At Her Leisure

Considering that I spent a lot of time cross-stitching this year, I'm surprised I made so much, but I had a good variety of projects this year. I didn't sew any clothes for modern wear so I should try to do more of that next year.

( This year's projects behind the cut )

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.

I finished my tatted garters yesterday.



They're from a pattern in Butterick's Tatting and Netting published in 1895. The tatting is done in gold silk beading cord. I substituted modern elastic for the silk elastic called for by the pattern. They're fastened with hooks and eyes and have taffeta ribbon bows. One of the ribbons I got at Costume College turned out to be a very good match for the beading cord.

I made the tatting about 1" longer than the circumference of my leg just below the knee to allow for stretch when putting them on, and I'm glad I did because weaving the elastic through the tatting took up a little length.

I finished the tatting for the first of my 1895 tatted garters. It still needs elastic, hooks and eyes, and a bow, but the tatting came out pretty well for my level of experience.



I'm more than halfway through the second garter now. It's going a bit faster than the first one, which is no surprise. My goal is to do two chains and rings a day and have the pair finished by Thanksgiving.

A lovely octogenarian woman started teaching me to tat Saturday. Here's what I had at the end of two hours.



It's not going to win any prizes, of course, but it's not too shabby for a first attempt. The first two rings are just trying out the stitches. Then I started following a super-simple pattern she wrote out for me.