All posts filed under: 18th Century

Putting marmotte hair to shame

I’m still plugging away on the Marmotte Masquerade Stays, but have been held up by boring paperwork and car fixing and whatnot.  So I’ll keep you entertained with other things. Between my stays and the  Fairies & Dinosaurs at Versailles party I’ve been fixated on mad 18th century hair. These fashion plates particularly delight me: ZOMG!  Look at that hair!  Look at the fruit!  The entire bowl of lemons (or apricots?)!  The full pineapple perched in front!  That one random pear at front!    And her fabulously NOSE-y nose. Best of all, do you know what the pointy fruit going up the back of her hair is?  I do!  I’m relatively certain that it is a cacao fruit. Yep.  That’s right.  Chocolate hair. I’m not sure what the large round fruit that alternates with it is though.  Out-of-scale quince?  Perhaps they were going really exotic and they were meant to be breadfruit. It’s like pastoral France meets my parent’s farm!  I love it! And what about this one: She’s a little more typically pretty, which …

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 …