Hello all, dear, dear people on this list! I don't know if _anyone_ will remember me. I joined h-costume in 1996 and have actually been on it ever since. When Eric Praetzel needed the 1997 archives for his archive page at http://sca.uwaterloo.ca/~fashion/, I supplied them... so that's me, just for reference.
I lived in Berlin, Germany at the time, and it's now over 5 years ago that I announced that I was going to become a h-costume member from Melbourne, Australia. ... and that I have been since then... but I've been silent. Now, I guess I'll have to explain why! As the archives were online along with my old e-mail address (which was barbara at math dot tu dash berlin dot de), the address was soon pretty much useless. It got harvested by e-mail address collectors and I suspect it became part of a virus kit, because it obviously became the nominal (fake) sender address of virus e-mails that I, needless to say, never sent (reading my e-mail mostly with a text-based interface on unix-like systems). I used to have a pretty clear picture at that time what viruses where currently around, from the number of 'reply' e-mails that I got that an e-mail of 'mine' (that I had never sent) had contained a virus. So, I've been reluctant to post since then. In fact, this is my special 'h-costume' mailing address now. Now I'm back and I'm happy to read so many familiar names, still! I believe I have only met one member of this list in person -- Bjarne, we once sat together in a cafe in Kopenhagen. You showed me pictures of your embroidery and I showed you pictures of someone else's embroidery (namely that of the gold embroderers of Buchara, Uzbekistan). So now, I live in Melbourne, Australia, and a move across countries like this does have its difficulties, it can also limit one's creativity a bit. But September was costuming month. My daughter's school turned 120 years, and the kids were supposed to dress up "old-fashioned". The school gave some hints on how to do that, and I browsed my 1887 dress pattern catalogues and found the hints were all wrong. In fact, I had a hard time finding an 1887s 7 y.o. girl's costume that would clearly stand out as 'old-fashioned' and could not have been worn today as well, at least by little girls. Knee-length skirts and ruffles never went away for girls, I believe. In the end, I tried to make a costume a bit like Alice's in the original illustrations of "Through the Looking Glass", in particular a "dress apron" which I am really proud of, after instructions from the "Workwoman's Guide, by a Lady". (Okay okay -- that's 1838, but Alice wears one!) (And she is from 1865, I know -- but at least that way you can tell that it's an 'old-fashioned' costume!) Then, only a few days later, my church staged an event where we all dressed up as people from the 16th century and all travelled from our church to the Immigration Museum, where a 'German Fest' was on and one of us, as 'Martin Luther', nailed '95 theses' to a door which we had supplied ourselves. (The idea was that the other visitors were invited to afterwards write down their own theses on 'what does the church need today?' and nail them to the same wall.) At least of that event, I can point to a few photos: at http://www.kirche.org.au/index.php?id=104. Now, I'm ashamed to have to say... I still don't own a dressmaker's dummy and doubt I'll ever find one that's adjustable to my size. But if I had one... I wish I already knew what would be on there. I will be getting married. Yes, and for the very first time in my life. I already have a daughter and am getting married for the very first time in my life! And it relly feels like The big event that I have been waiting for! The relationship with her father went to pieces, but now I have met this wonderful, chaotic, intelligent, lazy, lovable guy who is actually saying he wants to stay with me for the rest of his life! We will have one (formal) marriage celebration in Germany and one (religious one) here. And it's approaching way too fast. The date is early January, and I also work full time and have a lot of other commitments. In fact, I feel like I want to retreat and do nothing else for the next three months than prepare the party. And the biggest question is, what will we wear? He does live-acting role play, has seen the costumes I make and has now made up his mind that he will want to get married in an 1830s suit. Now, I have never made something like that, and his idea on that is also very vague, so I'm looking for patterns now. Where can I get patterns for an elegant 1830s mens' suit? And for myself? Before the idea of a wedding in historical costumes came up, I had already fallen in love with burda pattern 8199 (http://www.burdamode.com/Brautmode,1270778-1128998-1005430-1157072,deDE.html; or, with English text: http://www.fjoelner.dk/vismonster.asp?vare=6834&la=uk&uart=167) which to my eyes seems delightfully eclectic and for that very reason not historic, but modern. I see 'medieval' in it (sleeves), 'modern' (bare shoulders) and '1930s' (slim, straight line)... any more opinions? But how will that match an 1830s mens' suit? But I'm not going to make something 1830s for myself -- for fun, yes, not for my wedding. Not one of those huge hoop skirts. Impossible to dance a waltz in that. Or a tango. Dancing is a big thing for both of us. So I'm still not quite sure about my own dress and am still looking for inspiration. It's customary that the bridegroom cannot see the bride's dress before the wedding, so I even have to do all of this secretly! Okay, please forgive my long post. It's great to be back. Barbara -_- Maren _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
