I hope your summer has been a good one everyone! We just got back from Pennsic about a week and a half ago, and I haven’t picked up anything to sew since then. Although, I did fall in love with ancient Roman garb while at Pennsic, and made two new Roman gowns to wear while there, and brought fabric to make more. I brought some cotton gauze, and silk sari’s to make the gowns out of. You can check out a lot of on my Instagram page, but here are a couple of me in said gowns:

Now onto my upcoming projects! In the fall, I have an 18th century picnic in October and a spooky themed costumed meet-up in November, so of course I need two new gowns to attend. I plan on making a black chemise a la reine, and trying my hand at the Angelica Gown by Scroops Patterns

Now for the chemise a la reine, I did a poll on my Instagram asking for pattern recommendations, and I go two answers. The top one being the Laughing Moon chemise a la reine, OR coming in at a close second, it would be to free hand it. Apparently it’s just big rectangles, stragitcally gathered and pinned down, and then add sleeves. I’m going to attempt a free hand mock-up using the instructions from the Chemise A La Reine post from the Fresh Frippery blog.

The second gown I am going to attempt is the Angelica gown. Admittedly, I have been sewing for over 10 years and have made a ton of costumes. But I tend not to use patterns, and take a lot of shortcuts. So besides the two regency gowns that I made a few weeks back, this is going to be a big undertaking for me. Thankfully my friend Shasta said she will help me, since she has already made two of these gowns and was a product tester for the pattern. In keeping with the spooky theme, I feel that I found THE PERFECT fabric from The Silk Baron. It’s a silk taffeta, and the name of the color is Hex. I am in LOVE.

For the chemise a la reine, I think I am going to go with a black cotton voile. For the Angelica gown, I am thinking either linen or possibly faux dupioni or tafetta. What do you think? I anticipate I will be making a lot of mistakes!

So that’s it for now. Besides these two gowns, I have to figure out what we as a family are doing for Halloween. Last year, we went as The Ghostbusters. So we shall see! Stay tuned for the next blog post, which undoubtedly be me saying that I hate this costuming hobby as I attempt the next two gowns

Yes, you heard that right. I made a regency gown in five days. My friend Jenny-Rose invited me to her Regency lawn party which took place almost two weeks ago, and it was so much fun. When I got the invite, I was set on wearing the blue and gold regency ensemble that I wore to the Bridgerton Ball (the ball in which I was declared the diamond of the evening!!!). But me being me, I wanted to wear something new, and I had 4 2/3 yards of this gorgeous lavender satin sitting in my fabric bin, so I knew what had to be done!

But before that, here is me in my blue and gold regency gown and open robe at the Bridgerton Ball:

I used Simplicity pattern 9502 to get the pieces of the gown so I wouldn’t have to draft a new pattern, however I did not follow the instructions at all, haha.

I can say though, that the final product fit me perfectly without any adjustments. Based on my measurements, I was a size 24 in the pattern.

Now, sewing together the pieces for the bodice was fairly easy, again I did this without following the instructions of the pattern. But if you know me, you know me and sleeves have a long standing history of not liking each other, so my friend Renee came over to help me with them. In the end, I went with cap sleeves that were gathered at the top of the sleeve and the bottom.

So enough of me talking, let’s take a look at the gown!

I have been in a sewing tizzy, and thank goodness for it since I have the Bridgerton Queens Ball coming up this weekend. I finally finished my open robe that I will be wearing over my gown, and finished tacking down the trim. Approximately 15 feet of trim that I had to tack down TWICE since it was so wide. But it is done and I am so glad!!! I absolutely cannot wait for the event.

Here is what it looks like:

In the future, I really need to do a better job at logging how many hours I put into each project, but for this one I will say that drafting the bodice pattern for the open gown and tacking down the trim was the most tedious. But now I have a base bodice pattern that fits perfectly and that I can use for future projects (one of which I am about to work on for a Regency picnic next month), so that’s a good thing!

The next project I have planned is another regency gown made out of a gorgeous lilac colored satin, and I am looking forward to that. So spring like!

Also, here’s a video of a blazer that I converted into a regency era spencer jacket:

With the Bridgerton Queens call coming up (we are doing the 4/2 one in DC). I have been working on an open robe to go over my gown. Let me show you the mock up first!

Now y’all know that I love me a good upcycle. That gorgeous brown pseudo-taffeta silk was a curtain! Only $3 or something like that!

Anyway, mock-ups are IMPORTANT. I use to hate doing them, because my brain always wanted to start a project and be done with it. But hey, if you want it to look good, you gotta put in the time. So with the mock-up, I realized I had to change a couple of things. One, being the piece of fabric that goes under the bust to close. It originally had about a 4 inch gap in the center, so I had to add an extra piece of fabric on top of that so that the closure goes across the underbust and can be pinned closed.

Also, can we talk about the back seams of regency fashion? For some reason my brain got stuck on how to sew the back seam pieces together. I still don’t know if I did it right. But this is how I did it:

I cut two out (one of lining fabric-not pictured and one out of fashion fabric ). For the side/front piece, cut four. I then sewed the lining and fashion fabric of each piece together-so you have one back piece and the two side/front pieces. Now the thing that got me stuck was sewing the pieces together with right sides together. It just was NOT computing the regular way. So I had to place the back piece overlapping the two side pieces and sew that down. It came out pretty well though!

Now I need to fold under the bottom to make it pretty and start gathering the skirt fabric to the bodice. I’m also adding the same rose and pearl beaded trim that’s around the neckline to the hemline of the marigold yellow gown.

So on the first day of NOT doing #28daysofhistoricaldress guess what I did? I still did a vintage look. I couldn’t help it! I look dang cute in vintage. And the routine of waking up earlier to do my makeup has now stuck with me. Here’s todays look:

So while I really should do a full blog post with every outfit and the photo/video I did for it each day, that’s a lot of work! Besides, you can find it ALL on my Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/loveshutterbug I have it under the first stories playlist: 28 days of historical dress.

But for you, for you dear reader, I’ll share quite a few of the highlights of the past 28 days. Enjoy:

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, and I’m glad I did. While it took a total of 2 hours and 49 minutes (45 minutes of that was spent stuck on measurements), I’m glad that it turned out well. And this time, I actually recorded the process! Check it out:

Week 2 of my #28DaysOfHistoricalDressbfocused on the Edwardian era. I’ve dabbled in Edwardian when I would do victorian (I’m not a stickler about keeping things 100% historically accurate), but didn’t realize just how much I would love it.

For the week, I made 2 new velvet walking skirts and 3 dip waist belts, while working on some other projects. The skirts, once I had the pattern drafted (I watched the tutorial video by Pocket full of Posies on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mhSTqUVGp2s ), were fairly easy to sew since it’s all pretty much straight seams. Truth be told, it took a longer time doing measurements and drawing out the pattern pieces on paper, cutting, pinning, etc.

And of course, having the amazing Camille boots by American duchess pulled the entire week of looks together. So let me stop yapping and show you want to see!

This week will be week 3, and I’m doing 18th century. I sewed a shift, a pair of pockets (FINALLY!) and a petticoat to go with my short gown. However, as habit would be-I *thought* that I recorded the process of making my pockets, but alas, I did not. So here are some pictures instead:

I plan on doing either regency or 1920s for week for. I currently have quite a few flapper dresses, but I know that I would need daytime dresses anyway. So I’m gonna give that one hour 1920s dress a try!

Happy sewing & costuming!