Late 1780's Photoshoot

As usual, I'm rather late posting this. This photoshoot happened in mid October and it's already December. The weather is now cold and snowy, and I really wish it was still October. October is the very best month, at least in this province.

(Link to the coat construction post) (Link to the waistcoat construction post) Just putting those up top here so they're easy to find.

I was rather disappointed with the autumn scenery that ended up in the background of these photos, so I've sprinkled in some better autumn colours that I photographed in October of 2017.

We always have good autumn leaves, but 2017 was really good.

All the photos of me were taken by my mother. I was staying with my uncle for the weekend, so some of the pictures are taken by the lake he lives next to, and some are by an old church and a cemetery a little ways up the road.

The cemetery near the lake, with some excellent yellow maple leaves.

A completely different cemetery, in town, with some excellent reds and oranges

I'm wearing the black & white coat, and the yellow striped waistcoat that I made this year. I'm also wearing a linen shirt and grey wool breeches, both of which I made last year and have since altered.

The breeches were much too long, and too loose at the knee, so I shortened them by two whole button spaces and tapered them in a bit more. They fit much more snugly now, as they should, and they don't have all those horrible wrinkles at the knee! I also re-did the kneeband correctly, because I had put it together in a very bad and confused way the first time. That makes these my only good pair of breeches.

For the shirt I removed the too-thick ruffles, removed the front facing, cut the slit a bit longer and hemmed it, and added fine ruffles of cotton book muslin. I'll write more about these alterations in a later post.

My stockings are O Woolies from Sock Dreams, shoes are Hamiltons from American Duchess, and the watch chain is one I put together with a bracelet, a fake jewel thingy, and a couple of tassels.

In some pictures you can also see the beautiful but unfortunately crappy quality striped gloves I made last year, which are torn badly on one cuff and are only fit to use as props. In a few of them I'm also carrying the cocked hat I made in 2017, which is not terrible, but could use some re-working.

I think my hair turned out pretty good! I was aiming for a late 1780's look, like this, this, or this.
I still haven't had much practice with hair, so it took a long time and I had to re-do a lot of bits, but it's much better than my other attempts at 1780's hair. I wish I'd worn my queue bag instead of just braiding the back section, but oh well.

Unedited photo of some VERY red leaves!

Doing the "young officer in a zebra coat" pose.

I love my new shoes. One of the nice things about resolving to not buy fabric this year has been being able to spend the would-be-fabric-money on non-fabric things, such as shoes and reference books.

My yellow waistcoat looks so dull compared to those leaves!

This is a river that's nowhere near the lake, but you can pretend it's the lake if you want to.

I still don't have a pocket watch. That chain is safety pinned to the welt on my breeches pocket.
But shh, nobody can see it so it's ok.

That fenced bit is part of an enclosure that houses several pigs,
which belong to the IT guy from my college.

Me picking a small apple.

And making a face after tasting the small apple.
It wasn't sour, it was actually a pretty decent apple, I just make weird faces a lot.

It seems that I'm finishing this post with the sillier photos, so here's one of me looking at a small caterpillar.

You can't see it in the photo but it's there.

 And then placing my finger near the small caterpillar to see if it would crawl on my finger.

It did not.