At Her Leisure

Things have been busy lately. Among the Jane Austen Festival, the beginning of school, and Costume College, life has been busy. I haven't done any actual sewing in weeks except for tacking on a neck and sleeve ruffle for someone before the gala at CoCo. I have done a fair bit of knitting, though. I finished a plain 18th century stocking on the way to Louisville and started a tatted bit of lace for a collar for an 1880's dress on the way back from Louisville. I started the mating stocking while driving around Louisville. In LA I finished the first pass at the tatting and started the second pass of five. I've done a bit more of it now, but I'm still working through the second pass. (I only worked on it the first couple of days I was back from LA.) Today I finished the first of a pair of late 19th century openwork stockings. I'm going to wash it and block it before I cast on the second stocking because I think the odds are about 50/50 that it will end up shrinking too much. I really hope it doesn't.

I've been struggling to get back to my cross-stitching piece. Usually when something is 98% done, I can't wait to finish it off, but I'm fighting myself on this one. The piece has been a motivational struggle all along, which is why I'm on month 20 of working on it. I finished the actual cross-stitching part the weekend before going to Louisville, but it took until this Thursday for me to start the outlining. Part of it has been a lack of time, but you know the going is tough on a project when knitting a stocking sounds more interesting.

As so often happens after a big costume event, I've got a small pile of alterations and the like that I want to do. Most of it is trivial - I need to shorten the suspenders on my 1930's girdle and shorten some bones in my 1910's corset. I also need to check whether the center back bones on my early 18th century stays broke. They looked a little funny when I was putting the stays on last Sunday, but I forgot to look at them when I took them off. Not something found at CoCo, but I need to shorten the 1850's chemisette I made this summer. I did a poor job of judging where the waistline is on the pattern piece (yes, I know it should be marked on the pattern, but it's not) so I made it too long in front.

This ended up seeming to be a year of little pieces more than full garments, though I did make costumes from the skin out for the 1690's and 1910's. I did a lot of knitting this year. One of my goals for the year was to do better with my hair for events, and I think I succeeded. There were some hairdos that I was very proud of. I got to go to a lot of events in different periods and had some opportunities to wear things that I had never really gotten to wear. One of the best parts was getting to meet a couple of LJ friends in real life in July.

I finally made the Le Baiser dress I had been planning for years.


( The rest is behind the cut: )

I finished lining my stays last night so they are officially finished.

See?



I'll try to get pictures of them on me in the next couple of days.

I think I need a to-do list for all the projects that are scattered around here. There are far more UFO's than there probably should be.

1. 1690’s stays: Finish covering, make eyelets for straps, cut and sew in lining
2. 1830’s plain petticoat: Prep waistband and set waist
3. 1830’s tucked petticoat: Prep waistband, finish tucks (4 down/5 to go), and set waist
4. 1610’s petticoat: Reset waist
5. 1950’s turquoise dress: Shorten hem by 9”
6. 18th century cap: Everything – listed more to remember that it’s there than anything else
7. 1860 rigolette: Make 127 ½” pom-pons
8. 1912 vest: Order yarn and finish, but I’m still ignoring it because I’m not ready to order any other yarn at present and refuse to order the yarn and pay shipping for one ball of yarn
9. Pineapple bag: Just keep knitting
10. 1892 Zouave: Cast on so I can have some blind knitting for when I'm reading

Yesterday I tore apart the Tiana dress I made for my daughter a few years ago. I'm saving the other princess costumes (except the first Sleeping Beauty dress that wore out), but they never liked playing with this one because it was a really heavy dress.



I've always liked the gold sateen in the dress, though, so I tore the dress apart to rescue it. It's earmarked for the outer layer of a two-layer corset whenever I make another Victorian/Edwardian corset. I suppose I should be proud of myself; I also took the trim from a ridiculously heavy corset cover I made in college and recycled it for my 1918 combinations this spring.

1. Pushing the busk from the 1820's stays between the 1690's stays and my smock solved my center front boning problem. It's almost exactly the right length too so I might not need to get/make a new busk.

2. I assembled my knitted rigolette from an 1860 pattern except for the pom-poms. I'm calling it 60% complete because there are a lot of pom-poms. I'm having trouble getting excited about making about 150 pom-poms. That's a lot of pom-poms.

My late 17th century smock or shift (I'm not sure when the terminology shifted - pun intended!) is finished. It's all hand-sewn and somewhat speculative since I couldn't really find any extant examples in my searches. Perhaps I didn't search long enough, but I don't care at this point because it's done!

It's hand-sewn from a lightweight linen-cotton blend and is sort of a cross between a Portuguese smock in Patterns of Fashion 4 and the 1750's smock pattern on Sharon Burnston's shift research pages with a big ruffle added to the neckline.

I might get good pictures of it on me once I finish the stays, but it just looked ridiculous when I tried it on. I may end up cutting down the neck ruffle a bit if garments over it don't squash it down a bit.

The neckline is big enough for me to wear it off the shoulder for c. 1660's dresses...



( More pictures... )

It was satisfying, but I'm glad I'm finished with it and onto the stays.

Speaking of stays, they progress.

I've got all the boning channels sewn in my 1690's/1700's stays!



Not that you can see it in the picture - white on natural doesn't really show up very well. I machined all the boning channels because I may enjoy hand-sewing, but not enough to do about 200 boning channels that will be sandwiched between an outer fabric and a lining. Nope. Not at all. It took my spare time for most of three days to do it on the machine; I really didn't want to dedicate the next three months to it.

Now I've started boning, and I've got a question for those who have boned stays with reed before. If you break a reed while inserting it, and it breaks off right at the end of the channel, how do you get it back out? nuranar? koshka_the_cat? I got lots of information from nuranar's journal (particularly comments from the_aristocat), but I don't remember that being mentioned. I love the way they're looking, but I need to quit for the day; my thumb and forefinger have had enough abuse for one day! Another question is about doing the eyelets. When I put in eyelets, I generally seem to mangle the fabric about when pushing the awl through. Steel and plastic take it in stride, but I'm not sure the reed will. Does anyone have any tips?

In other news, my poor neglected pineapple is growing again, and I'm about half-finished with the leaves. I gave up waiting for knitting inspiration that would require new yarn and ordered more yarn for my 1912 vest. Supposedly, it will arrive this afternoon. On the flip side, the things that I came up with that I'd like to knit next can be made from leftovers from other projects so that's always a bonus. I also ordered some false hair to make a hairpiece with, but it was definitely not the strawberry blonde it claimed to be; dark auburn is more like it. It went back in the mail the same day it arrived.

The final bit of progress was finishing up a fichu that I cut out a few weeks ago. Now I get a break from rolled hems and whipped gathers for a bit. Somehow I seem to keep getting back to those. They may be slow, but they look so nice when they're done. I'll probably pick up the cap next week so it won't be that long a break from rolled hems and whipped gathers.