A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

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...)

Although no photo proof because the phone appears to be playing games where it refuses to upload to Flickr, so that's cool. (Not nearly as interesting without pictures!) Haha! Victory is mine!

I've got just a smidge more time for the rest of the spring semester since one of my students wrapped up his English class last week, and that must have been Inspiring, because I did an eyelet here and there, and got the transitional stays to initial try-on point for today. The pieces are just basted together to check the fit, and considering the total lack of effort put into mockups and fitting, they're pretty good!

They look slightly weird and bulgy but...that's just my torso, lol. There will be shoulder straps put on at the end of it all, but they're resting pretty comfortably at my waist.

 
The back at the shoulder blades is just a titch roomy; if I'd already sewn the pieces together for real I wouldn't bother unpicking for it, but since they're just basted I'll pull them in at the seam maybe a quarter-inch.


HELLO POKEY MCPOKERFACE. I wasn't planning on binding with leather because lazy, but...I foresee getting stabbed in the armpit if I don't. I think I need to buy another chamois because I had some but it seems to have wandered off... at least they're cheap, heh.

A Saturday when I have no obligations to anyone or anything, and can spend my entire day doing whatever I damn well want? Yes please!

What I wanted was apparently to stay in pajamas all day, drink copious amounts of tea, and putter in the sewing room. It was nice to feel inspired to sew - that's rare these days!

- Finished up most of my new Regency petticoat. I started it on Thursday night Because I Could, and this morning finished up everything but the hem, as I want to 100% make sure of the length under my new dress before I commit.

- New dress, you say? Ah, yes. Because I figured, while I had the stays and petticoat on, might as well see if that Swiss dot dress does still fit. Well...almost? But big back gaps are unhelpful, so no. And then figured while I had the gear on, might as well try all the rest of the Regency wardrobe on while I was at it.

Does not fit: Swiss dot dress
Light blue linen summer spencer
Long sleeves on the Lizzie Bennet dress (seriously, my forearms got fatter? wtf)
Pompom spencer/jumper
Gold and white evening dress

Will fit with a bit of adjustment (moving hooks/bars, adding to a front overlap, &c.):
Red linen spencer (except now there's a gap on the trim where there used to be overlap at the CF so trim HAS to come off now!)
Lizzie Bennet dress (just noticed today that I apparently spilled tea? down the front of the skirt at some point, so that's nice; have to see if that'll come out)
Cream wool dress and black wool spencer

Regency's not terribly easy to adjust size-wise, and god knows I have a BIT of a fabric stash, so it'll be much easier to just try and sell on the stuff that doesn't fit any more rather than refit it. Put that on the to-do list for next weekend, ugh.

So, okay, after I discovered most of my Regency wardrobe no longer fits (it's gonna be super fun to rediscover this for every era I do!), what did I do then? Well, I actually fitted a bodice mockup! Amazed I remember how to do that, it's been so long... I haven't 100% decided on the design for my New And Improved white 18-teens dress, so I just made a "base" mockup of a plain low-necked, back-fastening bodice and called it Good Enough For Now.

And then I was going to make some very small adjustments to the pattern I'd fitted, so I could use it for the bodice of the squiggle print set and maybe work on that a bit...but then I got a weird bee in my bonnet that I don't want to use the Redthreaded stays with that outfit after all! I want it to be more along the lines of working class, and these stays feel like they'd be a rather fashion-forward shape for a working-class woman around 1800...so I decided to make another pair of more fashion-backward stays! So...I got those stays mocked up, cut out, and basted tonight!

They're mostly based on the 1795-1805 pair from Regency Women's Dress (which I fiiiiinally acquired recently! now that it's out of print, good job, me), with some tweaks. I wasn't scaling them up as they'd nowhere near fit me - I actually started with my 1770s stays pattern, and added horizontally and subtracted vertically - so I messed with the back seam shape and am making them out of more layers of linen. I wanted to use a scrap of natural linen with a fun herringbone pattern (thanks hiraimi !) for the outside, but it's light weight enough that I wanted another layer there.

And those will now go on hold til I get the boning for them. I've been trying to be good with sticking to available Stash (ha very ha), but since these are deliberately a bit experimental, I didn't want to waste my plastic whalebone, plus figured I could give some of those cheaper-in-period materials a try. Basically I raided basketweaving.com...for "seagrass" (it's not really seagrass these days, apparently), fine round reed, and ash splints. None of them are exactly the same as the period materials (can you tell I finally bought PoF 5 for myself as a birthday gift?), but for the cost and availability, I'm willing to give them a try. I'll see what seems like the best bet for these when it all shows up.

Also, did you know cat noses will register as touch on touch-screen laptops? I just found that out. BYE, PIP.