Tag Archives: questioning my sanity

So Hip

02 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in A Silk Sacque, Clothing, Making Things, Reenacting

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I don’t always feel the need to enhance my anatomy; in fact, I rarely do, but then I started on the sacque. Ah, the sacque. I nearly abandoned the whole business but then I thought I’d look pretty silly dressed as the maid, or for George Washington’s funeral instead of his birthday party.[1]

I also don’t want to have a house littered with UFOs, because that is what my knitting stash is for. In order for the sacque to look right, I need hips. HIPS.

And while I planned to make panniers AKA pocket hoops, a simpler and easier solution occurred to me. Hip pads: I’d seen them on Sharon’s site and thought I could at least try a pair. They’d help my poor fake quilted petticoat (FQP, long story[2]), which will come in handy for a party in February. So I spent my New Year’s Day making hips and playing a bit with the sacque silk.

Half hipped, or me, right after my hip replacement.
Whole hipped: symmetrical, and wide.

To make the hips, I started out by laying a piece of muslin against Cassandra, and tracing a waist arc. I worked between the muslin and paper to create a paper pattern, and then made up a muslin, which I filled with polyester stuffing and then tested under the FQP. Better, no?

Then I added the seam allowance to the paper pattern (which you can download here and print at 100% if you have a waist in the 30 inch range and want enormous hips yourself) and cut four more of linen.

After three episodes of Death Comes to Pemberly[3], I had hips. They weren’t quite the same size, but my right hip is larger or higher or something, so I put the smaller one on the right and the larger on the left to balance my own deficiencies.

The alteration to the silhouette is pretty amazing, though Mr S did laugh. Perhaps this figure is an acquired taste.

[1] All I have right now to wear with the Celebration Spencer is a black petticoat, so I’d be rocking the 1799 George-is-Dead look.

[2] The story is that I have a real one basted onto a frame but I cannot fit both the frame and a sofa in the apartment. We chose sofa. I am sad but comfy.

[3] I’m ambivalent. Though I do love Trevor Eve, I wondered why there was not more changing of dress for various times of day

The Report: Sorry, No Pictures.

03 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Events

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We came, we saw, we sewed. Next year, if we go, I would teach (lead?) one class only. It was just too busy to enjoy other classes and prep for my own, so it’s a rational decision.

 It was fun to see the same people again, to meet friends made a year ago. And it was really fun to see costumes and costumers. It’s a different world. And while I’m not saying that re-enactors don’t have fun, or a sense of humor, one finds that the sense of humor is a little…different…and that sometimes, a weekend of all women is a fine thing to have. In two weeks, I will be part of a weekend of mostly men, and I will look back at the air-conditioned hotel nights and hot showers with real longing. (Having just realized that I am about to spend two hot sweaty nights camping and then drive home to New England from New Jersey with a load of stinking kit in the car, I am seriously questioning my sanity. But, onward, to Happy Father’s Day in the miasma of New Jersey.)

So. The conference was smaller this year, but still busy. We skipped the crepes (prep!) and the tea, as my friend cannot eat wheat, and that was OK. I made significant progress on some required overalls, and that was amazing. (PDF files of the classes I taught are on the Dress U Handouts page above.)

On Saturday, my mother took us to dinner at a Thai restaurant in Haverford, which was delicious, and such good company! Ever evangelistic about her hobby, my mother gave us both plants to take home.

Before dinner, we had tried to go swimming in the hotel’s silly pool (it is a curious shape). The pool was nearly at its capacity by volume of guest with an exuberant extended family playing hotel pool volleyball with three inflatable beach balls. After my friend was hit on the head the third time and glared at, we decided to leave.

Glaring and staring continued on Sunday when the Golf Guys arrived. We rode the elevator down with a possible father-and-son duo after dropping off the iPad and projector so we could get some dinner before we donned tiaras. Golf Guy the Younger stared hard: that was the filthiest look I’ve gotten in a long time, and I have a sarcastic teenager at home. He seemed offended by my green silk bonnet (I know, I used almost slub-less dupioni and not taffeta for my Anne Carrowle bonnet) and the notion that I was hoping to get it rained on. Golf Guy the Younger stormed out of the elevator ahead of us, while Golf Guy the Elder held the door, smiled, and said, “After you.” He was the original owner of the thick white leather belt that held up his mint condition mint-blue polyester trousers, possibly purchased with the leather belt. The meatiness of the leather belt reminded me of the thickness of the bayonet belts worn by the Second Helping Regiment, belts which are probably of an age with Golf Guy the Elder’s belt.

Golf Guy the Younger found costumed women so horrifying that he would not even take the door we held for him, though GGtheE attempted to speed up to catch the door. At the Outback Steakhouse (ugh, but handy and with a gluten-free menu and cold beer), more staring happened. It was full of tables of Golf Guys, as weird as the day we drove home from Philly when there was an Eagles-Giants game at the Meadowlands and were surrounded on all sides by cars full of men. Not until we saw men with painted faces did I realize we were headed for a football game, and up on the skyway part of the NJTP, small sedans crammed with large men with blue faces were a sight to behold. We weren’t re-enactors then, but if we had been, I would have put on every uniform hat in our car.

So we had the usual conference mix of meeting people, learning things, and shocking the locals, interspersed with a trip to the Exton Mall for a power cord lost from the projector case by an errant colleague and a couple of tiaras. We were sparkly this year, but had to announce that we had stolen our mistress’s jewels, as the excuse for wearing paste with peasant clothes.

Next year, CSA is in Baltimore at the same time…time to look into train tickets. But now, packing and loading the car for a drive back in the rain. And just like last year, we’ll take 287 instead of 95.