - the one I decide to put on the underside of the brim. Can't have too much fluff! I also wadded up some batting inside a tube of the blue taffeta...it currently looks like an idiotic "medieval" head-doughnut you see at renfairs, but I'm going to scrunch it down a bit! Hopefully it won't look quite so stupid after I scrunch it...

Pinned fluff:


Idiot head-doughnut, because I can't tell you about something like that and not give you a picture:

(Yes, it goes on top of the hat. No, I haven't lost my mind! Probably. With a puff of organza in the center I almost promise it'll look less deranged.)

Cleaned up (as much as I want, which is not all that much) for sewing day tomorrow, and got some more odds and ends put away.

I tacked the chiffon scarf onto the 1790s hat so I could put it away without losing the scarf (the feathers would have had to be detatched for storage anyway, so no point in putting them on now) and took some rather shoddily-considered-background pics of it:

The 'tail' of the scarf is in fact intended to hang off like that...you see it in a fair number of 1790s hats-with-scarves, and it looks fairly dorky but I like it. :D

I also put three more rows of cording in the 1830s petticoat, so it may be 2/3 done. I say "may" because I'm not entirely certain 6 more rows will make it as short as I want it to be, but we'll see!
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It's too early to sulk about my picnic on Saturday being rained out...but I am obsessively checking the forecast and eyeballing it VERY suspiciously. (Currently 62* and 90% chance of rain, which is...not good, Bob.) Maybe I don't have to worry about finishing the open robe...but too early to call that.

Anyway. I was rather lazy today sewing-wise (although FFC is having a sale on cottons and I might've indulged myself a bit, with vintage dresses in mind! some very pretty cotton-silk voile on there!). I finished sewing the hat together last night, though I still have to finish stitching down the lining. Blocked it by holding it in place with some wine bottles (yes, really...), and we have this:

And I got my Dharma order today, and felt the need to immediately cut the big square of chiffon for the scarf and try it on. And it does look cute if I do say so myself! Although the cheap-ass straw immediately snagged a couple of threads, because of course it did. Also put the first coat of paint on my Payless Regency shoes - I'll probably paint both the kitten heels and the flats this week, although since the heels are fabric, if there's any chance of underfoot squishiness they won't get worn.

I was off today, and horribly lazy, so I decided I wanted a zero-thinking hemming project while sitting on the sofa marathoning Law & Order:SVU. Okay...cap? Sure, let's make another cap. So I cut out all my pattern pieces (I cut the crap and bought the Country Wives: Beribboned Caps 1780-1810 pattern) and thought I didn't have enough of my nice expensive organza, and so cut it out of the cheaper Dharma Trading stuff. And then remembered why I didn't want to use it for caps. It's SO squeedgy! (Technical term.)

And then I decided to double-check whether I could fit it on the Silk Baron organza, and I could just. So I cut it out again out of that one. It's more than twice the price but I just like to sew with it so much more! Too bad I have 10 yards of the Dharma stuff and none of the Silk Baron now, haha. (I bought the 10 yards for trim...hems on the straight are all right.) So I'd best be happy with this cap!

So! I hemmed the band and am currently whip-gathering the crown to it. And tonight is apparently Knots In The Thread Night, and I attached about a quarter of the crown to the band before realizing the hem of the band was on the outside, oooops.

And I haven't forgotten about the poor Indian King Tavern - with the FFC sale on, I got a couple of checked linens to make aprons and kerchiefs. Only a yard of each because I don't want everyone to match, and 3 of the 4 linens were the same check in different colorways. But at $4.18/yd I couldn't say no! (Unless they're sold out already.)

Because it's not an event if I'm not sewing the night before, amirite? As of just this moment, the cap is all sewn together. I want to pleat up some ribbon to trim it with, then packing most stuff, then bed.

Also it is raining quite hard, which I very much hope it is not doing in Big Pool at the moment. Good thing my shoes were already muddy...poor things need a good polish!

OMG THIS CAP

LOL NO

I can't seem to quite convey in picture form just how doofy this cap looks. But in person I promise you I look like a chef or an Amish lady. Stiff organdy is all well and good, but this stuff is too stiff! It's like a paper hat. Now, I didn't put ruffles or lace on the edge, so that would dress it up a little...but I don't think I'll bother. At least the shape is good, so the next one should be better!


Which I think I will make out of some nice limp cotton lawn...

Because I took it out to work on tonight, and then unwisely decided to sign onto FB and chat with dragoneyes19 about Regency "undress" and poke around the internets to see what we could find. Immensely fun, but impedes the sewing process considerably!

Annnnd now there are "showers" in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday. Awesome. The probability of me packing my cloak just skyrocketed.

I did make cheater mitts today, though, so I'm prepared. *pats self on the back* They're cheater because earlier today, they were the sleeves of a knit merino wool sweater I used to wear to work - until I apparently had a brain meltdown and decided to put said wool sweater in the dryer. Brilliant, no?

So I cut the arms off and sewed thumbs on, and called them mitts. They're sort of dumb-looking; I had to take some gathering stitches in the wrist to fit them a little better, which didn't help much. But they're wool, and warm! (And have thumbs, which is more than can be said for those green mitts I'll probably never actually finish.)


And then I trimmed Hat Number One, for wearing with le stripey jacket. Green ribbon shot w/red, courtesy of Wal-Mart:

Which took forever, because I kept putting trim on and then taking it off, before hitting upon one I liked. Which is probably the fiddliest one I could have picked, and then took another eternity to sew together...

No, I didn't finish the shift yet! I looked at it, thought about it, and decided mitts were more necessary and hats were more fun.