Moving house

Spring has sprung and the weather is windy and changeable and full of the scent of wild flowers and all the garden flowers coming into bud and I have been absent from Blue Mountain Bliss while we moved house.

We have moved further 'up the hill' to a small two bedroom cottage, we wanted to reduce our household footprint and we have done just that, however, deciding what to bring, what to sell and what to give away, has taken a considerable amount of decision making. Then packing everything up that remained, packing, packing, packing until we were heartily sick of it all! Finally the moving day and the excitement of unpacking everything and putting everything in its new place in the new space.

Thankfully we had two weeks of leave to do it all and it has meant that apart from our books, which need a wall bookcase made for them (we have over 100 book boxes), everything is unpacked (well mostly) and we are nicely settled in our new home.

The new house is a 1950's fibro cottage, it was originally built as a company holiday home, which is probably why it feels so joyful and happy. The cottage has a lovely sun room that is perfect for cold winter days, a good sized lounge room with a slow combustion fire, an original 1950's kitchen that we love, two reasonably sized bedrooms and a bathroom. The laundry is outside, functional, with old fashioned cement tubs, great for dyeing fabric, plus there is a small 'bloke's shed' and outbuildings for the bikes. Even better, we have retained our studio space as there is a large two room studio at the back of the block for all our arts and crafts and for the occasional guest to come for a visit. Perfect!

The cats settled in immediately, helped by the fact that we were here everyday in the first two weeks I think. We are extremely happy, we are much closer to our friends and the mid-mountains suits us much better.

Italian renaissance gown update - The bodice

Onto the gown construction, you can see the underpinnings in the earlier blog post.

We were inspired by La Signora Onorata Katerin da Brescia's post on making a similar outfit, however, we morphed into a later period as we went along, more 1560's, something like Laurie Tavan's gown on the Realm of Venus. As this outfit isn't for the SCA or other re-creation event, rather its for a history demonstration and English lesson, so we're happy to create a generic gown of the time, using the painting and others as a style guideline.

We chose a lovely dark green cotton velvet for the outer gown with a lighter cotton for lining. M is an embroiderer and is working on all the trims for the gown and underpinnings. Haven't any photos of these decorative articles as yet.

We used the Corset generator to create the bodice.

Fitting of the toile:


















The bodice was made up of three layers, outer fashion fabric, lining and denim to reinforce the bodice. I also boned the bodice using cable ties, we were aiming for smooth, flat front of the late Renaissance period.








































Front of the completed bodice


















Back of bodice, note the back V point, this is typical of Venetian gowns of the period


















Close up of spiral back side lacing, we used the Zen of spiral lacing tutorial to get it right, we also used this for the corset.

















Draping of fabric to get an idea of the skirt, the pins look like a jeweled girdle


Onto the sleeves and undergown ---->