Too many things to finish...

I find finishing things to be dreadfully hard.

~sigh~

What I have to finish:

Eowyn Shieldmaiden vest for my friend
Um... like, the entire thing, practically!

1790s corset of pale green ~gasp~ polyester taffeta! ~hides face in shame~
Half the boning channels and then some, eyelets and binding.

Victorian petticoat of white curtain lining. Yep. I was pressed for pennies.
Whipstitch half the waistband down, 1 hook and eye closure

White print Regency gown
Two of the three skirts need to be hemmed. Lol, yes, I have three skirts on that thing - the top one is very see-through! I just added skirts until I couldn't see through it anymore...

Rose-coloured Elizabethan kirtle
One seam to be covered in trim, binding, and eyelets.


Well, that's all I can think of now. And that's just costume projects!!

~wanders off to contemplate the meaning of Life~

1807 Regency Gown pictures

It is done! Finally. Actually, the making of the dress didn't take a particularly long time... it's just the times in between that sort of stretched out the making! lol

The dress is made up of blue print cotton, with a cream linen lining. The bodice lining is fitted, with two darts on each side. The skirt lining reaches only to my knees in the front, and is about a foot longer in the back.

There is hand-sewn topstitching everywhere! Around the bottom edge of the sleeve, on both sides of each side-back seam, along the back neckline and shoulders... I think that's all of it. On the linen skirt-lining, instead of making a regular hem, I turned it under by 1/8" twice, and toptstitched it by hand. I also topstitched next to the dart seams. Yes, I was having fun topstitching... it's one stitch that I know I can do, and I got a bit carried away. But it does look nice and tidy, I think!

The back closure is hook-and-eye. This is the first time I have attempted a hook-and-eye closure and I am inordinately proud of it (or, I will be once I fix that horrid gap on the bottom!). There are seven metal hooks, and seven handsewn thread eyes. I made the eyes by sewing a 'bar' with a buttonhole stitch over six loops of thread. Tell me if that doesn't make sense! It was really quite easy.

And now, I shall let the pictures speak for themselves (because I can't think of anything else to say). Except: I am wearing a corset and shift, as you may be able to tell. The shift kept peeking out at the neckline, which was rather a nuisance.

Big Hair

The last couple of weeks, I've been rather obsessed with the dress and hair styles of the 1780s/90s (obsessed enough to start a corset for it!). I really want to make a chemise dress, but if I'm going to wear it, I need the hair. Yes the big poufy hairdo. Definitely a requirement.

So, this morning I enlisted the aid of my sister, and we set about curling my hair with hot-rollers. First, I dampened my hair with water and put a bit of gel in it (it seemed like a ton of gel to me, but I rarely put gel in my hair, so perhaps it wasn't so much). Then we put as many hot-rollers as possible in my hair, clipping them with little plastic hairclips where the metal pins wouldn't hold them in place. About half the metal pins refused to hold up their rollers, naturally.

I wandered about the house looking quite ridiculous for, oh, two and half hours. Somewhere in that time I misted my hair with a water spray-bottle and tried drying it with the hairdryer - an attempt to be sure that my hair would curl! After two and a half hours, I could no longer wait, and pulled out all the hot rollers and clips. The immediate results were not particularly promising... BUT, I just started piling my hair on top of my head and stabbing clips and bobbypins into it.


Success!! Well, it's not quite as big as I wanted - but I did manage to lift my hair a smidgen higher by sticking my fingers under it and tugging on it.

It has begun!

Well. Now I have a blogger - thing. This will be an account of my adventures in costume (may they be many). Now if I can just figure out how it all works...