I have had a lot to do lately and nothing much have happened in the historical world, but I have been doing some sewing, although I have been lazy at that for most of the time…
But yesterday we had our seasonal 18th century day at a little mansion called Edsberg, which pretty much is we showing of ourselves, and our knowledge in front of people who are curious of the era.
We cook food from the period to show them to, and then afterwards we get to eat it and party a little in the nice rooms of the place. Here is the table with everything nicely displayed!
I was
wearing a francaise I made a few years ago, but it has always irritated me that
the front closes so the petticoat doesn’t show, and I have been to scared that I
will destroy it if I tried remodeling it. But now after not wearing it for
quite some time I felt I would try at least, so I started to try moving the
side seams but that didn’t work, so I just ended up cutting away from the front
panels and voila, it worked wonders! Feels like a whole new dress now, almost
at least!
The dress almost closing, sometimes it even overlapped.
And here is the new slimmer and more opened front! (And yes, I have become bigger, but for this dress I think it looks better, more boobs for the people! ;) )
With me here is Tove, my
dearest, and I made her hairdo this time to. I was trying to make some kind of
tete de mouton from the beginning, but the curls ended up more in the back and
not so much on a straight line down the sides, but we were both extremely
pleased anyway, and I did it in a hurry, think we had like half an hour to make
it!
As for the
sewing, I have not only made alterations to my dress, I have actually made
something new to – a calash bonnet in copper/indigo silk!
It is almost all handsewn,
except for the cane channels. I didn’t do
any gatherings between the canes, because I tried but it made it so small on
the inside that my head with no hairstyle almost didn’t fit, and it made no
sense to me to do those gatherings at all, and then I started to look at
pictures and other sources of calashes from the time and it seems earlier
calashes did not have gatherings, so it wasn’t me who was stupid when I made it,
thinking gatherings made no sense.
I also wore
my black mantelet for the first time. I made it last year in October I think
but haven’t had any use for it until now.
As for Peter, he wore his “Köttkostym” (meat-costume) for the first time, we call it “meat” since in old Swedish that meant skin coloured if you talked clothes, and it is quite a weird colour combination. It wasn’t we who chose it, we bought it half finished by a friend who made it for her husband since she had found a fashion plate with a costume looking exactly like it, but he didn’t want it.. so we bought it and the remaining fabric last year because we needed extra costumes for Peters friends since they wanted to join a party and try this re-enacting thing, and I didn’t have time to make a hole bunch of costumes, so it was a blessing! Left is how we bought it, right how it turned out.
The wig is
also styled by me, made some time ago so that he would be able to wear the
earlier costume, before he has worn only regency clothes, partly because
the lack of a good wig. But now he has one! (And is happy like a child...)
And now for some "off" pictures and what we did there that day!
So long for now!
