winter recap

It seems like it has been forever since my last blog post... although you really haven't been missing much. Mostly I'e been working on 2011 planning with the DFW Costumers' Guild, and taking a much-needed break from tight-deadline, stress-inducing costume projects.

The one thing that I did mean to write about back in December was the Victorian Christmas ball that I went to with my husband. I've always dreamed of attendig a real live ball (*squee!*), but we ended up not knowing anybody there, and I'm afraid that we were quite the timid wallflowers. But it was still fun to get all dressed up and go somewhere, and I was pretty happy with the way the dress turned out.

I had just enough scraps remaining to make a new bodice to go with my 1868 silk daydress. I had to piece the bejeezus out of it to make it work, but it was fun to give this older dress a new life. For the pattern, I used the 1870-71 ballgown bodice from Patterns of Fashion. It went together well, but I wish I could have done some more tweaking on the bertha before I wore it. As usual though, I was sewing up until it was time to get in the car and go to the event, so I was pretty happy to just have it wearable.

I also re-boned my elliptical hoop skirt that I made with the Laughing Moon pattern. The first time I just used wire rope (bought from Home Depot), which wasn't strong enough to hold out the bottom hoops in back under the weight of a heavy skirt. But I went back and reinforced it with piano wire (from a Hobby shop), which did the trick nicely. I love the shape of this hoop - it is small, but gives the skirt such a pretty flare.

Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures that night, and the ones that I did get were dark and blurry, but maybe this is better than nothing. You can see more on my website.