Historical Costuming

(Panniers/Pocket Hoops Above)

:::Historical Costuming:::

I do like to post regularly, so regardless of whether this is an interesting post, I'd like to show you a few of the things that I've been up to.

For starters, I'm in the process of setting up a new blog that focuses specifically on the costuming that I do for my historical reproduction clothing business. I'm hoping that it can contain links to websites I use for research, as well as pictures of originals that inspire me, and reproductions that I'm working on creating. That should be up shortly. But this blog will still remain for my daily life inspirations and thoughts.

Now that the house is basically completely decorated - all of the curtains are finally done! - I've been focusing more on my business again. Right now I'm working on Ready Made 18th century clothing. I love so many eras of costume, it's hard to always find myself stuck in the 1860s. So it's nice to explore the intricacies of authentically reproducing 1770s clothing.

I started off with a Robe a la Francaise pattern that I will use the yellow striped silk for. My recent fabric shopping trip to Lancaster was a success and I brought back many delightful fabrics. The Robe a la Francaise pattern is finished and awaiting a mock up (actually, I'm really bad when it comes to this step - mock ups, what a waste of fabric and time! Often I'm a little too quick to cut...and my snip snips are sometimes followed by a loud...Oops! I've gotta work on that!).

Today I worked on making a Pannier or Pocket Hoops pattern. My main source of inspiration and research was THIS site which provides graphed patterns for some of the garments shown. Some of the instructions are a little hard to translate though as I believe they are in Danish. Heh. I've also been drooling over the 1700s dresses in the collection of the MET. Lots I'd love to reproduce!

(Robe a la Francaise Original Dress)