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Friday, September 26, 2014

Purple Plaid Wool

Apparently if you are going to carry an entire bolt of purple plaid wool fabric around the Heritage Festival, you are going to attract a lot of attention.

 People will ask:
"What's that?" (100% pendleton wool fabric)
"Did you get that here?" (yeah, at that tent over there)
"Do they have any more?" (sorry, this was all they had)
"Will you sell me a couple yards?" (umm possibly, depending on how much I have left after my project)
And of course "What are you going to do with it?"
Here's the short answer, I'm going to make this dress:


Now I feel like that deserves its own, rather long and involved explanation, so here is the long answer.
This dress is patterned after dresses from the early victorian era, specifically between the years of 1837 and 1842. I fell in love with this pattern last winter when Butterick Patterns were on sale for $1 each. Thus, since it was only $1, and I felt like I needed a new sewing challenge, I got it. Several months later, when patterns were on sale again (if patterns happen to be on sale, I have to buy a few, even if I don't really need them) I realised that if I were going to make this dress I really should make the proper Victorian undergarments to go under it. So I bought patterns for those and they are in various stages of completion now. I then bought 10 yards of green calico at Wal-Mart to make the dress out of. But then I went to the Heritage Festival last weekend and fell in love with this:


While the cotton calico would have been historically accurate enough to use, dresses of this time period were more often made of wool, so this is slightly more historically accurate, plus it's sooo soft, and sooo pretty, and I got a really good deal on it, so how could I not get all 12 yards of it? (the dress only requires 6 yards so I'll have plenty leftover for another project at some point of time in the future.)
Now I can't wait to get started on the dress! Hopefully next week I'll get to cut it out. Now I have no idea what I'm going to wear this dress for, but after it's done I'll find a reason to wear it somewhere :)

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