DollsArtCats

I love summer. These taste excellent; I am surprised the birds haven't eaten them all, but maybe they prefer the seeds in the feeder. I found a couple more fun costume books! The first one is a look at some of the historic men's clothing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is beginning to have a world-class collection of Western costume. There are gorgeous photos of items in the collection, and some very good essays to go with them--it is a little annoying to read, because the clothes are grouped more by theme than by chronological order, and that bugs me--fashion is very organic, with one silhouette growing from the previous ones, so to really understand the context I think it's important to show things in the order they came--you can do insets or pairings of "historically inspired" items, but every period has it's own distinct branch on the family tree. It was nice to see some history of things like the "Aloha shirt"-- original...

So I bought this pattern. I like patterns; I buy them occasionally just because..well, I like them. I used to have, before I moved, almost all the Folkwear patterns, some Smoke and Fire patterns, a number of Medieval Miscellanea patterns, and a bunch of Atira's Middle Eastern patterns , as well as some wildcat patterns that I bought over the year at Pennsic. For these small-run, recreation patterns I don't have high expectations--I figure I will have to tape the pattern pieces together, that there will be muddy directions or mystery spots; the sort of things that you would find if *I* was making a pattern from the stuff I used to sew for the SCA. (Though I have to say that Atira, aside from apparently being a skinny little thing, turns out a good pattern that is easy to assemble. Just go big.) Anyway, I figured this looked like a good, basic 18th century dress, and I could crib off the drawings to do a doll-sized dress or two--mostly I wanted to see how the back of the waistl...

More clickable, zoomable fun, this time from the Costume Institute branch of the Metropolitan. Go here to see the details of the suit. (Looks like an Admiral's kit to me, since they were non-standard in 1760).