August 2025 – The Quintessential Clothes Pen

There were a few more lovely photos from my day at Roseland Cottage wearing my 1794 dress and playing croquet that didn’t really fit into the other posts I’ve written recently. So here is a short post focused on just a few more moments that are fun for me to pause and remember. I hope you enjoy them, too!

First, setting the scene for croquet on the lawn at Roseland Cottage! You can see more views of the actual house in this past post.

Next, it was lunch time! I arrived ready to go from the neck up, but with modern clothes below. It was silly. I was, and am still, amused! We set up a picnic lunch on the edge of the woodshed.

The other side of the woodshed is very picturesque as it stands amongst the grass and even has a dovecote included!

Not far from croquet, I took this close-up of one of the pine trees along the entry walk, which enticed me with its shade. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the adorable little pinecones starting to form like little teardrops. I love the blue-green color, the overlapping shapes, and the tiny size!

Beautiful foliage was everywhere one looked! It was simply impossible to resist encouraging a friend in a beautiful pink flowered gown to pose with the carpet of pink blossoms under what I think is a rhododendron bush. The breeze fluttered her bonnet ribbons in just the right way!

Moving farther along the property, I was drawn in by the architectural shapes and vibrant pinks in this planter. The trailing white blossoms remind me of strawberry flowers and leaves. And I am always intrigued by plants with interesting and unusual upright shapes.

Finally, there was a another stand of pine trees creating an area both quiet underfoot and also a bit playful. It was just the thing to wander amongst for photos!

There aren’t too many days of summer left here, so I am doing my best to enjoy them while they last and relish the summer memories. I hope you are able to do the same!

Back in October 2024, I posted about the inspiration and construction details of a freshly completed 1794 dress (you can view that past post here). At the time, I promised myself that I would figure out how to get my hair to look vaguely 1790s and find a fun opportunity to wear the dress and get photos!

Every few months after finishing the dress, I found the inspiration needed for a trial to figure out how to get my small-diameter-curly hair to look remotely like the billowing-larger-scale curls found in 1790s fashion plates. Of course, one could wear a wig… but I really enjoy using my own hair for these things! It’s a fun challenge, I think.

My first trial attempt was unsuccessful in the overall look, but I learned that curling iron curls didn’t look so far off as to be implausible. My second trial attempt taught me that the 1790s organza cap I made (finished even earlier, in 2023, and which you can read all about here, in a past post) that was intended for this outfit looked silly when perched directly on my head. It really, really needed volume so it appeared to be floating on my hair. Enter, a giant bun form. (The same bun form, in fact, that makes up the biggest part of my hair support for giant 1770s hair in this past post.)

See? The cap isn’t really on my head at all. It’s just floating on my hair. Aside from curling all of my hair, the only other part of creating this hairstyle was to artfully pin the curls up to make them elegantly descend from the cap on every side.

With this dress, I wore the foundations of the 1790s ensemble I’ve been putting together for the last few years. This included my entirely hand sewn c. 1785 Stays of Success and 1790s Petticoat & Bum Pad. Also finished in 2023 and 2024, this was the first real outing for the stays, which you can read all about in this past post, and for the petticoat and bum pad, which you can read all about in this past post.

The whole ensembles is super comfortable! The stays are, in fact, a success! And the layers, with their generously gathered skirts, are full of movement. The ruffles add a bit of fun. And the front closures on the petticoat and dress are definitely easy to use!

The only difficulty of wearing this dress came from the hem that just brushes the ground. Wearing it outside meant that it collected twigs, pine needs, and leaves that I was constantly removing. Not to mention the fact that the layers attracted multiple stinging bee-like creatures to get stuck between them! Ack! Luckily, kind people around me helped me separate the layers enough to let the winged creatures free, and not a single person was stung! Whew!

Perhaps this ensemble is better suited to a marble-floored walkway, but… it was breezy, and cool, and elegant to wear outside (when one ignored the bits of nature stuck in the hem ruffle!).