Recent Successes

I know, I know, I have been failing at blogging. But to be fair I changed countries, self-isolated for COVID, yelled at the medical centre until they refilled one of my essential medications, and had technical difficulties with literally every electronic thing I own. Oh and started the second year of my MPhil. Nbd.

For a long time it felt like I was getting absolutely nowhere with anything I was working on and finally it feels like that is changing! So here are some recent successes

I have a friend from when I was at Bryn Mawr named Hanna, and Hanna is awesome. She is one of those people who actually wears antique clothing every day and, as a result, is super fun and inspiring to make things for. When lockdown first started I decided I wanted to make her a 1920s coat.

I fell in love with this pattern and found some alpaca-blend coating in a lovely navy blue which looks amazing next to the blue fox fur I already had.

Excellent.

Tailoring is hard though internet friends. I’m trying to be quite exact, and there are lots of bits that need basting and threadmarking and topstitching and and and…..yeah

Also, did you see those geometric trim things on the hips? They have become the bane of my existence.

Because of the shape these show up every inconsistency….hence all the contrasting threads.

Good news is I’ve finished one and, as you can see, I’m mostly done with this one too. That leaves the fiddly things to putting these in place and doing the second cuff.

In other good news: I am SO CLOSE to finishing my new late-Victorian petticoat! The waistband is basted on so I just need to stitch that permanently and add hooks and eyes. I’d finish it now but it’s Friday night after lab so….no. This was sewn either entirely by hand or on Camille, my antique hand-crank sewing machine.

I am also super close to finishing my Regency petticoat, so I think that might be my project for the weekend. Two projects down will be awesome, especially as I move towards the outer layers of my polonaise.

In the project drawer we have….well, many things. I haven’t been working on William’s shirt but it does have a new front panel and I’m working on getting the cartridge pleats back in. I tried a cuff pattern….

SUPER cute, but teeny tiny. Even doubled that’s too small for a shirt for a large-ish guy, so I have to come up with something else.

The amount I get done is quite dependent on how much energy I have after school, which can be….variable. Still, it’s nice to finally feel like I’m making progress!