m_of_disguise | Entries tagged with 1850s

Read over the instructions for LM's regency long stays. Got overwhelmed. Looked for easier alternative. Didn't want to buy new pattern. Didn't want to draft something. Ate lunch, felt better. Went back to LM. Reread instructions. Ignored insane cording layout. Pattern is actually only a half-dozen pieces. Much less intimidating.

So, maybe stays soon? Ugh. Maybe.

My brain has definitely switched over to Regency Mode, and I need it to not do that because I need to keep making steady progress on the ruffle monster. I'm going to try and get back into the habit of working on it every night. Tonight I will attempt to sew together the strips for the black base part of the next tier. It is one French seam, so completely doable. Tomorrow, I'll sew together and hem the next ruffle. Three French seams and two hems. I should be able to pull that off. This weekend, the goal is to sew one ruffle onto the next tier. I think these are completely achievable goals.

Next big goal is to get Tier 2 finished and attached by the end of the month. I know I said I wanted to finish the entire dress by then, but that's just unrealistic. I realized that I finished the first tier in three weeks only because I had two very long weekends of nearly uninterrupted sewing time, and I don't get a long weekend again until September, and it's my birthday weekend. So, new and more achievable goal is Tier 2 by end of July, finish entire dress by end of August.

The Regency event is on September 12th, so I'll set Dickens sewing aside at the beginning of Sept. and focus on getting the regency stuff done for that. Then it's back to Dickens, probably up until the minute I leave for the festival. Because that's how I roll.

The 4-day weekend was super busy, but I did indeed meet my sewing goal of getting the first tier done! Hooray!

Things learned - I like the 2:1 ratio of the ruffles-to-tier, but 2:1 was waaaay too much for the tier-to-skirt. The ruffles ended up folding over on themselves and looking really bushy and terrible, and since the ruffles are kind of the showcase of each tier, that was a major problem. I ended up chopping off 1.5 panels of finished tier, and ended up with a ratio just under 1:1.5, which still looks nice and full but doesn't interfere with itself.

2:1 on the left, 1:1.5 on the right. You can see how bunchy and stacked the ruffles got with the 2:1.

But, this is great news, since it means I'll be using even less of my plaid than I anticipated, and I won't have nearly as much ruffle to make for the other tiers!

As for non-sewing stuff, I made a big pot of chicken stew, which lasted us a couple of days and freed up more sewing time. On Saturday, M went to Six Flags with a group of his gaming friends, and since I didn't have to take him into account for lunch, I made myself some baked fish and bratkartoffeln (German fried potatoes with onions.) To stretch the soup, I made some cheddar bay biscuits to go with it, and that extended the soup until Sunday's lunch. Sunday dinner was a frozen lasagna, because I have absolutely no vegetables left in the house with which to make anything.

Intended to do a grocery pickup today, but WTH, prices on produce have gone up AGAIN. A 5-pound bag of potatoes used to be under $4, and how it's $7! For potatoes! I checked the bulk stores, and Sam's has an 8-pound bag for the same price, so I guess I'm going to Sam's for my produce from now on. Yeesh.

Threw a beef roast into the crock pot this morning to make things easy on myself. Since I was working up until bedtime on Sunday, I'm going to give myself tonight off before I dive back in to making ruffles again. Tier 2 will be faster since I can use the bit I chopped off the first one, so I'm hoping to see Tier 2 finished in two weeks instead of three.

Decided to take the weekend off from (most) chores and just do whatever the hell I wanted. Which meant that I got some sewing in! I finished pinning on the first tier's first ruffle, and stitched it on. It's quite fluffy, and I'm considering pressing it so it's not so poofy, but I'm going to wait and see how it looks with the other ruffles on, and the entire tier assembled.

I sewed together all the pieces for the other ruffles, and finished hemming one of them, but didn't have time this weekend to attach either of them to the base. That's okay, though, I'm actually really pleased with the amount of work I managed this weekend. If I can chip away at it over the rest of the week, I will probably be able to finish up the first tier of the skirt this weekend, which would be very exciting.

So far for this skirt, I have used (if my math is right) 12 yards of the black taffeta. I still need to cut the strips for the ruffles on the other two tiers, which will bring the total up to somewhere around 20 yards of the black taffeta. Yeesh. I'm glad I have a gigantic bolt of it. I'll need about 5 yards of my plaid for the rest of the skirt, which will bring the total yardage for the skirt to 25 yards of fabric. And I still need to figure out the bodice design, which will likely eat the other 4 yards of the plaid that I have, for an estimated total of 29 yards of fabric for one dress. The 1850s has been the most fabric devouring decade I have ever costumed. Of course, this is a particularly ludicrous (though period) design.

Made chicken paprikash for Saturday, and it turned out very meh. M and I had a discussion about my food rut, and he requested more Mexican dishes, so I guess I'll search up some new recipes in that vein. He gave me a break from cooking and made a giant pot of spaghetti sauce on Sunday, which will feed us for the next few days. We were out of peppers, so I made a quick trip to the Sprouts up the street, where I treated myself to some cranberry walnut oatmeal cookies, which are amazing. I'm desperately craving Fall right now, so the cranberry was right up my alley.

Short week again, which I am very happy about. I didn't really get a chance to catch up on sleep this weekend, so having a couple of extra days to (hopefully) do that will be super nice. Will attempt to finish the first skirt tier. Will attempt to iron all my clothes.

The days passed slowly on my mini-vacation, making it feel much longer than it was. Which was actually a good thing. I feel like I've been off work for a month instead of a week, and I felt very rested by the end of it. The days were not boring, they just seemed to stretch out forever. I blame all the damned summer sunlight. My body doesn't want to know that it's evening until the sun is down, and when that doesn't happen until 9pm, then the days seem stupidly long. Because they are.

Anyway, Tuesday after work I picked up M and the baby and we headed to the airport to drop him off. We splurged on taking the tollway the entire way there and back, rather than fighting rush hour traffic on some of our worst roads, so we'd be on the road for as little time as possible. When I got home, I gave the baby a cool bath, some fresh clothes, and a bottle to rehydrate her, and she was happy as a clam.

Wednesday, as I sat and ate breakfast, I watched Tookie shuffle over to the sewing corner and pee right in the middle of the floor. This spurred a Great Cleaning Tornado - I swept and scrubbed the entire living room floor, rearranged the sewing corner by moving the desk to a different wall, moved the project baskets so they were both underneath the desk, took the crinoline and its petticoats out of the closet and set it up for upcoming Dickens sewing, washed a load of dishes, and deep scrubbed the cat closet. The baby and I then did a quick grocery pickup at the nearest Walmart, making it as fast as possible because of the heat. Feeling very accomplished, I made myself a taco dinner.

Thursday I decided to get started on the ruffle monster dress project. I sat and stared at my fabrics for an hour or so, redoing my math over and over, before finally cutting anything. After seeing the difference in how nicely they gathered, I was very determined to cut my ruffles parallel to the selvedge rather than the cut edge. To keep my math easy, I tore some 60" wide panels, which I then cut into 4.5" strips that would get sewn together into one big long strip to be hemmed and gathered. I say this as though it all happened on the same day, but it absolutely did not. As of right now, I have one ruffle strip sewn together and hemmed, and the gathering stitch has been run through it, but the ruffle has not actually been gathered or applied yet.

Anyway, I do have all the strips cut for the first tier of the skirt. The plan is for 10" of each tier to be the plaid, 7" to be plain black, and to have three gathered ruffles (I originally planned knife-pleated ruffles, but that would have eaten way too much fabric) applied to the plain black piece. Yes, this will take forever. It's already taking forever! After five days of as much work as I could muster between baby duties, I have only managed to assemble one ruffle out of nine. I am glad I am starting this project now, which hopefully means I will actually have it done by December.

In sadder news, it doesn't look like Tookie will live to see the end of the month. She is nearly 20 years old, and in the past weeks she has been declining rapidly. She's thin as a rail now, barely eats a bite or two, and is very weak. M and I made her a nest of blankets and towels in a cozy spot on the floor and put a bowl of water beside her so she doesn't need to go far. The entire time I was off work, I would pick her up and take her to the little box so she could do her business, and then carry her back to her nest once she was finished. I told M to keep doing that during the day while I'm at work, because she's too weak to get there on her own. Poor old lady. We're trying to make her last days as easy and comfortable as possible. She's been a great cat.

Not a very exciting evening. We finished off the beef stew, baby had a bath, she had a long enough nap that I could work on updating the website a bit more, then she woke up and wouldn't go back to sleep until midnight. I tried to sneak a shower in, hoping she'd just self-soothe while I was out of sight, but no, she did not.

Started mathing out the ruffle monster skirt, and it's going to be a really tight squeeze to get the dress I want out of the fabric I have. I meant to remeasure the fabric last night to make sure I'm working with the amount of yardage I think I have, but I forgot to once I got home. I'll try again tonight, I'm hoping there's a bit more on the bolt than I remembered.

Found several examples of the sort of skirt I'm making for the ruffle monster! Strangely, I did not find the original inspiration plate, which I remember being a yellow dress with white ruffles, but I found plenty of others.