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the costuming symposium (and bats!!!!)
Nov. 30th, 2006 06:28 pmOmigod there was a BAT INSIDE MY HOUSE yesterday! A real live bat! Perched on the ceiling! It flew around a bit, so witness my mum and me shreiking like idiots as we tried to close the doors to keep it in the hallway, but eventually it perched on the wall again and we brought someone in to capture and release it. It must have migrated up from the basement. The joys of Victorian living. Oy.
But before all this batty business, and much more importantly, I went to all three days of the Known World Costuming Symposium over the weekend. Fabulous. Fabulous. Fabulous. It was such fun!
I learned how to properly make and starch a ruff, which I've always wanted to learn. Now that I don't have to worry about that, I'm setting out to finally make that Elizabethan costume I've always wanted. And I learned how to make a hennin so that it won't fall apart or fall off (hurray!). I even ventured into embroidery! The laid-and-couched stitch they used on the Bayeux Tapestry is ridiculously easy, and now I'm sure I'll be using it all the time, to the further detriment of my eye sight!
For me the other exciting part was seeing everyone else's costumes. This was a national convention, so there were tons of people from all over the country with all sorts of great stuff. The lady who taught ruffs had the most amazingly beautiful Elizabethan gowns I have ever seen, and the lady who taught hennins and her sister had stunning Burgundian gowns complete with veiled steeple hennins and they looked like a medieval Doublemint commercial. Nearly everyone looked amazing. And so historically acurate, too! At the little faires I've mostly been to, only a handful of people bother to do research, and they usually just make up the commercial patterns. But a symposuim will naturally attract the more serious costumers, so I was in seventh heaven accosting people in the halls to take their picture! Our camera broke, so we had to use a disposable camera, so I've got me fingers crossed that they all turn out!
Surprisingly, my thrown-together-at-the-last-minute turban was big hit! Lots of people told me how great it looked, and I even got cajoled into being in the 'Walk Through History' fashion show, even though I wasn't going to, since my ball dress for the second day wasn't as authentic as it probably should have been. But I didn't know they would have the fashion show the second day, and I wish I had, because on the first day I was wearing my portrait-inspired, historically documented dress, made of period fabrics, complete with real jewelry, which I would have been happy to go on about for hours, instead of the polyester dress with costume jewelry I wore for the ball! But oh well!
I'm just itching to start on new Renaissance and Medieval costumes now! The house is sort of a wreck, no thanks to the bat incident, because all the silk was in the hallway and we had to dump it all in my room so the bat wouldn't get at it, and good luck trying to get anything done with Mum over my shoulder, but I'm thinking of taking the sewing machine into my room when I get it cleared out, so hopefully I can get some work done there, on my own, in peace. And what fun I'll have when I do!
But before all this batty business, and much more importantly, I went to all three days of the Known World Costuming Symposium over the weekend. Fabulous. Fabulous. Fabulous. It was such fun!
I learned how to properly make and starch a ruff, which I've always wanted to learn. Now that I don't have to worry about that, I'm setting out to finally make that Elizabethan costume I've always wanted. And I learned how to make a hennin so that it won't fall apart or fall off (hurray!). I even ventured into embroidery! The laid-and-couched stitch they used on the Bayeux Tapestry is ridiculously easy, and now I'm sure I'll be using it all the time, to the further detriment of my eye sight!
For me the other exciting part was seeing everyone else's costumes. This was a national convention, so there were tons of people from all over the country with all sorts of great stuff. The lady who taught ruffs had the most amazingly beautiful Elizabethan gowns I have ever seen, and the lady who taught hennins and her sister had stunning Burgundian gowns complete with veiled steeple hennins and they looked like a medieval Doublemint commercial. Nearly everyone looked amazing. And so historically acurate, too! At the little faires I've mostly been to, only a handful of people bother to do research, and they usually just make up the commercial patterns. But a symposuim will naturally attract the more serious costumers, so I was in seventh heaven accosting people in the halls to take their picture! Our camera broke, so we had to use a disposable camera, so I've got me fingers crossed that they all turn out!
Surprisingly, my thrown-together-at-the-last-minute turban was big hit! Lots of people told me how great it looked, and I even got cajoled into being in the 'Walk Through History' fashion show, even though I wasn't going to, since my ball dress for the second day wasn't as authentic as it probably should have been. But I didn't know they would have the fashion show the second day, and I wish I had, because on the first day I was wearing my portrait-inspired, historically documented dress, made of period fabrics, complete with real jewelry, which I would have been happy to go on about for hours, instead of the polyester dress with costume jewelry I wore for the ball! But oh well!
I'm just itching to start on new Renaissance and Medieval costumes now! The house is sort of a wreck, no thanks to the bat incident, because all the silk was in the hallway and we had to dump it all in my room so the bat wouldn't get at it, and good luck trying to get anything done with Mum over my shoulder, but I'm thinking of taking the sewing machine into my room when I get it cleared out, so hopefully I can get some work done there, on my own, in peace. And what fun I'll have when I do!
