Versailles Stories – BBC 4

I am just watching this programme about Versailles, specifically fundraising for the restoration of the Petit Trianon.  Check it out on BBCi Player to enjoy the swoon-worthy views and information on everyone’s favourite Queen of France.

One of their ideas is to recreate Marie Antoinette’s perfume – what a great idea!  Fingers crossed they’ll raise the necessary money so that visitors can at last enter the Petit Trianon …

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Shift – Quick Update

In bed watching Marie Antoinette while I start sewing my shift. I’ve only done the gores on one sleeve so far, but I didn’t start ’till gone midnight. It’s too little to be worth taking a photo of, so here’s a pretty picture from the film instead:

EDIT: Oh, and I did notice that the shifts Kirsten Dunst wears in the film are pretty big, so maybe my original cut wasn’t so bad.  Still, I think I’d rather have something a little smaller.

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Marie Antoinette, Queen of the Zombies

While trying to work out how much fabric I needed, I decided to sketch up my costume to show the changes I’m making to the trims of the original pattern.  Mostly I’m just changing attached lace and floral trim for self-trims and making the flounces more accurate – in the pattern they’re the same length all the way around, whereas I’m putting in a little bit of overlap so they’re longer at the bottom and shorter at the top, more 18th Century-esque.

Anyway, here’s my little sketch, v quickly coloured in Photoshop:

The fancy dress shop in town sells really cheap fans, so I’ll get one of those and try glueing fabric to the paper – I know it won’t close very well as it’ll be thicker, but it’s only a quick and cheap job for one night… Having said that, if the dress doesn’t take me too long, I might use it as an excuse to make a nice fan, which is on my To Make List…

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