:: moments ::

Rain, rain, go away...

After three straight days of rainy weather (which we sorely needed here!), it cleared up yesterday morning to become a gloriously sunny and crisp October day. Between the previously dreary weather, and my being cooped up in the house so long, I was feeling quiet twitchy yesterday. Mom was kind enough to suggest taking me to one of our favorite haunts: the local “old town”, filled with antique shops, interesting boutiques and a couple tea rooms. So I donned my new, red beret and we spent a few hours just wandering in and out of shops, mostly window shopping (but I did spend some money; I rarely go into an antique store and come out empty handed!). Stopping halfway through for afternoon tea and yummy muffins at a bakery. Came home to find the inaugural issue of Victoria peeking out of the mailbox! (Review and thoughts coming later this week...) A lovely ending to a beautiful day indeed.

Today I wore my “new” vintage dress I picked up yesterday at my favorite dealer’s store. I’ve blogged about her before, but she always has the most beautiful selection of affordable (and wearable) vintage garments. I hadn’t been to her shop since mid summer, and all the inventory had changed to autumn-appropriate wear. Loads of lovely, fall hued dresses, hats and lots of coats (which I have to keep away from; I did a count recently of my coats/jackets and found I have upwards of a dozen! Yikes!). I fell in love with this 1950s, dead-stock (it still had the original tags attached!) jumper, was delighted when it fit and promptly bought it.


I love how vintage clothes fit! Nothing is better, in my opinion. Speaking of garments fitting nicely, one of the ladies at church lent me a whole stack of pattern cutting and fashion drawing books today! She had spent time in England years ago and had taken a course on fashion design, and had a whole bunch of books and class notes from then. We flipped through them a bit after church (hurriedly... lol!), and they look really good; nothing like the American-published books I have in my bookcase. I can’t wait to spend a bit more timing poring over them; I’ll share pictures and titles once I do.




I also fit a little sewing in this afternoon. Working on putting together the mock-up of my 1820’s corset for my dress I’m making. I made a similar corset several years ago, using the pattern from Period Costumes for Stage and Screen, which is dated a bit earlier in the century. This time around, I decided I really would rather have a corset that is appropriate for the 1820’s and 1830’s, so I’m using the scaled pattern from Corsets and Crinolines, which is a slightly different shape. Its more of a shape that mimics me, anyway, which always makes fitting easier. I need to make a fabric store run this week and pick up the cotton for the outer layer, as well as the cording. I’ve already got the linen on hand for the interlining (the corset consists of four layers; two cotton outer-layers and the linen inside), and I think I can probably scavenge spiral boning from my previous corsets. So hopefully I won’t go broke on this project! lol.


I have so many more things to share with you all, but to keep this post length reasonable, I’ll save it for tomorrow. I hope you all are having a lovely, happy weekend!

Cheers & Creativity,
♥ Casey [ email me ]

p.s. The time is drawing near: I'm going to be permanently moving my postings to my new blog as of Monday! Please adjust your subscriptions and links accordingly! Thanks!