At Her Leisure

Saturday I went to the Jane Austen festival in Louisville. It was a lot of fun and would definitely be worth a return trip. With my usual photographic habits, I managed to take exactly two pictures at the festival at Locust Grove, both of them after 4:00, even though I had been there since a few minutes after 10:00. So you don't get pictures. The people I spent most of the day with didn't do much in the way of picture-taking either so I don't have much to share there.

I did manage to get someone to take some pictures of me at the ball in the evening so I do have those. And I sat out one dance so that I could take pictures of the dancers for a friend.

So here are the official pictures of my little evening bodice. Doesn't it look better on a body than spread on a bed?







I think the neckline and waistline ended up working very well between the bodice and the dress. This was the first time I took the long sleeves out of my dress and wore it as a short-sleeved dress.

The wrapped turban was done following jenthompson's tutorial. It was so easy that I was able to take the fabric with me and do it in the bathroom before the ball. I was prepared to go straight from the festival to the ball but fortunately didn't have to. I took the long sleeves, neck handkerchief, hat, and pinball off and put the sleeveless bodice and turban on, and I was ready to go.

My hair behaved itself quite nicely, I think. I did small pin curls with setting lotion, and they lasted pretty well despite the humidity. Here's what they looked like after the ball was over and I was back in the hotel room.



Better than all the costuming stuff was getting to meet some people in person - I spent most of the day with koshka_the_cat, girliegirl32786, and gilded_garb. I also saw grace_lee_19c for the first time since DressU, though I have to admit I didn't recognize her right off, and I met tayloropolis and Natalie Ferguson of A Frolic through Time. It was fun talking twins with the latter since hers are roughly the same age as mine. I also met a couple of lovely ladies from St. Louis who were quite friendly at the ball.

I'll get around to discussing other aspects of my trip after I figure out what happened to the pictures.

At the Houston Area Regency Society picnic last month, Kaycee Cheramie photographed the white 1800's dress I made this spring. It's slightly off-white cotton lawn and completely hand-sewn. It's based on the 1798-1805 dress in Patterns of Fashion. I used the sleeve pattern as is from that dress, but the bodice used patterns I already had fitted and just modified to get the lines of the bodice right. The only decoration is tambour embroidery on the bib. I'm really pleased with how the whole thing came out.



( More pictures )

And my pinball...

I'm working on a proper write-up of the Houston Area Regency Society picnic last weekend, but for now I wanted to link to some of Kaycee's pictures. They're really lovely.

My white dress
My new pinball
My favorite picture

I'm not sure how to get them to show up in the text here so I've just got links. I'm lucky that we've got good photographers in both this group and the DFWCG. It makes me feel better about being a lousy and disinterested photographer. (It's a family characteristic. I can't tell you how many pictures we have of people missing the tops of their heads going back a couple of generations.)

The archery event yesterday was loads of fun - the shooting, the lunch, and the chatting afterward. Unfortunately, how many pictures did I take? 0. How many times did I even take out my camera? 0. Not that it would have mattered anyway because I had to stop taking pictures of the Altman Magazine on Thursday because my battery was dying so I charged it and somehow neglected to put it back in the camera before packing for the weekend. Oops.

I wore my new white dress and bonnet and my old rose pelisse. I had thought we were going to be outside so I also had my shawl and muff, which wound up being completely superfluous. I usually pack pretty light, but with the weather lately, you never know.

So I hope someone else posts some pictures, and I'll have to get dressed up again at some point so I can get pictures of my dress.



And for the record, the back of my neck is sunburnt. I knew I should have taken off my bonnet so that my hood would stop slipping off my head. (From the shape, I know I was burnt during lunch, not during the conversation in the parking lot.)

I bought a ticket for the Archery and Jane Austen event today so I'm officially going. I've got a third of my tambour embroidery done so I should have the dress finished this week and still have three weeks left to make a bonnet. I'm not going to win any awards with my embroidery, but I think it's fair enough.



Now here's hoping there will be something else going on after the event that I can join in on. It would make the drive more worthwhile.

I've been working on my Regency little white dress and making pretty good progress. I've finished assembling the bodice, less the drop front section, and made up and set the sleeves. The skirt is made up so now it's ready to be gathered and pleated to the bodice and front tie. As soon as I cut out the rest of the sleeves (the optional long sleeves) and the bodice front, I can finish cutting out the 1950's dress I started cutting a couple of weeks ago.

My 1930's bolero is progressing slowly, but I'm about halfway through the first side of the front.