1760's Day!

I'm not dead. Here is the proof!

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 18^th 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!