Tag: Caped Gooseberry

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Wardrobe Architect 8: Hair, Makeup, & Beauty

Hair, makeup, and beauty are a bit of an odd topic for me, I must admit. For one thing, I don’t wear makeup. And while I do have hair, it’s pretty well always under a kerchief (unless I haven’t got dressed yet). Mind you, the hair has still been changing, it’s just that no one saw it but me and the Caped Gooseberry.

Model in head wrap
Some years ago I had a sudden change in the length of my hair, from long enough to sit on, to short. But while it was fun for a while (I even stopped wearing kerchiefs all the time for a bit), it was quite high-maintenance compared to long hair, to my surprise. The reason being that I hate having hair in my face or on my neck, and short hair needs frequent trims to ensure this remains the case.

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Upskilly & Stuff 7: The Measurements

Seventeen measurements, to be precise (dictated by Pattern Drafting for Dressmaking). The full panoply of which (good word, panoply) gives you enough information to create a pattern which fits you perfectly. The measurements include everything from your widest point or ‘seat’, to the distance from your neck to your waist at front and back, to the circumference of said neck at the base.

Image from page 14 of "The new dressmaker; with complete and fully illustrated instructions on every point connected with sewing, dressmaking and tailoring, from the actual stitches to the cutting, making, altering, mending, and cleaning of clothes for la

Obviously, these are very difficult measurements to take by yourself, particularly if you want any degree of accuracy (which you do). Unlike the woman in the pictures above, who has either the help of two people, or the help of one freak with two left hands, I had the help of the Caped Gooseberry (CG: where is the base of your neck? me: where those two little knobbles are).

So all I had to do was stand there and help figure out what the descriptions meant. (I think we still got at least one of them wrong.) Seems simple enough, you would think. But now for the hitch in Deborah’s character, to steal (and alter) a line from Jane Eyre.

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Upskilly & Stuff 6: The Dressing-Gown

Sometimes you stitch the project up… and sometimes the project stitches you up. I struggled long and hard with finding motivation for this project, and I think it was largely because it’s so very much a draft copy or ‘wearable toile’. The fabric is so old and worn and it sheds white fluff like there’s no tomorrow.

Old Rags Into New Cloth- Salvage in Britain, April 1942 D7447
Deborah trying to hold the fluff at bay.
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