So the stays workshop in Williamsburg this past weekend was awesome. I had fun and I feel like I learned a lot. AND I've got the start of a lovely pair of 1780s stays, and I feel more confidant about drafting up some earlier stays as well. Knowing how they should fit and where they should be was always my biggest stumbling block, after all. I ( Read more... )

Did I just make a Spoonflower account just so I can make this dress? Yes, yes I did.

but I did take pictures of what I picked up in NYC today~

The main focus of the day was getting fabric for Mom's dress for the Titanic dinner. She's going with this Liberty of London gown from the Met. She decided to go with a nice light sage green for the color, and we found some lovely silk charmeuse for it.

As for me, I picked up a wild purple ( Read more... )

CADD is hitting and it's hitting hard. It tends to come when I'm past the halfway point of a project, and all I want is to play with the next pretty thing. I think the only reason why I haven't started working on my blue striped summer bustle is the fact that I haven't unpacked my 1872 bustled crinoline yet, and I need to actually measure out the ( Read more... )

The auction for the damask I was bidding on was pulled. D: But there were six days left and bidding was almost up to my limit anyway, so even if it had run the full time, I probably would've lost it anyway. Sooooo I went looking for something else and snatched this damask as a BIN. It's pink and gold, obviously, but as the V&A mantua was a blue and ( Read more... )

So there just might be 13 yards of a lovely pink and cream plaid silk shantung making it's way to me. Perhaps.

And should this fabric potentially show up in my mailbox, it just might find itself being made into something like this. And possibly a second bodice like this, so it can go for either day or evening wear. Since there is so much yardage ( Read more... )

I've got the Watteau polonaise all pieced, apart from the stomacher and sleeves, and pinned up on my dress form. (No pictures because I haven't gotten around to digging my camera out and charging it. >_>) I'm not entirely crazy with how the back of it lays over my bustle, but I think part of it is because it's only over a petticoat right now, ( Read more... )

I bought some red and tan linen off of Ebay last month, intending to do a more casual, everyday polonaise with it. But when it arrived, it turned out that the red stripes are printed onto the solid tan fabric. So, is this completely not period, and therefore not appropriate for a polonaise? If I end up not using it for it's original purpose, it ( Read more... )

Hit all the stores I wanted to in New York yesterday. It doesn't matter how many times it happens while I'm up there, snow still seems wrong. I picked up a few sample cards from C&J, and I've changed my mind on what fabric I plan to use for charlesii. It'll cost less than Distinctive Fabrics, which is always a plus. I also picked up the ribbons I need, as ( Read more... )

If (and this is a very big if, because I'm slightly suspicious of the price) what I've found is in fact silk moire, then my charlesii will be a topaz/cream gold instead of the light blue/grey of the portraits. Because if it does turn out to be 100% silk, then I'd be insane to pass it up even if the color isn't right. After all, who's to say my dear princess ( Read more... )