An 18th century day at Suomenlinna, 2017

When it comes to historical events and travelling, the past three years have been busier for me than any of my previous years in the hobby before. It has been absolutely wonderful but it also meant that when I've been at home, I have been frantically preparing for a trip on my time off, which lead to the complete neglect of this blog. With the limited free time and energy available, I've chosen sewing over updating the blog. Also, in the past three years I've found, like so many of you, that Instagram has been a more convenient place for me to share my work and photos of events. However, I never wanted to give up on this blog either because I feel like having a more permanent place for my photos and I still want to write posts about my costumes every once in a while.

This post is about an event back in July 2017. I didn't plan to go to it because I found out about it just a couple of weeks before it took place. However, it was too fun an event to pass up, so I made a bit of an impromptu trip to Helsinki for a weekend.

The neat thing about this day was that we got to travel to Suomenlinna islands in proper 18th century style on an 18th century reproduction cannon sloop Diana! 

It may have been July but the weather made it seem more like September.

Some members of the Olde Militia of Helsinki and Nylands Karoliner.

The whole passenger group captured upon arrival to Suomenlinna. 

Once we got to Suomenlinna, we set up a picnic and played some pall-mall, as per usual. 

We also visited the commandant's house aka the Ehrensvärd museum, named after the founder of Suomenlinna sea fortress, Augustin Ehrensvärd, whose official residence the house was. The house was built in the 1750s and the interiors of the museum are furnished in 18th century style.

I had quickly sewn two new garments for the trip the week before; a red petticoat and a 1780s apron with ruffles.





However, Ehrensvärd actually didn't live in the house as he lived in a cottage (that no longer exists on the islands).

Augustin Ehrensvärd (1710-1772), c. 1770, presumably after J. H. Scheffel.

Ehrensvärd was the first to have a tiled oven in Helsinki. Sadly the first oven from mid 1750s was destroyed in a bombing during the Crimean war in 1855 so the ones that are in the museum today are not original to the building.

Augustin Ehrensvärd was not only a military officer and architect but also an artist. There are several of Ehrensvärd's ink drawings on display at the museum.

We also got to see a minuet dance performance and enjoy some harp music while we were in the museum.  

This was the first time Mia invited her sister to join us to an event. Aren't they adorable? :)

Portrait of Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt (1757-1814).

Afterwards we had lunch at the Café Piper. The weather had suddenly turned all summery so we played cards in the garden before heading home.

Pocket hoops and petticoats for 1760's and 1770's

When it comes to costume making, it's been really quiet over here for the last couple of months. To be honest, I've lost motivation for creating anything but I tend to have these periods every now and then and they usually pass in some time so no worries, I'm just about to get back to sewing any time soon. Plans and patterns have been made but nothing much else, except for a ruffly cap.  I also never got around to post pictures of my new pocket hoops and petticoats as promised after taking quick photos of them in December so I thought to post them up now - maybe blogging will give me the little boost of inspiration that I need to get back on sewing.

So, here we have the pocket hoops. I actually had pocket hoops before these, too, but since they were made a long time ago as I was just starting with 18th century and sewing in general, the pockets were terrible: they would clung to my thighs and were made out of a too sheer fabric which caused the ends of the hoop steel to tear the fabric even if I had rounded the edges. As you can imagine, they were really uncomfortable. Anyway, these are the new pocket hoops. 

 And then, the first petticoat. It turned out to be shorter than I intended but it does the job so I don't mind.

And second petticoat which was made a year ago from an earlier garment... It seems the beginning of this post is almost a repetition from the post linked. I didn't remember I had just the same motivation issue in January 2012...

And the next one would be the actual petticoat. I really like the width of these pocket hoops and the voluminousness they give to the petticoats. 

Completed 1760's stays

The 1760's stays were completed two weeks ago and now I finally got around to post them here on the blog. This project actually started out as I wanted to try out how fast I could make a pair of fully-boned stays. It took me two weeks to about 10 days to sew this pair which is my quickest so far. Though, I must admit I could have finished them in about half of that time or even less because I honestly couldn't help myself getting distracted by the internet. (There are so many lovely costume making blogs out there!) This pair is made out of two layers of cotton and lined in linen and all of the materials came from my stash , except the bias binding. 

 

Compared to the 1780's stays, these stays give you a much more straight profile at the front.

For the first time in long time I felt confident enough to bind the lacing holes by hand because I was sure of how the holes should be placed.

On the inside the seam allowances were whip-stitched down by hand.

I guess I'm starting to get used to binding the edges of stays as it's not as hard as it used to be. If you want your stays to be bound beautifully, I definitely recommend that your binding shouldn't be seen on the outside for more than 5 mm and that you start to bind the stays from the inside so you can control how it looks on the outside more easily.  Also, the narrower and the stretchier your binding tape is, the easier it is to attach to the stays without any problems. Besides, from what I've seen, I've noticed that the extant stays are mostly bound with really narrow tapes anyhow. I agree with Isis pointing out that most of the extant stays also seem to be square at the end of the tabs, rather than rounded. As said before, the square ends are much easier to bind than the rounded. I've noticed that really narrow tabs are also extremely hard to bind as well.

I lined the stays first before adding the binding around the edges. I just kind of prefer the neat, finished look of doing it this way. Plus, you don't have to bind every tab separately.

Now I'm finally starting to feel confident enough to make a pair of hand-sewn stays, hopefully in not-too-distant future... It has always felt like such a waste of time to me to sew stays by hand because I would end up disliking them anyway as I knew I didn't know enough to make a really good pair... Anyhow, the next post is going to be about other undergarments I made for 1760's costumes.