totchipanda

By all things blessed and holy, there are events this fall! (wipes away happy tears) My local group is hosting the ball in September, and then my trip in November was planned specifically to coincide with another ball. The only thing I have made is one single dress that already needs to be fixed (the sleeves are in the wrong spot) and everything else was pre-panini so... I'm pretty much just going to start over.

First decision was: what gender do I want to present. I've been wanting to make menswear for myself for awhile, but I really don't mind womenswear when all the layers are needed, so I am leaning towards a dress.

Second decision: dress style. The Bridgerton show had not come out yet at my last ball so I am expecting A LOT MORE SHINY at these upcoming ones. I've done the long column look and I've done some round gowns, and given my new interest in dressing for my body type (theatrical romantic), I want to do a more 1790s transitional look, with a little lower of a waistline than directly under my boobs. (Someday an English court gown, with the side hoops because they are *so* ridiculous, but as my love pointed out, it would likely make dancing difficult lol.) So I am looking at a floofy floofy dress, most likely in white, with a coloured bodice, gown, or sommat over top. It will be FLOOFY and it will be LORG and probably very TALL with feathers (or perhaps not, I found a turban look with only two squiggles of hair at the front, which I could easily do with my natural hair) and hopefully SPARKLY. My only requirement is no train, because that DOES make dancing difficult.

Third decision: New stays! I've been wanting to do this for awhile anyway, so here we go. My last pair was made with Laughing Moon's pattern, which is excellent but as most things for me, too wide on the shoulder. No wait, lies, my last semi-regency pair was inspired by chocolatepot's Cherry Hill stays, which I mucked around with too much and they ended up being too small. And since these bits are all 5+ years old, I'm not even going to bother trying things on.

Options of which I own/have access to/are free:
Laughing Moon remake (long or short)
Cherry Hill remake/similar style drafted from a body block
Bernhardt stays
Corsets & Crinolines (Is there anything in here? IDK, I have access to it)
Saying heck with it and using a later prow-front stay, like Augusta.
I might still have the RH stays pattern kicking around (go ahead and laugh. I'll wait.)

Options I do not own:
There are many more options available now that were not available 5+ years ago, both for sale and for free, and they are easy to find. Go forth and behold.

Of the readily available options, I am most interested in the Bernhardt stays and redoing Cherry Hill. And potentially Augusta, especially if I can repurpose one of the pairs I already made. (If I can even find them.) (Yeah ok, that's not really an option right now.) I was thrilled to get a projector *specifically* for ease of scaling up the Bernhardt. Potentially... it's not the look I want for a 1790s dress.

Decisions 4-7 to make after stays are at least under way:
New shift? (Finish the ones I started which will need some work bc they are WAY too open in the neckline?)
Dress style + fabric + decorations
Over-item style + fabric
Hair and accessories

I think a month should be enough time to get the stays sorted out, so that's what I will work towards. Everything else will come after!

I was recommended to read A Woman Worth Ten Coppers by Morgan Howell in a rather roundabout way. Meaning, I was looking at Zutara fanart on a comm and someone had done cross-over art of Zuko and Katara as the main characters from the book. Intrigued but uncertain, I finally just bought it in Chapters' buy-3-get-the-4th-free sale and technically paid nothing for it. Woot.

Well damn. I'm totally hooked. I finished it last night. Hot damn, I thought, I need a sequel like whoa. It was getting to the good stuff! But I had an inkling that it would be a wait yet, as it only came out last year. Amazon has the sequel as coming out on October 27.

Whiiiiiiine. A: It's a long wait. B: October 27th? I can't read a novel that close to Nano! Anything I read in October flavours whatever I write in November! I was planning on writing a space opera which got changed (maybe) to a steampunk novel with a Klapperschlange and an epic chase scene through Badlands in the middle of a storm in which several men and regrettably many horses die during our hikes through Dinosaur National Park on the weekend. But if I read that novel four days before Nano? I'll wind up writing a fantasy (perhaps the sequel to my 2005 nano that I never finished).

So I whined to Debbie, and she said "well why not write a steampunk space opera fantasy?" And I thought about it for a second, and then figured, it worked for Treasure Planet...

Anyway, A Woman Worth Ten Coppers is a good read, and I have some planning to do.