Elisabethan corset

Act 1, Scene 1

Ah, my dears, I disappeared for much too long! First I was always at work, watching people buy fabric I would love to take home and play with. I changed my availability, so now I have two whole days devoted to being home and staying crafty. Yay! Then, a grave injustice: one of my managers gave me his cold! Three weeks later, I was convinced it was no cold, but some form of the plague and I would be dead before long. (No, obviously, I didn't die. Lucky me!) Then, my dad's truck, Chester, died of a blown head gasket. Now, I don't know much about cars, but I know enough to know that a blown head gasket means the car is pretty well dead, unless you want to spend massive amounts of money trying to fix it without a real guarantee. So now dad has my darling little car, my precious red Colonel, and mom and I are sharing her Taurus. (I really should name that, since I name everything. Life seems to finally be settling down a little for me to get some work done.

So what did I decide to do with my small bubble of relative sanity in this chaos that my life has collapsed into?

You betcha, last night I cut out the fashion layer of a corset. I had the pattern drafted by 11:30, cut the fabric out by 11:45(snack and Pepsi break, you know), and sat down to test the fit. Let me tell you, for those of you who don't sew, pinning yourself into even what will be a front-lacing corset is not such an easy feat. I don't know how many times I stuck myself, causing hostile muttering that scared my cat away from sitting over me and supervising. A little trimming, even more pinpricks, and then it was off to bed with me because it was somehow suddenly 1 am already, and I had to be at work to open.

So, there I sat, scribbling my tiny calligraphy in my little journal to type this post up, pondering my Elisabethan(spelled wrong defiantly, I spell my name with an s, not a z) corset every moment of my work day. What do I want to use as an inner lining? Denim. What kind of boning, and how long will it take to arrive? Will I go crazy and paint pretty designs on the wooden busk? It will be removable, to use in other such corsets I'll have in the future. Most importantly..

How much longer until 5 o'clock, when I get to go home and get some real work done??

5 o'clock came, and as I sat waiting for mom, watching more gorgeous fabric go out the door past me, I giggled over the new commission I got. My co-worker asked me to make her a gable hood! The Tudor-era headwear that is, quite honestly, shaped like most of today's simple birdhouses. For your head. How awesome! She had seen The Other Boleyn Girl ages back, and loved the look.
Picture courtesy of Wikipedia, which is truly a mind-boggling site. But lookit the hood! How cool is that?

Fantastic movie, by the way, and an even better book; I strongly recommend both! I bought the book Sunday afternoon at Borders, had it finished sometime Monday evening(after another 9-5 day at work), and promptly reread it. I've decided I now have to read everything by Philippa Gregory. I think it will be a far better use of my time in between work and sewing than reading another series I could mention, having lost six days of my lie to. No, I won't tell you which series, I like the whole not being lynched part of my life.

So, essentially, in the very near future, you get to look forward to an Elisabethan corset, a gable hood(maybe she'll even let me take a picture of her wearing it!), and I think I'll make myself a French hood, just for fun. Enough blabbering at you, dears, I'm going to get started on my goals for the night. Ta!