Month: November 2013

Rate the Dress: Deco tones

For once, you were amazingly unanimous about a Rate the Dress.  With the exception of a two dissenting votes down and two perfect 10 votes, all the ratings fell from 6.5 to 9 for  last week’s extremely matched brown-pink & blue Rate the Dress yet.  Unsurprisingly, the end result was right in the middle of that range: 7.6 out of 10.  As Beatrix said “not a showstopper but it’d certainly make you take a 2nd or 3rd look.” After all the muted colours and half tones last week, this I really felt we needed something bright and bold and crisp and refreshing to rate.  This advertisement from the New York Public Library’s digital collection fits the bill perfectly.   I thought about having a dress-off, but I don’t think it would be a fair battle as we can’t see enough of the orange ensemble to really rate it (though she would definitely win a shoe-off!  The blue heels look positively common compared to the orange sandals) so you’ll be rating the green and blue outfit. …

Fairies! And Dinosaurs! At Versailles!

You know those days when you are having brunch with friends and someone says “We should have a fairy party!” No? Well, among my friends group not only does that happen, but then I pipe up with “Yeah! Fairies! And Dinosaurs! At Versailles!” So, because a number of us had big, exciting birthdays, or little, equally exciting, birthdays this year, we had a joint birthday ball with that as a theme.  Because of course! I was hoping to get my Marmotte Masquerade stays done for it, but they weren’t ready and I needed to concentrate on party prep, so I just wore the outfit I had been planning with my gilt stays as a backup. C’est la vie. I’ve never gotten proper photos of me in the stays, so while I’m sad that the Masquerade ones weren’t done, I’m excited about pictures of me in the gilt ones, especially since Sarah the Photographer and I managed to pop down to the beach before guests arrived and get in a quick photoshoot (the benefits of a …

Masqued marmotte madness

Progress on my Marmotte Masquerade stays is moving along faster than I can blog about it, despite a little un-help from Felicity. Nope.  Can’t have it.  My fabric. All the pieces were boned, and sewn together: Then, with a bit of help from Mr D, I tried them on.  He wasn’t in a very good mood for lacing or photography, but you can still see that my lacing is nice and even The fit was pretty good straight from the pattern, with no alterations other than a bit of lengthening (and I’ll lengthen any future versions another half an inch). The one change I will be making is to try to reduce the waist as much as possible.  The stays aren’t giving me much of a cone shape, and I’d like a bit more compression in the waist for comfort. The uplift and shape in the bust is great though, especially considering how little I have to lift and shape. With fitting done, I made adjustments to the pattern and started covering the pieces with …