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Showing posts from December, 2016

New Castle Christmas: Red Ballgown

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I didn't need a new ballgown. (Is a ballgown ever something one really needs ?) The Rainbow Trout dress is alright, but I really wanted something more Christmas-themed, and less...sleeve-y. I love my friends in big-sleeved ridiculousness; I don't love it on me quite as much. So I wickedly bought some yardage of silk taffeta in one of my very favorite colors, and proceeded to make a c1838-40 ballgown! As much fun as I had at the ball, dim lighting doesn't make for very good costume documentation for one's blog, so I trotted it out again today to take pictures that are less grainy (and freeze my bum off in the park).

New Castle Christmas: Outerwear

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New costume bits for New Castle will be in two parts; not so much because I made a lot of stuff, but because I couldn't get detail shots of the ballgown from Friday night (the dim lighting at balls is not great for my poor little camera, especially when the trim is all tone-on-tone)! So I plan on dressing up the dummy today or tomorrow, and do a writeup on the ballgown then. With that said: new outerwear! Period winter clothes are some of my very favorite things to make and wear, so I decided to focus on a bonnet and mantle for Saturday tea and town-wanderings, and rewear my cream poplin dress from last year. Not a dress I'm thrilled with (still need to fix the sleeves), but perfectly acceptable, especially as a base for more fun things. Those "more fun things" would be a new bonnet and mantle, precisely. Relatively simple but very necessary in cold weather! (And we did have cold weather this past weekend. I was thrilled. "You mean it's going to be a hig