mandie_rw: me 1950s green dress (Default)
Done the second painted petticoat! So that'll get sent off tomorrow or Monday, and I get to sew for meeeeee again! For now. ;)

I ought to get cracking on my plans for the Big Hat Tea in April, but I'll allow myself a bit of playtime first. So, today, besides hemming the painted petticoat, I:

- Washed, dried, and ironed (ugh) a bunch of "modern" dress fabrics, mostly from my last splurge during an FFC sale. Includes what I'll probably use for my 1940 Reading airshow dress (white lightweight cotton with little black polka-dots), but we'll see about that.

- Cut a hunk of linen to make a new late 18thc shift from. Was going to cut the pieces, but realized it had a big weird brown mark on it, so had to wash that out first.

- Started a new pair of 1770s stays. Um, what?? Welllll, my current pair is still unbound - they were the "let me experiment with cane" pair, in which I decided I do not like cane at all for half-boned stays! After the first try-on snapped a couple canes I wasn't inclined to put more work into binding them... anywhoo, I wore them Saturday and broke another cane, which reminded me that I'd bought some fun rose-pink linen to make stays with last year, and I should really get around to that. This pair will be boned with plastic whalebone, so I shouldn't be able to destroy them as quickly!
And I'm going to hand sew them, for funsies. I'd like to, and there's no rush, since the cane pair is still quite functional. And I've never yet made a pair of hand-sewn 18thc stays, believe it or not! I should really use linen thread for linen stays, I think...but I like sewing with silk so that's what I'm going to use. Fight me. xD
So I traced off a new pattern from the cane stays, as I apparently still had the 2011 stays pattern but hadn't saved the updated-in-2015 pattern? Good job, Past Me. Derp. Good thing stays are easy to trace off! Got all the pieces besides lining cut - outside of aforementioned pink linen, and two layers of linen canvas for the channels. That is, the channels will go through all three layers, as I don't trust the pink linen to be used as a strength layer alone (midweight, mid-priced linen to hold in boning on its own? Nope). And basted all the pieces together with enormous purple stitches! Shame I didn't take a picture, it's very attractive.
mandie_rw: (1780s)
Almost forgot! Wrote up a whole blog post on the making of the painted petticoats here. And now I am heartily sick of painted petticoats! Time for something pre-Raphaelite, I think. :D And/or starting the 1830 stays once I buy the rest of the stuff I need for them.
mandie_rw: (1780s)
Since there were a few of us in the Philly area that couldn't make it to the Francaise Dinner for various reasons, I thought it might be fun to get together and do a Costume Thing that weekend to at least sort of make up for it. To that end, we went to City Tavern yesterday for lunch - the Tavern's a perfect setting for costumed lunches, and the owner loves when people show up in costume. (Free booze. Just sayin'. And Robin doesn't drink, so I got two. Win-win.)

Read more... )
mandie_rw: (1780s)
The jacket still needs trim sewn on, painted petti #1 needs to be leveled and pleated, painted petticoat #2 is about 2/3 painted. Hmmmmmm. Good thing I'm off tomorrow.
mandie_rw: (1780s)
Rapidly running out of time - it's a mercy we rescheduled the lunch to Sunday rather than Saturday. (Although if we hadn't, I probably wouldn't even have started the petticoat.) This one's got more colors in it, and so many leaves to outline. All the leaves. Hrrng. I like it very much though, so I'mma keep on truckin'!
mandie_rw: (1780s)
Soooo close to finishing the jacket! I had a bad case of the lazies today so I didn't work on it at all (and I actually did have a few other things to do). I did get the yellow ribbon for trim in the mail today (yellow was a good choice, self *nods*) and the package of inks from Dharma, which means I now have a small army of ink bottles sitting on the ironing board, staring me down. I promise to use you tomorrow, tiny inks!
mandie_rw: (1860ssunset)
Well, I wanted one for myself, too! And the first was to try out a less complicated pattern. This one's a little bigger. I ordered more inks a couple days ago; here's hoping they actually get here in time, heh. So I was dedicated and got the whole pattern drawn out today. So many leaves argh.
mandie_rw: (1780s)
Hemmed the painted petti today - took longer than anticipated because I forgot how fussy a small hem is on this fine voile.

Also, it struck me that I might theoretically spangle an entire dress and then manage to melt it all with an iron... so I tried out a couple of my fakey-fake spangles, and even under a press cloth they still warped. I suspect that when the iron's hot enough to flatten the cotton, it's just too much for the spangles. And I really cannot make an entire dress that can't be ironed! Hmmmmm.
mandie_rw: (1860ssunset)
Finished painting the petticoat today - even had time to do a half-repeat sample of the design on medium-weight cotton as well, though I don't think it looks as nice and uses up considerably more ink. Tomorrow it starts being an actual petticoat!
mandie_rw: (duh)
Got a nice chunk of petticoat painted today, although it was remarkably springlike today so I did spend some time outside enjoying the weather! Didn't take a picture of said painting because it looks the same as the picture from yesterday...just more so, haha.

Unrelated, I saw this article linked in a couple places on FB, and it made me laugh and shake my head. If you're going to snark about "sexist pockets" you should probably actually read the things you cite as sources on the history of pockets. Just an idea.

I think my favorite was this bit, about pockets in the 18th century: "If you were a woman of money (and if you had pockets, you probably were)..." Ah yes, those expensive-ass pockets. *nods sagely*

And a close second was this gem about 17th-century pockets: "A woman's makeshift pocket was hung under her dress but over the under-petticoat, making it logistically difficult to access unless she was nearly nude." ...what?? To be fair, the I-can't-find-my-pockets-dance would have been even funnier it that were the case...

December 2024

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
1516 1718192021
22232425 26 2728
293031    

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 12th, 2025 12:12 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios