gwendolyngrey | Better the second time 'round (Reply)

The Siege at Old Ft. Erie was, like last year, a very good event, and unlike last year everyone had a good time and I did not get sick! Like all 1812 reenactments, the clothes were a wide range of good and very, very bad, with an astonishing lack of foundation garments on many ladies and a fair amount of 'frontier-ish' impressions. I got to meet several new people with whom I would love to become better acquainted, including

renna_darling. It was her first time at Ft. Erie, and I hope to run into her at future events!

Katie/

rvqavalon, Mike/

dandytailor, Tyler/

superiorcap and myself camped with our group, the 1st Reg. of Volunteers. The guys spent most of their time drilling and being in battles, but Katie and I mostly sat on blankets in the shade with other ladies and talked the day away.

Gazing over the landscape a la Lizzie Bennet:

I finished my new dress and chemisette in the car on the way there (naturally), and am really happy with how they turned out. I love the chemisette to bits, and don't think I can ever go back to a plain fichu for this period. It's roughly based on the 1800-1825 chemisette in Janet Arnold, but I have a double ruffle at the neck instead of the triple mushroom pleated frills of the original.

Also, we have decided that the fabric of my dress is actually a dark violet and not a brown. It's a tricky, shifty color that sometimes look brown or purple or blue... I suppose it's up to the viewer to decide what to call it, but I think I'm settling on violet. Speaking of the fabric, I was talking to one of the ladies I met this weekend, who said that she has an original dress from this period which is made out of a fabric almost exactly like that of my dress! She said the print of the original was perhaps a little smaller than mine, but that it was an uncanny resemblance. Considering I purchased this fabric quite a few years ago (before I knew much of anything), I was really pleased to hear that it's "right".

I was utterly exhausted come Saturday night, and knew that if I took my stays off I'd never put them back on the next morning. Accordingly, I slept that night in my clothes... dress, chemisette, and all! Woke up Sunday morning with my hair a fright, bright pink sunburn across my nose and arms, but otherwise not too rumpled.

Mike wasn't in bad shape for being at the tail end of an entire week of camping/reenacting (he and Tyler had had their own extended adventure), but I am clearly not as well put together as the day before: