Okay, I finally got a new update posted, with another new garment – wheeeee! It’s the Mantua page over to the left. There are still a few photos to be added into it, but I thought it was best to post it asap.
I’ve also posted the beginnings of a list of suppliers. I thought some people might be interested to know where I’ve been getting my materials from. This is also in a somewhat unfinished state, but I thought something was better than nothing.
I recently found out through a European online 18th Century costume group called Lumieres that the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) is exhibiting a dress once owned by Marie Antoinette and possibly made by Rose Bertin.
The ensemble is only on display between Oct 11-26 due to conservation concerns, and some of the programming is already over, like a talk by Caroline Weber (author of Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution)
However, the ROM has a webpage about the exhibition of the dress, and a short visual podcast on the process of getting an artifact from vault to gallery.
So, I thought this might be of interest to some people! I’m just annoyed that it’s all happening about a month before I go home to Toronto for Christmas, boo-urns!
The stays have been started! And I think that if I can survive making these, I can manage just about anything!
They’re actually not really so bad, nor even as time-consuming (so far, I think) as I expected. However, I don’t think the fact that I own the entire Sex & the City series on DVD has even come in so handy before! Take a peek at the new Stays page at left to see how I’m doing so far.
And please give me opinions on journal entry format: whether you think ascending or descending order is better.
I have finally posted stuff on the quilted petticoat that has been started. I think it might actually be the masterpiece of the whole project once it’s done! Although, since it takes 12+ hours to quilt one repeat of the design, and there are about 6 1/2 repeats to do perhaps “if” it gets done is more accurate. I really hope I get faster at this as I go along.
Another day of working on the sack will be added shortly.
Aaaaand…(drumroll please)…I received shipment of the materials for the innards of the stays last week and I enlarged the pattern today. So that will be started this coming week – wish me luck with sewing all those boning channels (100+!) and look out for stuff on that to be posted next Sunday.
In other news, I have changed the format for the sewing journal pages. Both the pet en l’air jacket and now the quilted petticoat have the days going in descending order. I have left the sack in the original format so you can compare the two. Do let me know which you think is better/more reader friendly.
I have finished an update for the pet en l’air, so do go check out how that’s coming along. I ought to have the first installments of the next garment, a quilted petticoat, up within a day or two.
As for changes, I think there may be several. The first and most important is that I have definitely decided to alter the scope of time and garments of the project slightly. I the time period is now changed to 1750-70 (from 1750-75). Here’s the reason why:
The intent of the time period in the first place is to show contiguous styles that may have been present in a woman’s wardrobe throughout it. Between observations at the Museum of London, elsewhere, and in several written sources, I realized (which maybe I should have beforehand), that styles began changing right around 1770 too much for anything later to be included. For example, no woman of c.1760 would have had a caraco, that appears to be an innovation of the late 1770s (if anyone has info contrary to this, I would LOVE to hear it I really wanted to make this ensemble!)
In light of this I have decided to remove the polonnaise dress and caraco jacket + matching petticoat ensemble from the list of stuff to make. However, this leaves me with 7yds of a historic print cotton that I otherwise don’t know what to do with, so I am hoping to make a more period appropriate jacket and petticoat ensemble from it (I really wanted cotton represented in this project). I will update you when I’ve found an appropriate design/pattern.
I will make changes to the project outline stuff (currently under the heading of Exhibition Proposal), which I was intending to try and break down into more palatable bites anyway.
I have also been debating where to include my personal impressions and questions that arise as a result of this experience. I wonder, should I make a separate section for these, or incorporate them into the journal pages for the garments themselves? What do you think?
