At Her Leisure

I don’t really have any grand over-arching remarks, but I’m pleased with the things I made this year. It was a small year for events – only four: living history days at the Tucson Presidio, the George Washington Ball in Williamsburg, Costume College, and a Victorian Christmas ball in Mesa – but maybe that helped me to make a few things that I actually wear in real life. I hope 2019 will have more events.

January:
Mid-18th century stays


( The rest of the year is behind the cut )

Putting this together has made me realize that I’m actually rather in arrears on posting finished projects so I’ll have to put some effort into that over the next few weeks.

I set the waist on my 1790's dress yesterday so it is finished.







It's the Danish National Museum pattern (Tidens Toj*), including the embroidery. (Ok, I actually used the top of the pattern from my robe a la piemontaise for the lining and built from there.) It's a combination of machine and hand sewing with most of the interior seams done by machine and everything else done by hand. I did tambour embroidery instead of whatever the original had. It doesn't have as much visual weight as the original, but I like it.

*As usual, I am ignoring non-English characters so I don't have to figure out how to do them online.

I'm almost done with the embroidery on this dress! It's not that easy to see in the picture, but it's finished to the left and right of the hoop with only a strip about 8" left in between. With any luck, it will be done tomorrow. Then I have to make a dress out of it...

I've been working on my embroidered 1790's dress at something less than my usual rate because I've been doing a lot of reading lately. Now I've reached the point where I've realized that I don't have tons of time remaining before the end of July, and I thought I should actually make up a list of everything I want to have done by then.

1. Late 1790's embroidered voile dress: I've finished more than a third but less than half of the embroidery. The skirt seams are sewn, but that's it for construction. Based on the speed I've been embroidering, I estimate it will take another 40-45 days of embroidery. I should cut back on the nights of reading if I want it done as well as the other things on the list.
2. Petticoat for c. 1790 cutaway dress: The original one I made is too short for this dress so I need to make another one. Fortunately, 18th century petticoats are quick to make. I could make it in a day, if I actually had a day when I didn't need to do anything but sew.
3. Fichu for c. 1790 cutaway dress: It's hemmed, and I've sewn on almost half of the ribbon. Each ribbon takes about 45 minutes to sew on, and I have 6.25 left plus the corners that need to be woven together and sewn down. That should mean that I have fewer than ten hours of work left on this. (I couldn't do it all at once, though, because it's been a bit hard on the back due to the wiggliness of the gauze and ribbon.)
4. Mid-18th century stays: Replace front edge bones. One of them broke at the waist when I was buckling my shoes before the ball in March. I'm going to put plastic bones at the front edges to keep that from happening again.

I think that's everything I need to finish. I've also got a couple of things that I would like to make.

5. 1918 petticoat: I've got a 1918 dress I want for Armistice day this year as the centenary of the end of WWI, and I need a petticoat to go under it. I've got all the rest of the underwear. This should be a really quick project, again only a day if I could sew for the day.
6. 1918 percale dress: It would be nice to have this one for the end of July because I think it will be a reasonably cool dress that would be modern enough to wear in real life. I definitely want it by November, but I'd like to have it by July. Since I haven't done anything with it beyond identifying the look I want, it's highly questionable.

I am not one of the speedier seamstresses around so we'll see how it goes. I will admit that I tend to overestimate the time needed to complete something so maybe I'll get it all done. Or maybe I won't. Who knows?

Last night I finished ripping apart the first attempt at the mock-up of the c. 1901 corset from Corsets and Crinolines and sewed it back together with about 1/16" removed at every seam line. It fit very well, and the next time I'm ready to work on it - probably in two weeks - I'll cut out the real one and start it.

In other news, I started a 1930's summer sweater this week and am through the ribbing at the bottom of the front, and I am about a quarter of the way through my second 17th century garter. I also added the remaining skirt panels to my late 1790's dress. Next I need to trace the embroidery pattern on the rest of the skirt. Maybe tonight. I may have too many projects in the works, but they're all moving along, however slowly that may be.

I've been doing a lot more reading than sewing the past couple of weeks, mostly rereading things more or less at random off my shelves. My justification in keeping all these books is that I thought I'd like to reread them someday so someday seems to be now, at least for a handful of them. I've also been slowly working my way through Fashion Prints in the Age of Louis XIV, which isn't really what I thought it was. I thought it would be mostly about the fashions in the prints, but it turns out to be a series of essays on the prints, the first half of which, at least, are about the prints' context in society rather than the fashions depicted in them. The one I'm on right now is by someone who clearly wants to show that he has a large vocabulary and knows how to use it.

Last night I did iron a piece of voile and trace the embroidery pattern on one skirt panel for a late 1790's dress. I had an all-day headache and really didn't have any more in me than that. Hopefully I'll start the embroidery tonight. I'm really not sure how long this project will take, but I would like to think it will be done by the end of June.