Since Mother Eve in the Garden long ago

I have compounded my incredible historical costuming spending with incredible Unique Vintage sale spending. D: Fortunately my intention is to send back roughly half the clothes for not fitting right, but there is still always the awful feeling of "what if it all fits great and I want to keep it?"

Today's work: turning in back edges of corset and sewing, stitching a boning channel in one side. Where are my grommets and grommet-setting anvil??

Bonnie is a little unnerved at the fireworks, but is handling it well. Clyde started out handling it well, but as it continues he's getting a bit frantic.

I bought myself Folio Society copies of Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Air and since I finished my most recent NetGalley book I allowed myself to start rereading the former. It really is a totally different experience in the nicer format (compared to mass-market paperback, but also just ... in general, it's a very nice hardcover).

I follow someone on Tumblr called ziseviolet who posts a ton of pictures of hanfu - the photos are so gorgeous, I don't understand why Cdramas don't go for looks more like this!

I have made the big step of bringing my half-finished corset downstairs, but unfortunately MY CURVED BUSK HAS DISAPPEARED. Have ordered a replacement; in the meantime I will iron the wadded-up mess and try to do the, sigh, eyelets. Maybe stitch the busk channel. So far, they're fully handsewn as I was making them as an interpreter at Harvest Fest in 2019, but handsewn eyelets aren't really accurate for 1830s/40s anyway. In a sense, metal eyelets are more appropriate. Well, that's settled.

I'd like to take a pattern from something in FAM's collection for the gown, but that would mean either staying ~2 hours past the end of the day (or I guess maybe ~1 hr on a couple of days) or coming in on a weekend, and both of those options sound pretty terrible to me. So instead, for now the plan is to use the 1830-36 grey silk dinner dress pattern in Arnold, in cotton with perhaps a contrasting china silk piping/binding? Brb, mainlining robinsnest 's blog for inspiration.

I knitted a gauge swatch, and it came out right with the assigned needle and everything! Unfortunately, the ribbing at the bottom of the cardigan is supposed to be done in a needle I don't have somehow (I have so many needles!), so I'm using a slightly smaller one ... (I typed this several days ago, the back is 4" long now.)

Got in an argument with people on Twitter in the replies to a NYT post about Bridgerton/historical costuming. The original person I responded to said that the word "corset" is inappropriate in a Regency context because it inherently refers to tightlace-able Victorian undergarments, and then someone started arguing with me that "corset" wasn't in common usage until "well into the Victorian era" and that fashion historians never use "corset" for the early soft corsets. You can call anything whatever you want for your own purposes, but don't badly miscorrect me when I'm correcting someone else, okay.

I don't really have any DNWs. Darkfic is fine, and I love whump and hurt/comfort! Nothing is off the table, as long as it's something you genuinely want to write and think would make a good story - but also, don't worry about trying to be dark just to please me, I also love fluff. And everything in between. Setting AUs and canon divergence AUs are also fine with me, although I'd generally not prefer mundane modern AUs (college AUs, various occupational AUs, etc.). Mundane historical AUs are okay!

( Queen's Thief )

( Howl Series )

( A Little Princess )

I picked up my GFD muslin, actually sewed the seams (they'd just been pinned), tried it on, and made a few tweaks - and I think it might be basically good. It was already most of the way there, I just confirmed that the marks for the opening were correct on the left front, took a teeny dart in the armscye, and snipped the back of the neck as it was too high. I need to do a muslin for the sleeve as well, but that should be fairly simple, fingers crossed.

Can't decide if I should do this in linen, as it's cheaper and I find the first version I make of anything is often still kind of a mock-up, or tropical wool, as it'll last longer and probably be more supportive (and is more accurate). And of course the long sleeves vs. short sleeves with pin-ons question ...

Inspired to get on with it after wishing I could be involved with the local SCA the other day. I'm sure I could reach out to them and, once people are allowed to meet up again etc., borrow from the beginner's box, but I'd like to get started on my own.

I am so useless on Mondays - I always have been but when you're still at home it's so hard to make yourself go back to work.

Have y'all seen Emma? I'm pretty enchanted with it, apart from some of the casting (Jane Fairfax looks much older than Emma, Frank Churchill isn't very handsome or charming, and Harriet is supposed to be gorgeous - Harriet being very ordinary-looking in the movie annoys me both because I wrote a whole fic based on the sexual tension of Emma admiring her and because I also read a great chapter on how Austen played with the 18thc trope of the deserving, lovely illegitimate girl who gets taken up by a great lady and turns out to be legitimate after all). While I've thought before that the world doesn't need any more Austen adaptations, I would actually love to see a Pride and Prej movie in this same brightly lit and ironic-but-realistic style. 2005 is of course heavy on the realism but for the sake of playing up the romance (muddy, farmy Longbourn vs clean, monumental Pemberley) and 1995 looks ironically at the grotesque characters and seriously/romantically at the others while using realism for that '90s candlelight-drenched heritage-film experience. An adaptation that makes Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy look a bit silly at times, like Emma holding up her skirt in front of the fire/getting a nosebleed or Mr. Knightley being dressed by his valet/flinging himself on his parlor floor, and filmed with bright colors and wide-angle shots of the landscape overlaid with Maddy Prior singing English folk songs, would be a welcome addition to the canon.

First spencer test has come in, and I've screwed up the shoulders! Need to lengthen the front from them (and therefore grade the collar). Sometimes I just don't adequately visualize these things.

Finished Sorcerer to the Crown, time to update my analysis! (Very spoilery.)

( Definitely liking it more than I was halfway through )

(Although I don't overly benefit because I obviously can't wear them - my measurements are roughly 44-35-44.)

I shared video of them live on IG and saved it as a story, and then posted two of them as plain old Insta posts, if you want to see them. But I'm going to be long-winded about them here, too.

- The "Very Easy Crinoline". They've had several of these in the shop for a while and I've considered them for potential patterning, but only now actually bought one. It's basically an A-line skirt of stiff net with a ruffle on the bottom, the waist edge and ruffle hem bound, raw edges basically just pressed to one side and sewn. In just this evening I've fully turned it into a graded pattern and saved as letter and A4 printouts; I've sent it to be printed so I can have physical patterns as well. (I'll eventually print the Bessie patterns, but I want to figure out how many I really need first as they're like $7 apiece to print, they're so big.) I don't think I even need testers, the grading is so basic. It runs from a 21" waist to 51".

- Fancier crinoline, the "Barbizon Petti-Beau"! It's a gold nylon-orlon with two black net ruffles on the underside. The way they're attached is so interesting - basically, they're set in place, then the nylon is pinched up with the top edge from the outside, and that whole bit is bound on the outside, so you get some extra stiffening. Elastic waist, just slightly too small for me, depending on your definition of "slightly". Technically also pretty easy when you get down to it, but it doesn't look very easy.

- Dressing gown, pattern as yet unnamed. It has a "fashioned by Delro" tag, but that doesn't really have the cachet of "Barbizon", so I'll probably give it a lady's name. Rayon, somewhat translucent, with a black, pink, and blue floral print; reddish purple piping. Fairly broad lapels with pronounced point, and it fastens with two buttons in a kind of double-breasted configuration. Magyar sleeves with cuffs. (No sleevils!) This might actually fit me, but I haven't tried it on yet! Although I do know that it's super long, it would drag on the floor if I wore it.

- Green wool skirt suit - I'm having a hard time dating it because it's a little contradictory. Overall '40s styling with the jacket coming down over the hips and a just-below-the-knee skirt, but it has only the most minimal shoulder buildup and the skirt is straight. I'm thinking it's early postwar, maybe? The back-of-the-neck label is for McLean's, a department store that was in Binghamton, which is some pretty cool local history, and then there's a label inside the front for the designer, Rafi. Some cute detailing with these applied horseshoes on the jacket. Once I turn this into a pattern I am definitely making this for myself. I would kind of like to name this "Phyllis" for my grandmother, who would have probably liked to have worn a suit like this in that bank job she had right out of high school but could not at all have afforded it.

- Last but very much not least, a black velvet cocktail dress from the early 1960s. (Possible names: Holly, Audrey, Tiffany.) It has a boat neck in the front and a deepish V neckline in the back, where it fastens in a crossover trimmed with a velvet bow. It's so cute and also so small that I will never ever have a hope of fitting into it, but I think it would look fantastic on my mother. It'll probably not be too tricky to grade, although it has bust and waist darts, which I haven't really dealt with yet.

In general I don't want "modern" stuff to be an overarching theme for my shop, because my #brand is historical and I'm more interested in making interesting museum garments available to the world, and also I don't want to step on Lauren M's toes (though I don't really have to worry about finding 1930s and early '40s stuff at Underground Attic, most of what's there is 1960s and later).

The shop owner came in as I was making my purchases, which was great as I hadn't seen her in months, and I got to tell her that I'd really started my business. She told me she has a lot of stuff that isn't in good enough condition to sell in the shop which she'd be happy to make available to me for patterning - plus her personal collection of antique clothing. We talked a bit about my doing a multipack of 1890s capelets because she has some interesting ones!