Robe à l’Anglaise Photoshoot

Two years ago I made a robe à l’anglaise out of the Waverly Indienne curtain fabric. I documented the project here, but I didn’t have a proper kerchief, cap, hat, or shoes at the time and wasn’t satisfied with the photos I was able to get of the gown. Since then I’ve acquired the rest of the accessories so I recently set up a meeting with a photographer to get better photos. We went to the local National Park where battles of the Revolutionary War were fought, and I love how everything came out!

Small Project Catch-up

I keep dithering about making a post about my Costume College experience. I didn’t take many photos, so I can’t just do a photo dump. I’m wondering if people might want to read a wordy, first-timer’s experience-type of post that is more about what it was like, rather than what I saw? But that will take a while to write up, and meanwhile I’m backed up with sewing, so I will have to keep putting it off for a bit.

For now I’m just going to post about the smaller projects I’ve been working on recently (when I say smaller, that usually means “not a full outfit” in my mind, but some of these are still quite time-consuming).

The first is a Victorian Hat that I am making to wear with my existing Victorian gown as well as the Gryffindor gown that I am in the process of making. This is my first foray into millinery and I’m using the Truly Victorian V551, 1880s French Bonnets pattern. I bought buckram and millinery wire from corsetmaking.com and used the same black cotton sateen that makes up the vest portion of my 1887-ish gown, and will make up the jacket of my Natural Form Gryffindor gown.

I hand-sewed all of the wire to the buckram, and learned that you have to take frequent breaks to avoid pinching a nerve while trying to pinch the wire to the edges of the buckram while you sew.