A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

ME: I'm going to just finish binding these stays and then get nice pictures of them before I write my post about them! ALSO ME: NAPPING IS NICE LOL. I should know by now that I should just work with what I have NOW and then add more LATER, or it will never HAPPEN at ALL. So, without further ado, here's a little write-up/review of the Virgil's Fine Goods/ Scroop Augusta stays pattern !  With apparently no pictures of the back or close-ups, oops. At the very end of our last day in costume at CW. And very silly faces, but alas, that's just my face.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a costumer who insists on blogging rather than posting short-format videos will never get any traction. Not that I ever had any pretensions of being an influencer (they didn't call them that back in my day, you know). Me, I still prefer reading to videos. So here we are!   I haven't sewn much over the past year-plus, and nothing worth putting up here. However! Recently I went on a costume trip to Colonial Williamsburg. I didn't have the get-up-and-go to make any new outfits, but I did have one necessary make: new stays.

Also Known As: well I ran out of time for that dinner dress, huh? I really didn't think this "dress" warranted a blog post, but far be it from me to deny plaintive and pointed requests from all two of my fans, so here we are.  Disclaimer: 90% of the pictures taken of me at the event are ridiculous; part of that because I make weird faces, but the more significant part is because it was really windy that day! Oh well, we work with what we have... (that's a theme here, for those of you taking notes.) It's... aesthetic . I got my dinner dress for the event (an 1870s-1880s dinner hosted by my BFF Robin of SewLoud ) more than three-quarters done, but at the last minute had a few Real Life things come up, and with less than 48 hours til the dinner, had to be honest with myself that there was no way the dress was going to be wearable. And I don't currently have anything else 1870s-80s that's wearable, day, evening, opera, afternoon...nada. So this was going to r...

 A relatively short post: 1880s foundations! I don't especially like making the undies, but I do like having the correct foundations for an outfit; it makes all the difference.  

 Or, Traditional Welsh Dress, if you prefer. I actually made most of this outfit for a "Bonfire Night" themed party in 2022, but I didn't make the hat and I didn't bother making the sleeves because it ended up being 80F that weekend and didn't feel at all autumnal...and as such I didn't bother getting any nice pictures of it! I wore it on Halloween to sit out front and give out candy to trick or treaters (and creep some of them out ), which felt much more appropriate weather for this outfit...in the 50s and then lower once the sun went down. Which in turn inspired me to finish it up properly - at least enough to take pictures and document its existence! There's a lot of documenting ahead; if you're just here for the pictures you may want to step over to Instagram instead! I've posted and will keep posting some shots of the outfit there, too, with much less verbosity. Relatively speaking.  

 See, I do still sew! Not as often, or extensively (I got married and bought a house this year), but I still sew and even occasionally finish things. Heh. Not that often. Heh. Instagram is the place to be for second-generation costumers who are too lazy to do writeups much (it me. I mean me), but I'm still hanging on to the pictures-AND-words format. So there, steadily advancing social media trends. Regardless...I've got an opportunity to do some 1890s in January, and I wanted to see if I could bang out a new, mid-1890s dress over break. I haven't yet done any banging of outfits (ahem), but I did start and finish a couple of new petticoats! I have, uh, a lot of petticoats, but none that give a nice fashionable A-line for the mid-1890s. And fashionable was pretty wide mid-decade! Anyway, I made two new petticoats over the past few weeks, and finished the Big Fluffer the other day. Warning: bad pictures taken at awkward angle ahead. I'm not sure where the camera tripod is...

A finished UFO for our Costumers Getaway last month! (Unfinished object, for those not using that parlance. I find it amusing.) I had many grand plans for New Things this weekend - started a few, and finished precisely none of the ones I'd originally planned. Sewing motivation this year has been severely lacking. But! The week before the trip I realized I had this open robe, which has been languishing in a UFO bin since a canceled Georgian picnic in 2016 (!).