Out for a spin

Guess what I and five other lovely ladies from the Swedish 19th Century Society did last Saturday?

Wheee!

Such a luxury, but I haven't taken a ride in a horse-drawn carriage since I was a child, I think. Totally worth the expense!

We had planned for a sleigh ride, but there wasn't enough snow so we had to settle for wheels instead. Didn't matter!

To the right you see my friend Helena, who graciously
let me borrow some of these pictures to post here. She took the initiative
to start the Swedish 19th century society last year and invited me to help out
a bit so I made the society's web page which you can check out, although it's
only in Swedish for now.  We're also on Facebook.

My curls straightened faster than you could say "jinglebells".
By my side is Caroline who takes many of the pictures I put on this blog nowadays... Thank you, dearest.

I made a few new things to wear for the event but I'll have to leave it for another post. I had to wash the gown afterwards and now it needs a good ironing.

Natalie outside the tiny café where we warmed up.

It was a chilly ride but we went for hot chocolate (by a fireside!) afterwards.

I really want to do this again. We saw two wolves! Okay, wolves in captivity, but still...

Finished gown for the 12th Night Ball

Hello again, and a happy, prosperous New Year to you all!

In my last post, I showed you some in progress-pics of my spangled gown.

I finished it last week, just in tme for Gustaf Skål's 12th Night Ball.

It was a lovely event and I enjoyed it very much in spite of severe sleep depravation. As usual, I didn't take any picture because I lack a sufficient device for that, but I bugged a lovely, young mademoiselle to take some shots of me in the gown.

I was just about to leave when the photos were taken and, as you can see, my hair was in its final stages of collapse:



I had my hair cut a couple of months ago so there isn't so much I can do with it yet. I had managed some very nice curls but didn't use enough hairspray and pins so things got quite messy (but I had awesome volume for days afterwards!).

The flash revealed my underthings! Oops!

The place was crowded but my train hardly got stepped on at all. And I only lost two sequins!




Overall, I was rather pleased with the gown, but:

a. I really could lose some weight,
and
b. it needs much, much more embellishment! It don't mean a thing if it aint got that bling, or something.

Luckily, I have lots of sequins left so there's something for me to do during those long winter nights.

Except that I'm busy as a bee with completing about a million things for an event on the 28th. It hasn't been without backlashes and revised plans and I'm still very disoriented and confused about what I need to do and in what order. But I think I'll save that for a later post!

It's Caturday!

Kids, crayfish and a cat, living together in perfect harmony.
Annibale Caracci.

Museum goodies

An early holiday gift from three Swedish museums: The Royal Armoury, the castle of Skokloster and the Halwyl museum? Yes, please! Link

These three museums now have an online database with a vast collection of objects from the middle ages and onwards so here is something for all tastes:





The website is in Swedish only for the time being, but to make a simple search for garments, type "kläder" (clothes) in the search field on the front page and you'll get hundreds of results.

Happy browsing!

Cristmas in 8 days...

...here in Sweden, as we celebrate on the 24th.

This year I decided to make gifts by hand to a selected few, and they are all costume related! No pics yet, in case those selected few should stop by here, but after the holidays I'll make a post about it.

So these projects have kept me rather busy lately, but every now and then I've been able to work on something for myself.


This is supposed to become a round gown of the 1790s for the 12th Night ball in January.

It's a dark navy cotton ( that looks much darker in reality)that I had planned to use for something entirely different but when I started on this project, I thought it would be perfect as the base for a masquerade gown, since the Gustafs Skål's traditional 12th night ball has a masked ball theme. I would go as some kind of Nox/Luna goddess and the dark cotton would be the night sky and the sequins stars and moons and stuff.


Except that this 12th night ball didn't have a masquerade theme! Oops. I had to think again. And unpick a lot of sequins.

I had planned to have the phases of the moon running along the hemline and I kind of stuck with that concept for the current design, but much more simplified as you see. Overall this is a very simple design compared to the real gowns of the 1790s.

As a comparison:



The KCI

Imatex

I know my limitations so a simple design is quite allright for me. I've still used about 1,500 sequins. I will use some more for a couple of rows on the sleeves too.


I think the cat likes it!

Anyway, is anyone else having problems with Blogger? It's very weird for me, I only have "Add image" and preview options in the toolbar and I kind of hate how Blogger is dealing with images. Aaargh!

It's Caturday!

This cat is very much alive but it has gone to kitty heaven - So. Much. Fish! Om nom nom...

The ray. Jean-Baptiste Siméon-Chardin, 1728

It's Caturday!

There is a terrible pun here somewhere but I'll spare you. I have no idea where I got this picture.