WIP Wednesday, the one with garden parties

GENERAL THINGSTechnically it's Thursday, but I only got back yesterday and promptly had to log in to work to get some stuff done. Anyway, it's been a week of much things done (although not necessarily things I wanted progressed) and today is a public holiday (ANZAC Day) so I have time to type this up as I didn't yesterday. It might still be Wednesday in Hawaii or West of it.

 

DRESSMAKING

BEHOLD the dress I made for the Bridgerton Garden Party (hosted by Netflix at an exclusive resort in country NSW):

It's pattern Simplicity S9434, but I extended  the bodice all around the waistline because my bust is bigger than the model size, adjusted the back so it fit me personally, and made it with tulip-sleeves instead of the puff sleeves that were the chief option.

I also ended up making it in quiting cotton (Joel Dewberry's Notting Hill range) and the skirts are cotton voile.

 

It worked really well, I think. A good style, very 'Bridgerton'.

I also had a second dress: this one I 'made' from secondhand clothing: one '1970s style hippie' dress, all loose and flowy, and one mandarin-collar jacket from HK brand 'Wanko'. I sewed the 'belt loops' for the tie higher - right under the bust, and shortened the jacket so that it's more like a Regency-style spencer.

All in all, I and my real-life peeps like what I've done. But pretty much everyone in Bowral was indifferent. Ah well. Now I have a regency dress if anyone I know happens to have another garden party!

Or, you know, I could wear it to the next frocktails event!

 

SEWING:

Today (Thursday) I sewed up a couple of zippered bags which have been lying around for at least a couple of months - since the Blue Mountains Frocktails. Well, one of them has been around for at least a year, I think - I've had it since one of the Sydney Frocktails, I'm sure - while the other one I got in the BM Frocktails goodybag.

I lined one with patchworked scraps of linen - also from the BM Frocktails goodybag, and the other with some more Joel Dewberry Notting Hill print, although I think this one I had saved for handkerchiefs.

 

BINDING:

I have finally - FINALLY - made a teeny tiny squidge of progress on binding. I've cut up some more strips for binding, and was fully intending to sew them together today and make the binding and...I got distracted. It's 8:30pm and I'm out of energy, so no binding.

 

PIECING:

And while I was in Bowral, on Sunday afternoon I finished sewing another column of stars to the Restless Hands of Sel quilt.

Quite cutely, a little girl and her family wandered by and wanted to know what I was doing. Her mother encouraged her to ask, and so we had a little talk about making quilts and what I was doing and how it was made.

 

THOUGHTS I HAD

Finally picked up the four quilts that my quilting group made in the years before COVID and delivered them to my mother, who is going to raffle them off for her charity organisation to donate the money. My quilting group always intended to raffle them off, we just haven't had the time to get it all organised and happening. Mum's charity does this every year, they offer a bevy of prizes, and people love winning the quilts that I or my group have made.

I'll post pics of them another time.

WIP Wednesday: the one with more Regency

DRESSMAKING

Finished the stays and a cotton chemise. 

   

The pattern for the chemise was self-drafted thanks to a number of helpful YT vids, however, next time I would make the neckline smaller, although this might require a more triangular body shape rather than the rectangle I went for.

Also, a note to myself: always flat-fell the first set of seams before sewing the next set.

The stays presented a bit of a problem - I didn't make them very well ("flexible" seams and a tendency to wing it) so I don't feel like they do quite what they're supposed to do. Some of it is the shoulder straps, I think, and how they're set up, and also maybe the pattern was not as supportive as it needed to be - I need a tighter bodice and armscye (as a FB friend who I've known for nearly 40 years observed).

It looks okay-ish, I guess. Not quite as high a bust profile as I'd like - as a friend observed, it might work for an afternoon/day dress. Which I'll make and use the underpinnings for.

 

The stays also don't have a busk - the wooden prop down the centre of the bodice. The friend who I consulted said that most people use a paint stirrer and cut it down. That might be a plan.

Anyway, that's two things out of the way: chemise and basic stays. Might have to make some more solid stays, but that can wait until later.

 

And planning a regency dress for a garden party I may or may not get to go to!

Bridgerton in Bowral is apparently going ahead (after hearing it might be cancelled), and I'm going down from early Sunday morning (I hope to leave around 6:30am and arrive around 8am) and will stay until Wednesday. I can work while I'm away (may not be particularly comfortable, but it can be done) and I will also be seeing the first episode at the local cinema!

 

The thing about the garden party, though, is that you apply to participate, and chances are high they're going to look for influencers and other people with big followings who'll promote the event and the happenings. Which is a big d'oh, but I'm hoping to meet some other Aussie Bridgerton fans, so we'll see how that goes. I've already made arrangements with people I've met on FB.

That said, I still want to make a Bridgerton-style gown - if I don't like it, I can likely fob it off on someone else.

 

BINDING:

ahahahahaha, no.

 

PIECING:

More seams on the Restless Hands Of Sel, although still haven't finished sewing the column together!

So my current schedule is full of dressmaking for Regency balls, etc.

WIP Wednesday: the one with Regency

GENERAL THINGS

I have decided to sew one seam a day. At least. If I do more, then great. But otherwise, one seam a day. One thing a day, whether that's hemming handkerchiefs or stitching binding together.

Hemmed hankies, made from spare squares of fabric around the place

Also: an overflowing scrap box. Need to cut those up and stuff them into the pouffle.

DRESSMAKING

I have applied to go to a Bridgerton garden party in Bowral (which is right in the middle of the holidays, I think) and I don't have any Regency clothes at all.

I would really like to make:

1. a Regency corset
2. a day dress
3. an evening dress
4. a spencer/jacket

I mean, this is wishful thinking: I have a little over ONE WEEK in which to do any of it. I have no patterns, I have made no muslins, I have no time.

Frankly, even just getting the evening dress done would probably be nearly impossible.

But I do have fabric. Lots of it. A lovely two-tone cotton weave (not quite the colour for a day dress, but possibly a riding habit). A gorgeous emerald green-black dupion silk (I found it at a Pitt Fabric store one year during the Sydney Craft And Quilt Show and bought the bolt). And a green lace so dark it's almost black.

The light doesn't show the colour very well. But they look really good in sunlight!

There's the blue-black chiffon (probably poly) and the mustard-and-violet chiffon (actual silk!) and a maroon crepe de chine (actualy, that could work for a day dress, although, again, not quite the right colour), and assorted cotton voiles and lawns that would probably work quite well (although they're prints, not solids, obviously).

One of the things I find absolutely mind-boggling today is how casually I have more fabric than a modiste of the Regency could have ever afforded. It's less susceptible to mould and decay and wearing and fray, and with some care, it might last for another fifty years.

Anyway.

BINDING:

Done: Cut strips for red bindings.

To do: cut morestrips for red bindings.

PIECING: 

I went to the Saturday morning sewing group meeting for the first time in a couple of months. There were a decent number of people there, and it was a lovely sunny day after having had an exceedingly wet and rainy Friday ("rain bomb"). I dragged along all the components of my Restless Hands Of Sel quilt and did some more work on it. 

I sorted out which stars were next on the list, and sewed some of the columns together, which was quite satisfying.

One problem I'm having, though: I can't find where I put the fabric pieces I was using. When I went on holidays last year, I took with me one of the bags that I'd been using to house them and...stuffed the rest into a ziplock bag. Which I then mailed home with a bunch of heavy winter clothing I wasn't going to need while in Hawaii--

Okay, so now I have an idea of what happened to them, but I still can't remember where they are... Wait. Found them!

LOL. Thank you so much for helping me jog my memory as to where everything is.

THOUGHTS I HAD

What if I got you guys reading this to vote on what I should do next?