Jane Austen Festival tickets now on sale!!!

Early bird tickets for JAFA (Jane Austen Festival Australia) are now on sale!!!!!

My Mum, Bell and I went last time with our friends Beany and Weasel (was it really only earlier this year?) and we had a ball (literally), it was SO much fun to be able to basically play dress-ups all weekend. It was FUN.

The basic program is roughly as follows (now remember this is a really rough sketch of the top off my head based on last year);

   Thursday

I didn't go last time so I can't say

   Friday

 A bunch of activities in the morning (these include dancing, sewing workshops, and other random stuff related to the era)

 Lunch (provided)

 Another bunch of activities (see above)

 Go home an hour or two (I think it was two but I'm not sure) to get dressed for dinner

 Formal dinner (again, it's provided) and entertainment including some dancing

   Saturday

 A bunch of more activities (again, see above)

 Lunch (again, provided)

 More activities (continue seeing above)

 Go home earlier to have dinner and get dressed for the ... BALL (no, that isn't a soccer ball, or even a football, but a dancing ball - think Cinderella)

 Go to Ball :D

   Sunday

 Go to  Commonwealth Park for a promenade and picnic (not provided, sorry but you have to bring your own :P)

 (I think there was something in here, but I can't seem to remember what it was, so I'll just leave this bit blank)

 Back to the hall for some more informal dancing then finish up about mid afternoon

The link to the JAFA website is here and the link to the blog should be on my profile.

Have a great day and may God bless you,

Queen Nellie

Bell's regency dress and stays part 2

NOTE: Bell's regency dress and stays part 1 and 2 are one post that I had to break in half, due to the amount of photos, it would have taken far to long to load. the stays are now part 1 and the dress is now part 2

Dress

front of dress

Mum and i made this dress on Friday for Bells party on Saturday. I'm rather proud of this dress, we did all the sewing in one day, plus cut out the lining (the outside fabric we had cut out the day before), I didn't get to bed till about midnight that night and Mum staid up for about two hours after that so Bell could wear it Saturday.It's not quite done yet, things like buttons and button holes aren't sewn on yet, and we haven't done the hem yet ether.

back of dress

you can see here what i meant earlier ('back of stays' pic) about cutting the 15cm off the back of the stays caused problems later, the stays are popping out the top of the dress due to cutting that bit off and making the back heaps narrower (you'll be able to see this a lot better in the 'bodice back' photo)

side of dress

I don't know if you can see it in this photo, but there's a bit of a train which is one of Bells favourite parts, 'long enough to be pretty with out being so long as to be a nuesense'. one of the things with  this dress is the length of the skirt, it's not quite long enough for the rest  of the dress, if you notice in the 'front of dress' photo, the skirt is almost up to Bells ankles, although this would be correct for later years, the rest of this dress is set too early and should be floor length.

bodice back 

we didn't get the buttons on so Mum had to sew Bell into the the dress on Saturday, I took these photos yesterday so i just pinned her in. this is a better/worse view of the stays popping out.

our cat Catherine

this is our cat Catherine, she kept hanging around while Bell and I were taking the photos, and when I knelt down to take a photo of the hem, she wouldn't move out of the way,  so I took a photo of her and she was happy and moved out of the way. :D

hem (or lack thereof)

As you Can see we didn't get to hem the bottom. Mum overlocked it, which isn't terribly authentic, but then, we did the hole dress by machine and that wasn't even invented till 1830, this dress is approximately 1810 (the waist line reached it's height - literally - in 1811).

All up the patterns weren't to hard to follow(I'm still a beginner, so any pattern's a tad difficulty's to get my head around at times) and they turned out alright if-I-do-say-so-myself, :) , and I'd use it again without a thought.

have a lovely day and God bless,

Queen Nellie

Bell's regency dress and stays part 1

 NOTE: i have had to split this post into two parts as it was so long and had too many photos it would have taken far too long to load.


Hi everyone, sorry I haven’t posted anything yet, my laptop hasn’t been connecting to the Internet (I’m using Bells at the moment).
I want to share some photos of a regency dress and stays my mum and I made for Bell for her party last Saturday, we used sense and sensibility pattens; regency underthings and regency gown. Neither the stays nor the dress are quite finished yet (things like buttons aren’t sewn on) but they were wearableJ.



Stays

front of stays



back of stays

I don't know if you can see it on the photo, but there is a seam down the back, that wasn't supposed to be there, but when I put the stays on Bell for a fitting, they were too wide around the back, so we had to cut off about 15ish cm (approximately 6")  which made the stays fit heaps better... but caused problems later  ( you'll see what i mean in part 2)





the lacing



Sorry about the dirty appearance of this photo. I haven't had a chance to wash it, so it still has chalk markings all over it :S



the eyelet(or lack thereof)

 I haven't gotten to sew the eyelets yet so that's what they look like at the moment (BTW, the reason it looks so dirty is because at first i didn't have an awl so i was trying to use a lead pencil instead(SO hard) and that put pencil all over it. i have an awl now and it makes making eyelets SO much easier)



arm hole



As you can see I haven't put the binding on the armhole yet, I didn't have time. Note the pretty binding, Bells favourite colour is purple so i used floral binding of that colour  :)

  
(photos of the dress are in 'Bell's regency dress part 2')