First Photoshoot

In my very first post, I talked about my very first selfmade dress, the yellow Regency dress. I drafted the pattern (not on my dressform, because it sucks, but I'll tell you about that later), figured out the closure and sewed the whole thing up; I even embroidered the bib front - only to realize that the bib was too small, there was no way to close that dress over my chest and wear it modestly, even if I had a shift and stays to go with it. So I had a dress I put a lot of work in and the only way to wear it would be for me to cut off the prettiest part that had also been the most time-consuming. Needless to say, I was very reluctant to do that and put it off, resulting in the dress sitting in a box in my closet for about a year.

At least it looks pretty on a hanger...

I recenty decided that that's just no way to treat your first big project and asked a friend of mine to come over and model it. Enter the Muse:

She made time in her busy schedule to help me show off my dress :)

I put her into the dress (yay, it fits :) ) and did her hair, which took a lot of curling and pinning and probably took longer than the actual photoshoot ;) 

Then she got her accessories: an old necklace of my mother's that i pinned into her hair (I thought it just looked nice...), a cashmere scarf (also from my mother) and an antique fan made of ostrich feathers that belongs to - suprise - my mother as well (my aunt owns an antique-store, so my mother gets some very interesting birthday gifts from time to time). I also meant for her to wear the finished knitted sleeves, but they didn't go well with the dress, so I guess I'll have to take some "modern clothes" pictures of them. The shoes are the Muse's. We simply went into the garden to take some pictures, and I think it went pretty good, even though the Muse kept losing her scarf. (I find it amazing how the girl with two brothers loves to play dress-up so much that she modeled her skill-set around it while the girl with a sister needs to be taught how to sit down with a long skirt and a scarf without almost destroying her outfit ;) )

Anyway, I had fun, the Muse had fun (at least I hope so) and here are some pictures:

Picking Blackberries

Admiring the Plants

Drinking tea

Is that a blackbird?

I think this one is my favourite, though:

This and the first one. She's just the prettiest when she laughs, don't you think?

There's gonna be more Regency on this blog soon: in my next post I'll show you pictures of my finished sleeves plus the progress on my Regency stays. Remember those?