Monday, March 31

Pardon, my slip is showing

Ooh, the excitment is building around here.

Not only did Momma finish my LepreCon outfit (complete with matching petticoat and lobster tail bustle) but she is finishing a second to sell in her Etsy shop, Greta Garb-oh!, this week!

Yes, you too can dress like me! Momma plans to make two of each outfit she makes for me (or my Vinyl American siblings) and sell the second on Etsy.

The Thimbles and Acorns description for both the 1870s Bustle Dress and Lobster Tail Bustle and Petticoat are the same:

Fashion is where expression meets practicality and lures it into the realm of the extreme. Though fashion trends have a tendency to push the limits, practicality always manages to bring them back into balance… at least for a time. Full skirts were the hallmark of the early Victorian era and by the 1860s they had expanded to as wide as six feet in diameter.

However, as railroads began forging paths around the world, women began to travel more and more. Full skirts and crinolines made for poor traveling companions and the boundary for this fashion trend had been reached. Still, it would be a gallant exit.

 The 1870s saw a great boom in the textile industry. Hand looms were replaced by more efficient steam driven power looms which resulted in a larger supply of cloth and fancy trims at greatly reduced prices. The great cage crinolines were shed and the surplus fabric from the full skirts was draped in elaborately decorated layers and pulled toward the back in large bustles that were reminiscent of those worn a century earlier. The fashionable silhouette had become smaller and more mobile, but what was lost in size was more than made up for with the elaborate trimming which would become the hallmark of the later Victorian Era.

Momma used the green Victorian Dream Gears and tea-stained muslin. She deliberalty left the petticoat longer than the shortened bustle skirt so the raw, selvage would show. Momma plans to make me a matching camisole and drawers, too!

I think it's pretty awesome, myself.

 


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