Regency Day Dress and Spencer

This little outfit has been done for a while and worn a couple of times now! I drafted it myself from another Regency gown I had made, and it's quite basic in shape. I also made a navy spencer out of a very small yardage of wool from the Laughing Moon  LM129 - 1798-1809 Ladies’ Regency Wrapping Front Spencer pattern and it was super easy so I'm sure I'll make more of that pattern eventually.

The little dress shoes were a thrift store buy if I remember correctly, and they have a funny little cut-out that was the perfect place to tie a white bow.

 

 Front and back of the spencer -- loved the little ruffle, but you can also leave it off.

 

Eventually I hope to get some Regency winter boots from American Duchess, but ran across these inexpensive ones on Amazon and they work great, even if I wish the toe was a bit more pointed. I wanted to take some quick pictures so I left the regular laces in, but plan to lace them with thin black grosgrain ribbon instead for a prettier look.

Can't take a real Regency shot without at least one classic 'wedgie' like the fashion plates, lol. I was losing the light a bit here but it's kind of 'romantic desperation on the icy moors', right?

The next time I wore the gown was by itself, at a delightful tea party where we went for an 'era free-for all'! Loved the different outfits that came out to play that day.

 

 Sara and Christine

 Some of the delicious food offerings

 Just look at that tower of treats!

 Christine and the 'other' Sara

I always enjoy Emily's company

Erin and Sara H. in pretty Regency

 

Here we have three eras -- 18th century, Regency, and Victorian!

 You can see here that this is just a plain bib-front, nothing fancy.

 And just recently I wore the gown and spencer out again to the Saint Louis Jane Austen Fest, a weekend of lectures about Austen's works, with all kinds of other activities.

Kim and I managed to squeeze in a lecture and a tea. I wrapped a scarf around my head to approximate a turban because I didn't feel like re-trimming my only bonnet, which has a summer look going on right now.

 And during the Tea we signed up for, we got to hear a little lecture from the costume designer of the play we went to that evening at the Repertory theater...Pride & Prejudice! Always interesting to hear how designers for the stage think through historic styles and adapt them to both the characters and the necessities of the stage. These were some of her designs on display.

The stage itself was GORGEOUS when we got to the theatre. I was obsessed. And they had the most amazing mesh panels on both floors that could be either opaque or see-through, depending on the lighting. They also projected period paintings within the gold frames, or large-scale film clips of action happening between scenes in the interest of time-saving and condensing.

 (this can be my house now, k?)

And this picture I did not take because of course it's terrible theatre etiquette to take pictures during the performance -- I stole it off the Rep's website and photo credit goes to Philip Hamer.

 I was super impressed by all the actors, and the whole thing was just visually gorgeous. What a great evening this was! At the end, they had the 'hall' decorated for Christmas, and 'snow' fell from the ceiling onto the actors and within the audience...so pretty and festive! 

Next up -- a sunny yellow floral Francaise! :)

The Plaid Pet (and shoe painting)

Catching up with past projects means next featuring this very holiday-spirited short-sacque, or 'pet en l'air,' and the Saint Louis Georgians' symphony outing to a Mozart concert!

One of these days maybe I'll learn that I don't look good without a fichu or tucker.

Starting out, I was inspired by this short sacque and matching petticoat at The Met, which also has a full-length overgown of the same fabric. What an interesting piece!

 Unlike a traditional pet-en-l'air, the Met's example here has the back in 4 separate pleats, which I've only seen on an earlier Robe Volante. I decided to go with the more usually-seen pleats using the J.P. Ryan sacque pattern.  

My fabric was a long roll of indeterminate fiber, probably a cotton/poly blend that has a really nice crispness to it, almost like taffeta, but fairly breathable. 

 

  Oooooh I just love this part of the process. I felt like the pleating was made extremely easy by the lines of the plaid.

 

Once I had the thing mostly sewn-up though, I realized that to me it felt a little plain (despite the loud fabric!) and I decided to trim it with a sheer off-white voile. 

   

Cue a LOT of small hand-hemming. Ugh. I wanted to cheat and machine-sew it but I just couldn't bring myself to on something so visible. HOURRRRSSS

 

 Anyway --

 

Lots of fun stomacher poofs and bows.

 

 

Annnnnd more hemming for the bottom flounce. 

As for shoes, I knew the winter weather at this point was likely to be capricious and possibly wet, so I didn't want to wear my standard Pompadours since they're fabric and I didn't want to sit through a concert in wet stockings. My only heeled leather shoes, my trusty (originally white) Devonshires, were at this point painted brown...yeah sure red and green usually make brown when you mix them together but that's not quite what I was going for here.

 

But with these shoes, changing the color of them is only limited to the supplies you have! This is now the third time these shoes have been changed over, with no damage to the leather. They've been the original white, then bright yellow, then a lighter yellow with painted floral designs (whyyy did I ever wipe that off, still kicking myself because it was beautiful), then brown.

I first use Angelus Leather Deglazer ...copious amounts of it on rags. Do this step in a well-ventilated area, wearing gloves. It will take quite a bit of time and effort and you may get mixed results depending on your original paint, depth of color, and type of rag (I finally had the best results with the fleecy side of a cut-up sweatshirt over any other type of cloth). You will likely NOT be able to get the shoe all the way back to its original ivory, and if you're trying to go from a dark paint to a pastel, you'll have to work twice as hard at the cleaning process to make sure there's nothing left in the shoe creases or you'll have to do more coats of paint than you might want to.

 First coat -- you can see I wasn't meticulous about getting all the dark brown off -- I'm familiar with how well Angelus paints cover leather and I knew I was going from a medium tone to another medium tone. The red is "Scarlet Red."

Second coat! I was pretty happy with this finish as it reminds me of the popular red Moroccan leather shoes advertised frequently during the 18th century, and this gorgeous pair at the Kyoto Costume Institute:

 

 Being now ball-ready (even Cinderella didn't head anywhere without the perfect shoes, right?!), I headed across the river on concert day. A lot of people were a bit delayed by a nasty ice storm from that morning, and a few couldn't make it at all, but those of us who did had an amazing time! As usual, when I'm really excited, you can't see my eyeballs. I wore my red light wool cloak, and a fur muff I had just finished.

 Christine's ridiculously gorgeous embroidered redingote was much admired, and I was terrified of stepping on it. 

 I didn't quite pull off 1780s hair, but made a good effort of throwing all kinds of flowers and gauzy lace at it, lol. You can see the absurdly beautiful background of Powell Symphony Hall's foyer, which is modeled after the chapel at Versailles, so it makes a great 18thc backdrop.

 So many beautiful and talented friends!

Sara of Ensembles of the Past looking royal-court-worthy

 We were all trying to gather for a group photo at this point but I was struck by the lusciousness of all the different fabrics and styles here. 

 The lovely Jean who covered her hat to match her cut-away gown

 Tracey went all-out 1790s and rocked it

And photographer Genevieve humored our request to do the "Exhibition Stare-case" picture that now we cannot go anywhere without replicating. It's tradition. Since I don't believe in sliding down banisters timidly, enjoy the unashamed impropriety of bared knee.

 

A little rumpled from sitting for an hour and a half, but it turned out quite satisfactory. I think I'll shorten it up before the next time I wear it so it's a sassy 1770s length that I can also trim around the bottom with yet more voile (why do I do this to myself). 

C'est fini! 

Next time's post: a little Regency ensemble of gown and spencer.