I love rules

So yesterday Kim (the educator) asked me if I'd look at the docent costumes they have because apparently the women all tend to wear the hoopskirts and she wasn't sure that that was right for the later 19th century. And I did, and I think I've come up with a list of things for if I end up as educator at a small museum, or if they just let me do the costumes even if I'm not in education. They're mostly common sense, but hopefully writing them down will help me in the future to be firm about them if I need to.

( Cassidy's Laws )

I'm going to try to get the dress form cover done today so I can work on the spencer - I started trying to draft it on paper last night and I got the back piece all right but those fronts are hard to figure out. I think I'm going to go with the earliest of my examples, and see if this can help me make the shawl collar. I've got some extra light blue wool from an old project I might use to do something like this with the collar and cuffs, although I need to look at the two cloths together as they might not go. It might be better plain, anyway.

OH MY GOD

I went to Mom's for the afternoon so we (she) could alter the dress form cover so it would match my measurements, and I just spent at least half an hour getting the cover on the foam form. I bought the largest size cover for the medium form, and I can't even imagine how people who get the smallest manage.

I'm being overly critical of the thing because in my mind I'd built it up to be The Answer to all my problems, but: it doesn't quite fill out the cover right, the bust is kind of too low and the hips manage to be a bit loose, since my hips are where the waist ought to be. In general it manages to be slightly bigger than me.

But this is pretty silly. (Although my thumbs still hurt from pulling and pulling on the zipper, not happy about that.) In general, it's fantastic that I've now got a dress form that's basically my size and has a high waist!

(no subject)

Draping like a boss. I have the body of my spencer worked out and it only took me like half an hour. Whenever people say they draped their pattern I thought they were sewing geniuses, and I'm not saying the people I follow here and on Blogger aren't sewing geniuses, but this is decent.

Any tips on shawl collars? I've read about drafting them and I'm cool there, but my question is about attachment. Do I sew the lining version to the outer body and vice versa, then sew them together, or do I sew the outer collar to the lining and then attach it to the body?

I can't stop checking out my dress form's/my ass. It's pretty fantastic.