Josie Comes For A Visit!

I cannot believe that it has been a whole week since my most fabulous friend Josie Smith was here for a visit!!  I had such a wonderful time with her, dressing up, antique shopping, looking at all the things, and laughing our heads off.  Well, not really laughing our heads off, but close!  To put it succinctly, I had a most wonderfully fabulous time while she was here!!!

There wasn't anything planned, dress up wise, so I thought that We Wear History should host a Titanic Picnic at the Idaho Botanical Gardens.  We missed the sinking of the Titanic date by about a week, but that's ok.  It was still the month of April and the weather was sublime!!  We invited some lovely guests from anther costuming group, Style "N" Time and had a wonderful time eating our lunch under the shade of the trees in the garden!  On the menu was Broccoli and Bacon Salad, Chicken and Grape Salad, Herbed Egg Salad Sandwiches, Fruit, Cheese and Crackers, and Chocolate Mousse, all washed down with Iced Tea!

I hope that this picnic becomes an annual event for us here in the Valley!!!

The weather couldn't have been any better.  The air was soft and every once in a while we were blessed with a lovely breeze!!!

The ladies!  L to R:  Carole, Marilyn, Me, Tammy, Josie, Lana and Shannon.  I thought we looked like a lovely bouquet of spring flowers!

The gentlemen join the ladies...on the left is Ruben and on the right is Chick!  They are so much fun to be around and are true gentlemen!!

Edwardian/Teen ladies!

Love this pictures of all of our hats!!  Like yummy, fluffy confections!

Look at the buttons!!  We LOVE buttons!!!

Three shades of purple!!!  LOVE!

Below are some of my favorite pictures of the day.  I took over 300 of them and could have posted many, many more, but didn't want to irritate Blogger.....

 

We can't help it...we need to be silly!!!

I love this image above and took some serious ones of us ladies in the arch ways....they reminded me of Alphonse Mucha paintings and next post will be dedicated to those...they are fabulous!!!

On Sunday it was to Mom's house so she could capture images of Josie and me in our sailor dresses.  It was the first time ever that two of the three dresses were together in the same place!  We still need to get all three dresses together!  These two are missing their sister!

Mom and Dad have access to a subdivision pond and that is where we decided to have our photos taken.  And yes, silliness ensued!!

You didn't think we had monkeys in Idaho did you?  You were wrong!!!

I like big bustles and I cannot lie!!!

We LOVE stripes and tabs!!!!

I have my bubble thing...Josie had her Coke thing!!  It's a thing....

Love the colors in this picture!  Way to go Mom!!  You are a picture taking rock star!!!

Well, the time went waaaaay too quickly and before I knew it, my friend was on the plane heading back home.  We are so in need of a worm hole in this world!!!  I miss you my dear friend and cannot wait until we can wreak havoc on the tranquility of the world once again!!! Love you!

Be blessed my friends!!

g

Port Townsend Victorian Festival: Saturday Day

Day 2:  Saturday (Daytime) 1885

I was so proud of my Mom!!  She decided that she wanted to make her own bustle sailor dress for this trip and she got it 94.89% complete!  IT LOOKED FABULOUS!!!!  She got her inspiration off of a fashion plate from Le Journal des Modistes (image below).  It was stunning on her and it is now one of her favorite dresses!

Thankfully, the wind had died down to a whimper, so our hats were safe from flight.  It did offer up some gusts at times, and it was still on the chilly side, but all in all, it was a wonderful day on the wharf! 

Mama and me!  Isn't her dress awesome!!!  I am so proud of her! 

The inspiration for Mom's dress.  We couldn't find any fabric that was white with blue anchors, but JoAnn's had some blue with white anchor linen fabric a few years ago.  The white fabric on Mom's dress is a white on white cotton jacquard.  She will get around to embroidering the HUGH anchor at the front of her dress when she gets a few spare hours.

We decided that gold buttons would look smashing on this outfit and we were right!!

Ah yes...the little girl comes out!!  My Mom is so fun!

My dress finally gets to see the sea!!!  I know it was happy...it told me so!

Amazingly enough, the color scheme of the clouds, water and far shore line worked so well with the colors of our dresses.

Out for a stroll on the wharf!

This was such a lovely day!

Oh yes...those gusts of wind I was telling you about?  Yaaaaa....this is an example of one!  It was quite brisk and one could say refreshing!

The tide was out, so we went in search of sea shells.

Mom kept laughing at how seriously HUGE the bustles made out bums look when we bent over!  Hiiiiilarious!!!  But you get a good shot of my shoes!  I have had these forever and LOVE them!

More gusty wind!

Mom spied a huge clam shell right at the edge of the water and was on a mission to fetch it.

She acquired a stick to help her in her endeavor!   I LOVE how well the gold buttons "pop" on the front of her bodice.

S-T-R-E-E-E-E-E-T-C-H!!!!!

DO NOT RUIN YOUR DRESS!!!!  Or fall in!  I am so not jumping in after you!

Success!!  Her smile says it all!

Coming back, prize in tow!!

This was a fun day!  We walked around the town with Val LaBore, purchased buttons and then went to lunch.  It was a very fun day indeed!!!

For those of you who don't know her...this is Val the button enabler...hahahaha!!!  She took us to a place that has OHMYGOSH fabulous antique glass buttons and we went a bit crazy....Thanks again Val!!!

Well, that's all for Saturday Day of our weekend saga....

Be blessed my friends!!

g

1885 Sailor Dress....Or My Most Favorite Dress in All the World

 Hello Lovely Readers!  This TBT brings to an end my outfits for the SPWF.  I have, in my opinion, saved the best for last as this is my most favorite dress in all the world...that I have made.  This is so much my favorite dress that I joke with my husband that I wish to be buried in this dress upon my death.  He doesn't think it's funny.  He doesn't know that I am sort of, kind of, rather serious.  It is a reproduction of an 1885 sea side bustle dress.  

The last event of the last day of the SPWF, we decided that we needed to be a Steampunk Olympic Team.  All of us ladies chose a sport to represent and went to work designing our dresses around that sport.  Judy Smith and I actually traded sports as I started out wanting to be archery but couldn't find out a way to get a recurve bow on the plane from Idaho to New Jersey.  So we switched...she became Archery and I became Sailing.

Photo:  Kat Stelzer

Inspiration:

1885 Fashion Plate of a Nautical Bustle Dress

I fell in love with the overall yuminess of it all.  Not only was the color scheme glorious, but it had tabs!!!!  I ordered the anchor patches off of ebay and they were a perfect color and fit!  I wasn't overly fond of the apron/drape on the left side of the dress, so I left it off of mine.  I had hoped to recover a parasol to use with the dress, but I ended up using my left over ivory silk on another project.

I found this fashion plate waaaaay before I even met any of the ladies that became the Steampunk Olympic Team (I would like to point out that Beth and Josie also had this in their "I will make someday" file too.  We have each made our sailor dresses based on this fashion plate and will one day get together for a photo shoot...) I put it in my "will make someday" file and would bring it out and drool over it from time to time, but always put it back because I couldn't find a stripe fabric that made me happy.  In the end I, I spent 16+ hours sewing 1" blue satin ribbon to the dupioni silk to form the stripes.  CRAZY!!!!!  But it worked!

I found some incredible antique ivory and navy wings on eBay for the hat.

Patterns Used:

Bodice:  TV463 1884 French Vest Bodice

Underskirt:  self drafted...I needed a dress that wasn't cut on an angle, as I needed to sew satin ribbon to get the stripe look and didn't want to sew them on the curve.

Overskirt:  self drafted

Fabrics Used: Ivory dupioni silk

Navy faux dupioni silk

1" Navy satin double sided ribbon

Natural muslin

Gazing through the looking glass that Beth lent me....she of course insisted upon getting it back.  Brat.

If you look closely, you can see the good job it did in matching the ribbon stripes up on the side seam.  I was a little impressed with myself!!   hahahahahahaha!!!  Sometimes, things that I do actually end up right!

My hat was a navy blue straw instead of the natural color of the fashion plate.

The prerequisite immature picture.

Pictures taken on Emma

Lovely filligree ship I found on eBay

The Team

Needless to say, I thought all the ladies on our SPWF Olympic team looked beyond fabulous!  It was so fun to meet in the large patio area at the hotel and see the glorious dresses that the ladies had created!  We had medals that hung around our necks and either Beth or Kat had made the contestant numbers for our backs!  I cannot express what a fun event this was!!

All of the ladies on the Olympic team with our handsome judges.

Beth:  Shooting

Loved the colors of her plaid and all her buttons!  She even found antique shooting medals to pin on her bodice!

Kelsey:  Tennis

She has embroidered tennis rackets along the hem of her skirt!  Of course a tennis champion would not be complete with out her trusty racket!

Josie:  Swimming

Notice the octapus at her hip and of course her life preserver!  Adorable!  The color of her outfit was so refreshing!

Jess:  Equestrian

The color of her gown was gorgeous!  Her veiled habit fit perfectly on her beautifully coiffed head!

Judy:  Archery

She looks like a Steampunk Artemis, goddess of the hunt!  Loved all the pleating at the hem of the short skirt!

Kat:  Croquet

Pleats and tabs!  I need say no more!  Loved the shade of the red with the black lace!  Oh and her croquet mallet holder was pretty epic too!

Jason and Steve our Judges

I think they were a little biased.....

Our contestant number signs had gears to represent the 7 Olympic rings!  Such genius!!!

The End

Well, here we are at the end of the SPWF...also the backs of our outfits!!  This was such a fun adventure and event!  I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and can't wait until I get the chance to be with these incredibly talented and fun ladies!

See you next week!

Be blessed my friends!

g