Trip Recap: London (Again)

The last leg of our trip was London. We arrived in the afternoon and after checking in at the hotel we went for afternoon tea at The Royal Horseguards. We had their signature strawberries and cream black tea. It was seriously delicious.

After a leisurely 2 hour tea we went to see a West End show: Jersey Boys! It is my new favourite musical. Conveniently, the movie is coming out next month. Guess who's going to be seeing that wearing her new Jersey Boys official t-shirt!

( Making our way through London town )

The bit on Aesthetic dress reminded me of Aubry girliegirl32786.

( The last of London )

The next day was quite a mess. The airline had rescheduled our return flight to a day before we even left on our trip so we arrived at the airport to find that we didn't have a flight. We got a new flight (luckily, and no extra charge) but it involved two layovers instead of one. And Every Single One of our flights was delayed by about an hour. And it was something of a rush to get through customs, get our baggage, and check our baggage, all in an hour and a half. We finally made it home after 1:00am. Whew. I was glad to get home and see my family again. That was the best!

Trip Recap: I bought fabric

The UK offers some fantastic opportunities for fabric shopping. In Edinburgh I went to a place called Edinburgh Fabrics. Like most places in the UK, it was a smaller place, but they carried a wide variety of fabrics, from cottons to faux furs to polyester to silk. The real show-stopper there is the Scottish wools. They have a gorgeous stock of wools, specifically tweeds, in a beautiful array of colours. I've never seen anything so lovely as the shelves filled with bolts of tweed in lavender, pink, emerald, and turquoise. I wanted to buy them all, but in the end I got a remnant of wool and a dress length of cotton muslin.

The wool is a blend of wool, cashmere, and 2% lycra. At 1.3 metres it is enough for a blazer and it only put me back about 16 pounds. It feels wonderful and the colours are lovely, a dusky purple herringbone speckled with white and yellow. The muslin was a really good deal and I wish I had bought more. It came in a whole rainbow of colours and the muslin is smooth and fairly sheer. It was 2.5 pounds/metre, so I got 4 metres. It is earmarked for an embroidered Regency dress and whatever is left will probably become Regency accessories and frills for my 1790 habit shirt.

I also picked up 8 metres of 1/4" cotton tape, but that isn't really exciting enough for a photo. It will be useful for covering the seams of my stays, though, and as ties for my 1790s chemise gown.

In London, I went to about half a dozen shops on Goldhawk Road. This is a place where the costumer for Game of Thrones does shopping! I was hoping to find a good brocade for my Tyrell costume bodice, but no such luck. The stores are a treasure trove, however. Gorgeous fabrics upon fabrics all packed into small rooms with just a small pathway through them. There are shelves filled with bolts and then fabric on rolls leaning against them. It is crazy. They have synthetics, but also tons of silks and wools and cottons, which were what I was focusing on. My favourite store was Classic Textiles, but I also really liked the other ones including A-One Fabrics, A to Z Fabrics, Fabric World, and another one or two that I'm not sure about the names of. If you're there you'll see them all; they are clustered together right near each other on two sides of the street.

I have NEVER spent so much money on fabric at one time. I also got upsold on some wool by a very convincing salesman. He gave me some wool that was priced at 12 pounds for 10, and got me to buy the 4 remaining metres on the bolt even though I only wanted 3. But really, we both knew that he couldn't leave just one metre on a bolt... ;p I bought the wool, it's a nice burgundy that I think will be good for a Regency redingote. I also picked up 1 metre of silk velvet in a yummy emerald colour. That was the most I've ever spent on a piece of fabric, 17.90 pounds/metre! But totally worth it. It will make a lovely spencer to wear over my muslin gown. And I got 4 metres of silk in cream (labelled as Thai silk, I would call it taffeta. I guess they're not necessarily mutually exclusive). I like the colour, but I was also sold on the fact that, as a light colour, it will dye well. I want to use it to make a Regency dress with matching spencer.

I guess you can tell that I had Regency on the brain for this trip, but really, it was also just the fact that the fabrics there were really suitable for Regency things. I had other things on my list, but couldn't find them. I was really tempted by the silk tulle I saw at one store, just because it was silk tulle, but I'm not sure what I would have used it for anyways so I resisted.

Anyways, the moral of the story is: when traveling, buy fabric!

1790s Chemise Gown Mock-up 2

First off, thanks to koshka_the_cat's awesome tutorial on setting 18th century sleeves! Super helpful. Everything was going fine with this mock-up until I put in a sleeve. I made some adjustments to it but it still isn't right. The sleevehead needs to be higher because the sleeve is too small for the armscye. I also made the sleeve narrower because it was way too big for my arm. But I think I am getting too many wrinkles in the back, even for an 18th century sleeve. Looks like there's just too much fabric back there. And it also looks like it's sitting too far out at the front and around the shoulder. But when I had more fabric there in the sleeve it was super wrinkly. Maybe I should take some fabric out of the bodice and strap? Any sort of fitting advice from you more experience folks would be greatly appreciated!


ETA: The back of the sleeve actually ends where the strap meets the back piece. I just had the seam allowance pinned over the strap piece because of the method I was using to set the sleeve. I tried repinning the top of the sleeve deeper into the top and front of the strap and found that helped a little bit.