ACG Victorian Picnic

On Sunday, I hosted a Victorian picnic for the Australian Costumers Guild. It's a little late in the year in Australia to be holding an event when you are layered up several times with undergarments, corsets, petticoats and all the dress layers, but it turned out to be a lovely day with a fantastic breeze blowing in off the Brisbane river. We set up at Newstead House for the event where we spread out our picnic blankets under a large shady tree. Along for the day were members from RIFF (my re-enactment group) The Queensland Scottish Volunteer Core (my cousin's re-enactment group), Dance Kaleidoscope (my dance group) the ACG (of course) as well as family members and a few new faces to the Victorian costume scene. All in all we had about 40 people attend, making this one of the largest Brisbane events ever. Not only did we all sit down to lunch, we spent time taking photos (of course), playing croquet, graces and battledores as well as dancing. It was a thoroughly relaxing day.

And it was a huge success. Everyone expressed that they had a wonderful time and really look forward to hopefully doing it again next year.

As for costumes, I took along my parents with me. They both wore costumes that I made them a couple of years ago for another Victorian event. My mum in an 1840s skirt, blouse and bonnet and my dad in a full Victorian suit. As for myself, I took the opportunity to make a new costume that I have been itching to make. You will most likely notice that it is the same fabric as my existing gold Natural Form bustle gown, but when you can buy 3 metre wide fabric for $7.95, what else are you going to do? I made three new pieces for this ensemble (all based from Truly Victorian Patterns - with a lot of tweaking). The first is a fantail skirt with a pleated ruffle at the hem. The technique for pleating that I used it one that I learnt on making my 1836 gown a few years ago. The ruffle is pleated in the middle using box pleats which then have white velvet ribbon sew over the stitching. The top of the ruffle is flat pleated in one direction. this gives a twisted puff sort of effect. The second layer of my costume is the apron. It is made from "sherbert" colour dupion silk from Eastern Silks. It is essentially the long draped overskirt, except that I made it longer. I added a fringe trim to the hem and tassels at each side seam. The third piece of the costume is the bodice. It is the Natural Form Dinner Bodice with a bit of tweaking. I made the point in the front a lot deeper and the scoops over the hip higher to reflect a number of fashion plates that I had seen. I also made sure that the tail at the back was large enough that I could wear the bustle bad I made last year under it. I was so happy that I could finally wear it! The bodice is then trimmed with white silk bias binding, a couple more tassels and some metal buttons that I had in my stash. The hat, is from when I wore my other natural form day gown.

I am so extremely pleased with how the whole ensemble turned out. Though I must say, in the yellow and orange, I really really stand out in a crowd. I will disabuse any illusions that the gold fabric is silk; it isn't. It just has the right sort of slub and sheen that it looks like a silk, but it really is a polyester. Big tip off is the salvage of the fabric with its melted edges. But hey, I love the colour and I love how it all turned out. One of the things I am most excited about though is the ability to nix and match my two different costumes now. They are both Natural form, so it gives me a lot of freedom, but all in all, I have 2 skirts, 1 apron and 3 bodices that I can put together. And I still have fabric of both the gold and the orange left over. I am thinking that somewhere down the track I will make another apron and maybe another bodice. I think it just makes my wardrobe just that bit more versatile. There may be a new hat waiting to be made as well....

Pot Luck, Retro Style

So, the plans for last weekend kinda feel through completely. I was supposed to be out camping in style. Regency style that is. But the weather forecast all week was looking like rain on Saturday. And not just a little rain, a whole bundle of rain. So we cancelled. Thursday saw parts of Brisbane hit by a pretty big storm, Friday we had a little more rain, and then Saturday came around. Bright sunshiney skies, getting rather hot throughout the day and then it hit. Hail. The storm hit the northern suburbs of Brisbane (including where we were supposed to be camping). The hail was coming down at a 45 degree angle, and some of the larger ones to hit out house were the size of marbles. The noise on our patio was incredible - even yelling, we could not hear each other talking.

It all cleared in time and we were rather pleased that we had not gone camping. Knowing my luck, I would have ended up with dents in my car, a soaked shelter and furniture and ruined another of my regency dresses with mud and water. So, instead we put together an evening of retro pot luck. We all dressed up in our vintage dresses and sat down to dinner and cocktails. We rounded out the evening with singstar and parfait. I had a lovely evening and was glad for such a simple night.

 I didn't take many photos, so you will have to imagine the dress. It was so nice to just pull out an existing dress with no muss or fuss or panicky last minute preparations. I wore my yellow 1950s dress again and paired it with some wedges to get into the spring feel of the evening. I did make sure to get some snaps of my mum's hair. I did her up with a 60s beehive. I think she was a little overwhelmed by the hair, but it was fun to do a beehive on someone other than myself. (I seemed to be able to get a lot more height into it when I am not doing my own hair). Go figure.

Steamed Tea

A few weekends ago, a couple of our fellow Australian Costumers Guild members were up visiting from Adelaide and looking for a way to fill their Sunday. We came to the rescue with a Steampunk outing. We met in at the French Twist at Roma Street for lunch. The shop has a lovely victoriana feel to it, but unfortunately they don't like you taking photos inside. The food was lovely though and the company even better. We had a great time and took a lot of photos.

I wore my one and only complete Steampunk ensemble - The Key Maid. It's a costume that I am completely happy with and 100% pleased to wear. It also happens to be inordinately fun to wear as I simply adore my long blue curly wig. It's one that I bought a long time ago on ebay when I first started costuming. It has sat for so long in my wig box just waiting to be worn and last time I wore the key maid, I hunting for a wig to wear and decided that it would be perfect. Now it has pretty much become a staple part of my costume. I am however looking at putting together a new Steampunk costume or two but that certainly won't happen any time soon - what with my calendar booked up each weekend right into November. Add to that the couple of projects I have for my Christmas Parties and I won't really have much time to put together anything else new until my Christmas break. I can safely say that it looks set to be a busy time.