I am on the final countdown for the celebration dress, it should all be done by the end of tomorrow, fingers crossed. I had a very lovely day yesterday watching various things on Netflix and hemming the sleeves. It was the best kind of day and very welcome after a somewhat fraught time at work recently. All ended well though, with a lovely week where the students did lots of different activities and we held a conference that I organised which went smoothly, thankfully.

I am now looking forward to a final fitting of the dress this coming week and on to my next project! I am continuing with the Barbie wardrobe but will also be cutting out one of my Steampunk outfits as the next big project.

I have been accompanied during my many hours of stitching in the past months by some new inspiration in the form of podcasts and vlogs so thought that I would share them with you as they may be of interest. This post will concentrate on the vlogs and I will do another one later on the brilliant podcasts out there for anyone interested in sewing and fashion.

It is due to watching one series of vlogs that I came to be making the celebration dress really as my friend was looking at buying her celebration dress from the internet. However I have seen quite a few vlogs warning how things don’t sometimes look at all like the pictures and that the fabric and manufacture is very sub-standard.

Bernadette Banner is one of the first historical sewing vlogs that I started watching and she had an awful experience with someone using her photo of the reproduction medieval dress that she had painstakingly hand sewn to sell a very shoddy reproduction. This kind of practice is just awful and far worse than merely selling dresses that look nothing like the photo on the model. You can see what happened here as she bought a copy of the dress to examine. Picture from Bernadette’s blog with all credit to her for the 250 hours it took to make the dress.

Bernadette is so wonderful to watch, she has a lovely way of presenting and talks a lot about hand sewing techniques, so I have learnt so much from her. I have been very inspired by her makes, the medieval dress especially but also her wonderful Lady Sherlock Holmes outfit that she made for Costume College last year. I love everything Sherlock and am currently watching Elementary and really enjoying that take on the stories.

Angela Clayton was introduced to me by Ellen and she is an amazing seamstress who both creates her own patterns and uses other vintage ones for a variety of different periods of costume including very recent fashions.

Angela uses a sewing machine for her work so I have been learning so much about the importance of toiles, fitting, and how to construct costume from different commercial patterns which has been really useful to me for Steampunk.  I love this Edwardian blouse, I need more blouses for Steampunk and I am tempted to try and make something like this using some of my lovely stash of vintage lace. All pictures from Angela’s blog.

It is unlikely that I will make much more medieval kit now apart from occasional shirts and I do have a peasant dress to finish this summer but I love seeing her reproductions from all periods that I can use as inspiration. This one is just stunning!

She has also produced a series of patterns for McCalls and I am very tempted by the walking outfit here, I love the shaping of the waist on the jacket and the sleeves. I have to be good though and use my current patterns for this year’s outfits before I buy any more.

The last one I will mention in this post, although there are many more I have yet to listen to fully, is Morgan Donner. She is a member of the SCA, a re-enactment society in the USA who do lots of crafts from all different periods so her vlog is fascinating.

She makes the most beautiful garments and accessories and gives really detailed information, it has been very useful to see her posts on making medieval shifts, hose etc. And she has the most amazing hair, I love her hair 🙂 and all the different styles that she does with it. All pictures from her blog.

She has also introduced me to the term history bounding which is wearing historically inspired clothing as everyday wear and now I have joined the history bounding group on Facebook there is no stopping me for inspiration for day wear. From her blog I traced down the source of some fantastic material inspired by one of my favourite pieces, the Elizabethan Layton jacket below that someone has used to make this dress.

The fabric has been reproduced and made available on Spoonflower. I do now have two samples of this one and the blackwork inspired from the same designer and one day may be tempted to order enough yardage to make something with them. I think the Layton jacket one would make an excellent Steampunk waistcoat.Someone has actually done a pattern similar to the Layton Jacket , thankfully it is only available from the USA with high shipping costs or I may have been tempted!

So thank you all of you historical costume vloggers out there, I have been entertained, kept motivated, educated and inspired and there are many more resources out there that I have yet to explore.

I hope that you have all had a good week and are planning nice things for the week ahead. We have a quieter time at work over the next couple of weeks and then I have some leave planned over Easter so I am really looking forward to getting underway on lots more projects.

Take care and thanks for visiting.