I Do Not Knit, But I Have Seriously Considered Learning How, Exclusively So I Could Make One Of These.

My latest finished project, based off a couple of extant bodices and a fashion plate which all had this snazzy cross-over front feature.

I actually made the skirt a long time ago as a historybounding, everyday thing to wear. It has alternating panels of striped and solid black cotton, and has a scalloped hem. I love it and wear it often, and decided that I was going to make a matching bodice so I could wear it to costume events, too.

I draped the pattern myself, based off of a couple of extants. Each seam is boned with artificial whalebone and the seam allowances were tacked down by hand with a herringbone stitch. The peplum is lined with black cotton, but the rest is just lined with cheap plain white muslin to save on cost. The bodice closes up the center front with hooks and eyes, and then the wrap panels are folded over and closed at the side seams.

Brain gremlins about my weight are under the cut for those that don't want to read it.

I finished this outfit a while back, but I've been struggling with whether or not I wanted to post it. It's not the outfit, I think that it turned out fabulously. But I've been really unhappy about my weight, and it's been a fight to remind myself that my weight is not my worth. I keep hearing the negative things my mother would say whenever I would gain a pound or two or the "positive" things she'd say when I lost them (things like "oh, you have a chin again!" or "I can actually see your waist now.")

So I'm trying to ignore all that and remind myself how awesome this dress turned out, how hard I worked on it, and how proud I am of the construction of it.

Some colors just make my heart happy. This gown is peak Gothic, dating from 1840-1850, potentially of German origin. If you like layer cake gowns with staying power, this is ideal.

Miles of rose pink taffeta silk, Chinese style embroidery, and those mirrored V shapes at the bodice top and bottom just make this perfect for a princess (or a princess at heart). The embroidery at the bottom of the bodice just kills me it's so beautiful and delicate. Monochrome can be so beautiful!

Image Credit: © Historic Deerfield, Inc.

The Párisi Udvar in Budapest, Hungary. Arcade/department store/ galleria built 1907-1913, in a mix of styles- venetian gothic, orientalism, jugendstil, renaissance.

This hits so many of my niche interests, it's perfect. ♥

Bookbinding: A Stitch in Time

My mom has been hoping to get her hands on a hard copy of A Stitch in Time, which, as I'm sure most of you are aware, tends to be pricey if you can find it. (It's currently listed for ~$115 on eBay, and more expensive elsewhere.)

So, I decided to put my bookbinding skills to use and make her one for her birthday.

Notes on the design and construction:

The cover design was inspired by (or rather adapted from via considerable photoshopping) this book cover from 1901 that happened to cross my dashboard in a post with a bunch of other cool old book covers:

I created the Cardassian building silhouettes based on a screencap, and the DS9 silhouette is borrowed from the Niners logo. The orchid on the back cover emerging from the Obsidian Order logo is one I found in Cricut Design Space.

(Feel free to use these in your own projects, if you like.)

The bookcloth is by BOOKCRAFTSUPPLYCO on Etsy (dark green). The cover designs are HTV, Cricut Everyday Iron-On (black), Cricut Foil Iron-On (gold), and Vinyl Frog Metallic Foil (holographic silver). The Cardassian Union logos on the end pages were done using Cricut's foil transfer system (gold). The fonts on the cover are DS9 Title and DS9 Credits from st-minutiae.com.

Whipped up a quick mantelet to keep me warm at yesterday’s Georgian Picnic. The outer fabric is a champagne colored taffeta, and it has a warm fleece lining. I edged the entire thing with marabou to simulate fur. It was nice and warm in our cool fall weather!

I've started another embroidered waistcoat! No, I haven't actually finished the other one yet, but I wanted to hone my tailoring skills a bit before I finished up the big fancy one. The photo on top is the actual extant waistcoat that I'm basing this one off of, and the bottom two pics are my in-progress embroidery. I'm aiming to have this project wrapped up in time for an event on the 16th of September.

Day Dress

c.1855

England

This type of widely protruding skirt that appeared around the middle of the 19th century came to be known later under the name of the "crinoline style." As can be seen with this dress, large design motifs proved immensely effective on these voluminous skirts. The border pattern here is wood-block printed and repeats every 20.6 cm. Compared to small-scale designs, large patterns require a solid technique to avoid misalignment of the print colors. Considering that this mixed fabric of silk and wool is a material hard to print on, this dress with its bright and cheerful colors is a particularly fine example on how much cloth printing techniques had evolved.

The Kyoto Costume Institute

Hello, Stripes, you have my attention. ♥

La Mode: revue du monde élégant. Troisième année. Juillet. 1831. Paris. Pl. 166. Robes de Mousseline blanche et mousseline à raies brochées, façon de Melle Palmire. Coiffures de M. Hypolite — Bijoux de Chauffert, Palais royal. Bibliothèque nationale de France

1860s summer dress

La Compagnie du Costume

This project is finally finished! I started this dress back in July '24, thinking that I had plenty of time to finish it before my trip to Dickens on the Strand in December. Of course, I grossly underestimated my ability to get distracted, so I was, as is tradition, finishing this dress up in the hotel room the first night of the event. But hey, at least it was finished!

Things started with the skirt, which was based off several designs I kept seeing in 1850s fashion plates that have tiered skirts with ruffles on them. I had always slated that amazing plaid fabric for something mid-Victorian, and the ruffles seemed like a good way to accent such a busy fabric, and to help keep fabric usage down, as I only had 9 yards of the plaid.

The ruffles were attached to a plain black panel, which was then attached to a plaid panel, which was gathered onto the skirt base, which was also made of plain black taffeta.

I hadn't decided on a bodice design when I first started, and when it came time to make it I was definitely in a time crunch, so it's pretty much a straight make of Truly Victorian's TV440. The front closes with hooks and thread bars, but I ended up making it slightly too small, which led to gapping over the bust. I didn't have time to fully address this before the event, so I made a fichu in black taffeta that I could wear to cover it.

To make the fishu, I traced the back bodice pattern onto the fabric, then just drew in the tails in chalk. I mocked it up in cotton first, and then cut it out in taffeta. If I were to do it again, I would remember to put the taffeta on the bias so it would stretch over my bust correctly. The taffeta was also super slippery on top of the bodice, which was also taffeta, so even though I intended to wear it like a sontag, as seen above, I ended up wearing it with the tails down in front.

The undersleeves were finished in the hotel room just before my first event. You can't really see them in any of the pictures, but they definitely helped make the outfit feel complete, and I didn't have my naked forearms flapping around for all the world to see!

There's a much more in-depth writeup on my main costuming blog, including a lot of skirt math!