A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

I don't think I've posted about this before.  A local re-enactor and photographer who's also a family friend has asked me to make him a pair of woolen breeches for his impression of a slave at the Schuyler Mansion in Albany.  He gave me three hand-woven (they have real selvages ) black-and-white striped wool blankets to use, and said he'd like it all machine-sewn.  I was kind of afraid to start because who would want to screw up cutting into hand-woven wool blankets?  But I have.  Started, I mean. I decided to use the breeches pattern from Everyday Dress of Rural America , as the shape of the pieces seemed the most similar to the Jas. Townsend breeches Cliff lent me to take measurements from, and looked simpler than the patterns in Costume Close-up .  I worked out the measurements of the scaled-up version of the pattern a few days ago - fortunately, the pattern is very, very close to the measurements of the Townsend breeches - and last night I finally mad...

There are a few days between me and this dress, so now I can look at it all in a more rational way. I volunteer at the National Museum of Dance, which is having its 25th anniversary this year.  A few days ago, it held its Silver Gala - attended by the likes of Marylou Whitney and Ann-Margret (who was being inducted into the Hall of Fame) - and one of my supervisors asked me to sew her a dress for it.  She isn't very into dressing up or shopping for fancy clothes, so it seemed like a great idea to have one made instead.  And it needed to be silver. I was given a few fit issues that my supervisor wanted the dress to take into account, so I set about looking for patterns.  I picked a few that seemed to work from Simplicity and Butterick - A-line skirt, high waistline, longish skirt - and then, as an afterthought, a pattern from Vogue with a sort of marquise-shaped panel on the left side, with the rest of the fabric pleated up into it.  Of course, that was the...