Tweed Ramble

I went on a tweed ramble. Which is like a tweed ride, but without bicycles. Which is an excuse for people to look snazzy and sporty and (possibly) wear tweed (if you haven't heard of tweed rides, they are a thing). I took the opportunity to channel cute 1920s ladies who wear pants and dress like unconvincing boys. PANTS. I never wear them (even in modern, everyday life) so don't get used to this.

Apparently when I wear pants, I run around climbing rocks, posing like Captain Morgan, and yelling "Look at me, I'm so rugged! Rugged I say!"

Or I lean against fences, feeling autumnal and casual. I'm in the sunshine in this picture, but the day ended up being colder than I'd expected. Luckily my good friends from The Quince and Quail lent me a spare jacket from their car! https://www.facebook.com/TheQuinceAndQuail/

Have you noticed yet how much I love taking pictures in trees when I'm all dressed up? This was a perfect tree, too!

True friends will climb trees with you.

THE BEST TREE EVER. I was a little afraid to get down, though. My shoes were really slippery on the bark.

Hanging out in a cemetery. Oh yeah.

 

 

 

 

Just chillin. We were trying to capture the feeling of the picture that was the cover for the facebook event.

The picture from the cover of the event page. Do you think we have the spirit down?

Ladies dressed sort of like boys! Or at least, wearing sporty knickers. This awesome 1926 picture is just what I'm talking about... http://www.vintag.es/2015/03/womens-street-fashion-of-1920s.html

 

 

 

 

My Royal Regency Jumper

That's me, admiring the Prince of Wales! Too cool! This weekend we went to the Museum of Fine arts to look at the new Art of the Americas wing. I got to see lots of pretty paintings, and even a fabulous dress. I also got a chance to debut the new dress I made last week. It is inspired by Princess Charlotte's Russian jumper, though not by any means a direct copy. Mostly I was inspired to make a light blue, silk-like jumper with gold scalloped trim around the arm and neck holes and in two stripes down the front. Hers was made in two pieces, mine is just one. Hers has some kind of buttons decoratively down the middle, mine does not. Her back is very curiously shaped, but I did not bother with that sort of thing. I feel like it looks really wrinkly in these pictures, which is too bad, but it was still nice. Wow, I sound too negative, but don't mean to be - let's try again. This dress is really cool and pretty and sparkly and I feel like a princess!
For comparison, here is Princess Charlotte:
I also added a "spencer" for traveling (it was cold and snowy!). Actually, this is a great example of cheating by wearing a modern garment with the right lines for the period. Actually, I had to pin up the weird tail of the jacket in the back, but I think it looks pretty good, and was otherwise pretty similar in idea to a real regency spencer.
I should have gotten more group shots, but I failed. Mostly, I have pictures of me with my little sister, because she was also wearing a regency dress and we are super cute. Here are a couple other pictures too, of my mother (she did 1860s with a white cotton with red sprigs dress), and Katy Bishop (who wore a fabulous pink 1880s dress).

Regency Ice Skating

First of all, I love this set of pictures that mother took. So cool!
Let us just say that this gentleman was a much better ice skater than I was. In fact, let us further say that it is a total surprise I only fell dramatically once. My knee is all purple... Ow! Other highlights of the afternoon include hearing Cake on the sound system (somehow I don't think it is actually because the ice skating people read my blog... but it was a fun coincidence), and of course watching Julia's cape flip over her head and blind her - repeatedly - as she attempted to skate around in the strong winds. Those winds were REALLY strong.... there were times when I was standing still but the wind blew me across the ice until I was actually moving pretty fast. And of course, if you were already moving at a reasonable speed, the wind make that speed unreasonable.

As for what I wore, I started with my brown federal-era dress, made from a (very pretty) Past Patterns pattern. This is the same one I wore in Vienna. To make it a little more day-wear-like (i.e. less astoundingly busty), I added a make-shift fichu to the neckline. Now, remember all my lessons about how to fake the outfit by getting the silhouette as close as possible? I did not have a pelisse, but I did have this cute 1960s jacket with an artificially high waistline. I pinned the lapels up and decided to go with it. Honestly, the giant velvet buttons say Ragtime to me, not Regency, but these are details! Then to stay really warm, I added a little red caplet that I recently made, and a hat for good measure.