STUPID FACE

( Doctor Who )

I actually made substantial progress on my thesis project last night, I think. I need to make a pair of short stays, but the pair I'm modeling them on is across the ocean and impossible for me to view. So I took the Jill Salen pattern of a pair of brown stays from 1790 and drew it out on my graph paper. The main thing that needs messing with is the length, as the VAM stays don't make it to the waist, so when I drew out the pieces I made the bottom line where the top of the tabs started. Then I scanned in the pattern pieces, c&p'd them so I had both sides, and doubled them to being at 1/4 scale. (And then shrunk them a wee bit to fit on the printer paper.) After I printed them out I cut them out and taped them together into a tiny little adorable paper corset, just to get an idea of how the seams would lie to compare to the VAM ones. I think I will have to do a bit of shape-messing-with as well, as the result is still VERY conical, but that shouldn't be too hard. Since it's not cinching my waist or anything, I think I can check that with just a muslin mock-up, which I might do today. The only trouble I that I can't seem to find my washable marker - I hope I didn't leave it at home.

Took a Claritin. I'm just worse than yesterday, sneezing and itching all over the place.

The Borgias

Is it just me, or do they use a lot of profile shots in this show? I can't tell if they actually do that as a nod to all of those Italian Renaissance profile portraits, or if they're using a normal amount of profile shots and I just notice it more because they're in Italian Renaissance costume.