In this case, on my floor, but who'd notice a thing like that?

Several of my very best friends fall more on the menswear side of things, so if I want to take them reenacting with me (muahahahahahaha) I need to branch out into historical men's styles. On the table right now, 1860s. First up, a sack coat!

Yeah, those pictures are so convincing! definitely not a low-key disaster or anything.
The coat is blue corduroy, because I had it lying around, lined with ... whatever that is. I think there's some cotton in it, and I think it was a curtain once. And the wrong side, which is what will be face-up in the end, is less "grandma stripes" and more "variegated beige". Plus its inside a coat, no one should be looking at it!
There's piping all around the outside edges, and on the sleeve cuffs, because apparently 1860s sack coats don't have cuffs.

Right now, I have the whole outside sewn together and the whole lining, and then i sewed those together all the way around the outside. I put the lining in the sleeves and then i stuck those in through the armholes and sewed them in to the outside armholes.
What's next is, I've unpicked most of the CB seam in the lining so that I can turn the whole thing right side out, and then hand sew the lining armholes over the seam allowances and finish every thing up nice and tidy. Oh, and buttons and buttonholes. hahahahhhhhyikes

It only remains to be seen whether corduroy will be too stiff to sit properly, and whether I'll be cursing a lot trying to put in buttonholes.

-consider getting a male one.
Why? you ask. I'm a lady with boobs and hips and things, and male dress forms don't come with those.
That's true. And if you can get some kind of custom dress form to fit your shape exactly, definitely go for it. But if you need an adjustable dress form, either because you're building garments for corseted shapes or because you expect to work for variously shaped clients - consider a male form.
When I was a wee seamstress my parents bought me a dress form, one of those adjustable ones that gets larger and smaller by the use of these little turning gears. And it's totally fine if i need a basically human shaped clothes horse, but LET ME TELL YOU, it has nooooothing to d with my actual body shape! Chiefly because the boobs are these little hard immobile mounds which are too high and too close together to even approximate my own chest-age - but also because even adjustable dress forms can't be every possible shape.
Like, if the chest is a lot bigger than the waist, the dress form strains and eventually stops adjusting. The "adjustment" has to fall within a certain range of bust-waist-hip ratios or the thing might break. And I have really no idea how those tiny hard immobile boobs relate to the shape of a large busted woman -"yeah, the chest is 40 inches around, and the apexes of the boobs are wierdly far apart and somehow shaped exactly like the cup of a 32 B" - like probably not?
But with a men's form, you can use batting and padded-out undergarments to build up the shape of your own particular body, and get the fluffy parts and the places in between all just right - and sqooshable, because batting with squish under a corset or whathaveyou.

Just a thought.

I'm planning a wee bit of 1810s reenacting at the Old Manse with one of my friends from high school - another case of "Nancy drags her non-reenactor friends into reenacting", which of course means that I'm in charge of all the costumes! Let's be real, I wouldn't have it any other way. But of course, instead of starting right in on a nice transitional stay for her to wear, I was like, this needs new bonnets! And to be fair I haven't got any good 1810s bonnets for summer. I have a wool one but that's only appropriate for December weather. So the first bonnet is all done now (the second one is that black one that was on my worktable, and will stay there till I've finished the transitional stay! We won't even be outside really...)
I took loads of pictures - LOADS of pictures - during construction so here's a kind of tutorial type thing.
I was aiming for something kind of like the center bonnet in this fashion plate (the blue and white one - everything I own is blue and white).

Because I'm cheapycheap and don't have a lot of "real" hatmaking supplies, I decided to make this one out of an old 18th century bergere which was constructed from cardboard! Like cereal box cardboard. It's better than posterboard, that much can be said for it. I had the bergere brim lying about because I remade it out of buckram with wire.
So I cut that brim in half, and laid the halves ugly sides together.

The cardboard had been covered with fabric by means of glue, so there were weird scraggly bits on the "back". So those got sandwiched in the middle.
Then I "pinned" the halves together around the outside brim edge with binder clips. I started with one in the middle and then bent the whole thing against my work surface to clip the rest.

That way the outside layer is a teeeny bit bigger than the inside layer, which makes the bonnet brim more inclined to hold it's curved shape. It can't really lay flat because then it does this:

A bit hard to explain, but it's good magic, I promise.
So then I got out some thread (in a random teal color b/c who cares not me) and stitched the brim(s) together around the outside edge. I mostly went through the fabric parts and also a little the edge of the cardboard. I mostly avoided the cardboard because cardboard isn't really a party to sew through.
Then it was time for the crown. I needed to shape the back of the brim so the crown attachment would sit in the right place on my head. I forget exactly how I did this; I think I basically just set it on my head and guessed. I drew on a new crown line and cut it with tin snips - I was hiding from the heat in the basement, where the hardcore tools are, and anyway it would have been a nightmare to cut even with sharp paper scissors (of which we have 0).

Now, the plan was to make the crown out of the back of this old cap I had, which was the same fabric as the brim covering (and anyway, what was this cap supposed to be? Certainly doesn't match any fashions I know of from the 1700-1900 periods). So I liberated the cap crown from its brim and binder clipped it to the brim, right sides together...

... and put the hat on for a moments test, and ascertained that, oh yeah, part of the reason I never use this cap is that its TOO SMALL.
Not a lot too small, either, just an infuriating couple inches. So I went upstairs into the gross oven world and retrieved a bit of more fabric.

Not the same color, really, but I figured, there'll be trim on the borders between the fabrics and anyway there's a tradition of costumers/reenactors having brims and crowns that don't match so I can't be breaking tooo many rules.
So I cut a new crown like 3 inches bigger than the other one and clipped it to the brim, and sewed it down. Because, as mentioned, cardboard is not a party to sew through, it required some convincing with my awl. But I got the crown sewn from one side to the other and then I went back the other way again (which is sort of cheater's saddle stitch) to squish down the freehand gathering that was necessary to get the pieces attached.

So then I gathered the backside of the crown down, and bound it with some of the fabric from the brim of the Unfortunate Too-Small Cap. I measured it against my head a number of times while doing this, and wound up with a very snug fit - perhaps a bit more snug than is really ideal, given the presence of hair and possibly day caps meant to fit under it and then emerge unscathed. For the most part given the sort of reenacting I do the bonnet will probably be on all the time or hanging out as decor all the time, so maybe it isn't an issue that'll come up, but I'm still a little annoyed about it (especially since I ALWAYS DO THIS. I never remember to account for the underthings...). But, voila, bonnet!

Then there was the matter of trimmings. I didn't actually take any pictures of this. It was a bit trial and error and a lot sewing bits of trim to other bits of trim. I though there would be flowers on it, but in the end there weren't any. And I managed to avoid having to sew through the cardboard at all when applying the trim!

I'm sooooooo pleased with it! I think it really looks very like my inspiration, but not too much. So pretty~!

So I don't drive, but I have places to go and things to do, which means I spend a lot of time on public transportation. I don't listen to music on the bus like normal people, because I get worried that I'll forget my stop or something - but I can't just sit there with my thoughts because then I'll have time to worry about other things. So my solution since about June has been ~*knitting*~! I don't really like to sit with no project in my hands in general, so the knitting also comes with me to church** and the theater, and even just watching TV with my parents (the Great British Baking Show, if you must know. Or Project Runway.). I've got a lot done already.
My knitting project of choice is triangular shawls. They're in garter stitch, and i start with one stitch and do an increase at the beginning of every row. the first one, i did on extra small needles and it came out very tight but too stiff for a shawl, so I unpicked it. But the second one is this beastie!

So huge and nice! There's a funny stripe effect, where I went from one yarn to another. They looked like the same color in the skein but in fact are not. I think it looks pretty weird flat but all right on the body. I think maybe I'll do a button and loop on either end of the front edge, because its big enough I could wrap it around and button behind me (if you see what I mean).
The second shawl is this one:

Its a bit smaller, and it's all funny and variegated. I had two skeins of that so it all matches. The skein's still attached at the corner because I want to give it a decorative border - maybe crochet? - so I bound off with yarn to spare. When it's done, it's going in my Etsy shop.
And right now I'm working on yet another, this time in Navy blue.

This one is going to get a border with some stripes and maybe get big enough that I can use it for 1860s reenacting. I can't quite tell if large knitted shawls were a thing then, or if it was really just large fabric shawls or knitted sontags (which are a bit of a different shape). I found one thing claiming to be a Godey's knitted shawl but it seems a little bogus...

** - I always feel like I have to explain the "going to church" thing, because there's churches and there's CHURCHes. It's a Unitarian Universalist church. So, not on the CHURCH-y end of churches - very light on the Jesus and heavy on the interfaith exchange. Its just a nice community and for the most part people there are concerned about the same social justice problems that I am. And we sing pretty music and hymns and stuff, which I find very pleasant.

I got this commission from my boss at the Old Manse, after I made her that brown silk dress. She had an old black silk dress and an inkling that it wasn't quite right, and asked me to make it over into an 1820s dress, perhaps one that could be used for teaching purposes. Which of course I decided must mean "let's make it all by hand!" because I'm a nerd. But before I took the old dress to pieces to make it over, I took loads of pictures because I thought it might be interesting to see what changed and such.
The original dress looked more or less like this.

My mannequin does it no favors, being entirely too small in pretty much every possible way, but even on a larger figure, its clear that the weight of the fabric would still result in a limp-wrinkle kind of look.
The sleeves are this sort of medium gigot shape. They're held up on the inside with little sort of fans of pleated fabric stuck into the armsceye.

The period this dress supposedly aims for is mid-1820s, but although the gigot sleeve did come in around 1825 I still think it winds up looking a bit too fashion-forward. (Context: The dress was supposed to be worn by a minister's wife who was quite old.) The depth of the waist and the distribution of the gathers also felt very 1830ish to me.
The center front had this large decorative buckle, which was really much too heavy for the bit of fabric holding it up. The actual design of the buckle seems passable to me, although the one missing rhinestone is a bit sad. It's worth noting that this dress saw maybe 5 or so years of occasional wear before I got at it.
The center back buttoned up with large buttons. Like very large. Very plastic, with enormous machine button holes, and this sort of awkward placket situation. I'm not really sure how this closure came about, especially since there are so many way easier period closures.

Apropos well-worn dress, there were a few signs of wear in the garment, kind of amusing ones?
The neck facing was just a little narrow bit of cloth, cut on the straight if I'm not mistaken, which liked to stick up at all angles.
And under the arms were these weird stains... In the picture it looks white, but it was actually sort of glittery. I don't know if that was well-ripened deodorant stains, failed dry cleaning, or some kind of like febreze. They didn't show when the dress was worn but they were a bit unsettling.

 So anyway, I took the whole dress to pieces, mostly by cutting along the stitch lines. The original stitcher had faithfully zigged along all the raw edges, which was good thinking on their part but of course made unpicking things a bit more difficult than I'd hoped for. Then I started making up my new pattern. I did it by the pillowcase method, where I make a fabric pillowcase to approximately the measure of a torso, cut little arm and neck holes, and then put it on a person or form and shape it from there. Since there is no planned wearer for this garment, I just sort of picked a size at random. I figured 5'6"-ish and proportionally a bit wider than me should cover a fair portion of the volunteer pool most likely to wind up in this dress. Plus it's going to have a drawstring back so there'll be room for variation.
For the design of the dress I'm taking my inspiration mostly from this dress from a Norwegian museum. There are great pictures, from front AND back! It's the exact right year, and it's relatively simple so the style lines are easy to read. The look I'm going for is basically, simple silk day dress for a conservative New England lady who is also trying to be a bit up on the fashion. I'm going to do roleaux trim on the hem instead of ruffles, and probably a simple puff on the sleeve, and I'm putting in a waistband which will be magically adjustable at the back

Right now my progress consists mostly of a page of nearly unreadable notes and the lining pieces cut out for the bodice. To fix the whole limp-wrinkle thing I'm flatlining the whole dress with this beige quilting poly-cotton. It's a "historical color", so Members of the Public turning it over won't be confused and startled, and I figure the poly content will only be obvious to other textile folks, who represent a fairly small percentage of MoPs.

Next: baste the bodice lining pieces to the black silk outerlayer, figure out what's happening with the sleeve and the skirt, and sew the thing together. Also, make 1000000 piping, and that roleaux.