I made two new costumes for Costume College: a regency dress out of a blue sari and a Tang Dynasty dress. I’ve also been sewing a bunch of small projects and doing some quilting in my spare time.
I’ve been slowly picking up the few books on historical Chinese fashion I can find on Amazon. There’s obviously not a ton of literature in English and I’m looking for stuff that pre-dates the Ming dynasty, which is really hard to find.
I wanted to try making something a little more historically accurate for a hanfu this time. My green snake costume was very much a movie-version-of-a-hanfu. I was limited in my choices though cause of that whole tummy thing so Tang Dynasty it was.
A couple days before I left for Costume College, Marcus and I sat down and watched The Banquet (a Chinese movie with Zhang Ziyi) which was set in the Tang Dynasty. Awesome costumes! Pretty accurate as far as I can tell with my limited knowledge. Kind of a terrible movie though. I wish mainland Chinese movie makers would stop making everything tragedies. Tragic ending does not automatically equal great movie. -_-;;
Anyways, more photos of my Tang Dynasty dress on my site if you are so inclined to look. =) Most of the materials on this costume came out of my stash which was randomly cool!
The hair could have been better but considering I did it at the last minute in 3 days, it came out ok!
I also took a stab at making my first regency dress. The sari material is from my very first cosplay costume: Kendappa. I’ve been keeping it around all this time and it’s getting a second life now 10 years later. =D
I used the Simplicity regency pattern and modified it. I picked up the Bagatelle regency pattern recently, so I’m hoping to try that next to get something a little more historically accurate construction-wise.
Blue sari regency page on my site with more photos.
Judy, Mi, D and I went to Filoli in our regency dresses and snapped some fun photos. This is one of my favorites by D…
On the quilting front, I decided to give cathedral windows a go using this pinterest tutorial. I made small blankets though instead of a pincushion. I’m going to use these to cover up my baskets on the top shelf in our bathroom. They get really dusty and it’s a pain to clean everything inside the basket. I figured it’d be easier just to wash a small blanket so I made these:
These are pretty fun to do so I’ll have to use them (sparingly) in more projects!
I made a fabric box to store all of Yoyo and Bobo’s toys. I used an existing fabric box pattern (the one I posted previously in the craftsy post), but modified it so no seam binding would be needed.
I was worried at first that Yoyo and Bobo might not like having to fish their toys out of a box but it doesn’t seem to have slowed them down any… we still have toy mice ALL over the house.
And I finally finished the quilts for Aimee’s baby twins! They match the one I made for myself. Next quilts will have no prairie corners tho. -_- I’m paying someone else to do the quilting step for me from now on.
It’s hard to see in the photo above, but the patterns are all Alice in Wonderland themed.
I think my next project is going to be some regency undergarments… or maybe another quilt. Will have to see what strikes my fancy this weekend.
