I got my jeweled buckles in the mail yesterday, and they are gorgeous! I am guessing that they are Victorian instead of Georgan buckles... but that is probably a good thing because I would be too nervous to wear them if they were the real deal. Anyway, they are definitely silver and high quality, but I don't think the stones have the black spots that they are supposed to have if they were really old. (I'm still not exactly sure what I should be looking for with that one, but I'm assuming it would be fairly obvious if it was there.)

Here's a picture of the buckles with my fabric for the dress and shoes. I am beyond thrilled. :)

Anybody interested in buying a pair of size 9 spool heel pumps for $18? Free shipping in the US... I'd have to check for overseas. I was going to recover them for my 18th c. outfit, but they are a little tight. I'm usually more comfortable in 9 1/2 or 10's but they were so cheap that I thought I'd take the chance. But I don't want my feet to be hurting at the event since we are going to be playing games and walking around a good bit. They are in great shape, and look exactly like these (but I'll take pictures of my own shoes if anybody is interested). If you don't want to recover them for 18th c. stuff, you could also add some decoration to the vamp or make some spats and use them for Victorian. It's just so hard to find good spool heel shoes that I don't want them to go to waste.

Vintage Martini is having a trunk sale this Friday and Saturday, and I'm going to be out of town! NOOOOOO!!!!! But in case any of you other DFW folks are interested, ( here are the details: )

*sob* I want to go SO BAD! :(

On my way to the guild business meeting today, I saw signs for a Dallas vintage flea market. They have one every month at Fair Park. I had no clue. The guys at Vintage Martini were talking about selling some stuff at the flea market, so I'm guessing this is the one they go to.

I'm definitely going next month. Woohoo! Just what I need - another place to go waste my money on old crap! ;)

I ran down to Vintage Martini after doing the SAT this morning, and picked up 2 great items on sale. I got this cute 1950's dress and a damaged black silk faille swing coat, which will probably be recycled into a Victorian bodice. Best of all, they were only $10.80 each! Sweet! I love that place so much. The guys who own it are so nice, and they remember me every time I go in. They even gave E a cookie and offered to watch him for me while I dug through the other damaged items in the back room. The clothing and accessories on the website are all 40% off through Monday, so you might want to check it out.

Oh my... I'm one of THOSE people, aren't I? I was a little offended at first, but by the end I was laughing so hard tears were rolling down my cheeks! It really is a goofy thing that we reenactors do.

So I draped a pleated bodice with release tucks at the shoulders for my 1860's dress. Everything looked great on the dress form, but it absolutely refuses to convert to flat pieces so I can assemble it. Nothing wants to go back together right, and for the life of me, I can't figure out where I went wrong.

Oh well. At this point, I just want to get done, so I guess I'll just follow the original pattern and do a simple gathered bodice. It was just supposed to be a work dress anyway, so I'm going to cut my losses before I get frustrated and throw it in a corner. It is definitely time to move on to other things.

So I picked a fabric pattern (dibs!) and enlarged it to the size I want and traced off what was there. You can see the repeat in the original textile going one direction, but I had to fill in the gaps with my own designs going the other direction. The drafting stage took two days of work and lots and lots of checking to make sure the edges would tile seamlessly. Now I'm going over the outlines with colored pencil (I'll also be mixing in brown and pink and green over the indigo to match to original better), then the outlines will be scanned and turned into a vector graphic in illustrator so it will be nice and clean in the final version. After the outlines are done, I'm going to put a piece of acetate over this drawing and fill in the colors with gouache... which will also be scanned and worked up on separate digital layers. We used a similar method when I worked in a screen printing shop back in college (pre-computer!), so it seemed like a good idea here too. The cool thing is that I'll be able to tweak the colors of the flowers and leaves and outlines separately, and I could make many different color versions once I'm done. If this fabric turns out decent, I have dreams of selling it on etsy and people could even custom pick their colors so it wouldn't look the same every time.

Anyhoo... just thought I'd do a mini fabric diary for those of you who are interested in the custom fabric stuff.

At last! It's done!!!!

The hoops from hell have finally been tamed. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. I really like the size of them... although they seem even smaller than I thought they would be. My legs bump them when I walk, but I just need to make an effort to take smaller steps. They are VERY sturdy too. I'll try to do a little write-up on my thoughts and suggestions about using piano wire next week.

Yay!

I want some more practice making faux CDV/tintype/cabinet card photos, so I got Emma to pose for me at the tea. I think it turned out pretty good for a quickie with bad lighting and background. Here is the original for comparison.