At Her Leisure

I see that Dress U has posted to their Facebook page that there will be no Dress U 2014. I'm sad but not surprised since there hasn't been any news there recently and the webpage went defunct a few months ago. It sounds like Dress U 2015 may be in doubt too. I hope it happens.

The Hallowe'en costumes are finished! I put in the last stitch and immediately turned around to work on the 18th century bodice pattern Carrie Midura draped on me at Dress U. It hasn't been touched since we returned from Dress U four months ago. I've got a muslin cut out and plans to do any refinement of fit with a friend on Sunday.

I made the decision to leave my 1868 dress on hold a little longer while I finish up my husband's cross-stitched lady and make a 1780's jacket. I want the jacket for Holidays at Smithfield and the 1868 dress couldn't possibly be done by Hallowe'en so reprioritization time again. I really don't usually keep rearranging my sewing plans like this, but sometimes things happen.

Now what to do tonight? I can either work on cross-stitching or start doing more quilting on my 1780's bum pad that I made this summer that just doesn't have the oomph I wanted out of it. I'm hoping that more quilting and possibly resetting the waist will help.

For the court dinner at Dress U 2013 I needed a court train. Since I knew it would be a one-time use kind of item, I didn’t want to put too much time or money into it. Fortunately, I had a gold brocade in the stash that I had bought for a very good price. That gave me something with the gold metallic decoration that I was seeing in museum artifacts without me having to spend months applying gold beads. I think I came up with something reasonable though not particularly good.



( Here's what I did... )

Thoughts after wearing:
I was surprised at how little trouble I had with the train. I had anticipated it being such a nuisance that I would have to take it off early in the evening, but I wound up taking it off only when I wanted to get pictures taken of the back of the dress at the end of the night. With the large number of trains being worn that night, I suspect people were probably being more careful where they stepped than in normal situations. Still, I was pleased and a little surprised that no one stepped on it, including me.

At Dress U last weekend, they convinced me that the best way to keep in touch with other costumers would be to get either a LiveJournal or Facebook account. I've opted for LiveJournal, and here's my first post.

I enjoy needlework and reading. My particular needleworking interests are sewing (mostly historical costumes but also some modern things,) knitting (again, mostly historical costume pieces,) and cross-stitching. Mostly I read vintage mysteries and classics.

Dress U last weekend was great. I haven't uploaded many of my pictures to Flickr yet and still need to get copies of L's pictures so that I'll have pictures of everything I wore, but here's my copper 1820's dress with court train that I wore to the formal dinner on Saturday night.


At the end of the evening I took off the train to get a couple of pictures of the back of the dress.


Hopefully by next week I'll have a proper write-up of the project. In the meantime, I'm working on a 1947 green linen-look dress, which is getting pretty close to being finished, an 1847 knit bustle which is also close to being finished, a teal linen/rayon blend 18th century petticoat, and a pair of 1857 red cotton knit gaiters. I should be finishing some of those up in the next week or so and will write them up as I get the opportunity. I'm also working on Bucilla's "A Summer Stroll" cross-stitch, but that's not going to be finished any time soon.