A late 1780s wool riding habit.
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09/14/2012
I've wanted an 18th century riding habit for as long as I can remember (my childhood obsession with Felicitiy's riding habit being mostly to blame), and it’s been on my costuming bucket list for far too long. Since I will be visiting Williamsburg in the early spring rather than the brutally hot summer this year, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally make one!
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11/05/2012
Did you think I’d forgotten about my riding habit? I promise I haven’t, but lately I’ve been suffering from a severe case of CADD (Costuming ADD), jumping from project to project like a spastic puppy. However, despite my lack of focus, I have managed to finish the petticoat.
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12/13/2012
While waiting for the regency stays and card party dress fabric to arrive, I’ve been plugging away on my riding habit; this time tackling the waistcoat.
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12/18/2012
Since my current sewing progress is rather boring (new shifts are not exactly thrilling blog material), I thought I would share some of my most recent accessory finds. You know one of my favorite parts of costuming is spending hours on eBay and Etsy searching for just the right thing to complete my outfit. I can’t help it. It’s an addiction.
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03/20/2013
With less than a week until I leave for Williamsburg, I'm happy to say the bulk of my sewing is finished! The habit shirt and jacket are both wearable (though lacking buttonholes), and while the jacket is far from perfect, I'm not disappointed with my first attempts at tailoring. As you can tell, my final designed morphed from early to mid 1780s to very definitely late 1780s early 1790s. When I'm pressed for time, I dont fight the fabric, I just let it do the talking. I plan some more detailed construction posts later, but for now I have a few photos to share.
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04/05/2013
Here is the first in a long serious of Williamsburg outfit posts. I'm sure you will be sick to death of seeing me by the end - sorry in advance! To start we have the finished 1790 riding habit:
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04/16/2013
As promised, here is a little more construction detail about my riding habit jacket. Unfortunately, since I was in a rush I took almost no construction pictures, so I hope my rambling description makes sense.
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05/07/2013
When it came time to construct something to wear underneath my riding habit jacket, I admit I was a bit stumped. There just isn’t that much information out there to the casual researcher about what exactly was going on beneath those habit jackets. Finally, I settled on the idea of a separate shirt to wear over my corset and shift but under the waistcoat like a man’s shirt.
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08/09/2013
And I'm back! I had a lovely time, as usual, at Costume College this year. It was so nice to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. I really tried to overcome my shyness this year and one of the best parts of the weekend for me was chatting with lots of different costumers and getting to know them a little better. I hope to do even better next year!
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08/20/2013
When I was preping for Costume College, I came to the realization that there was no way my riding habit hat would fit in my suitcase. I certainly didn't want to crush it and wearing it on the plane really isnt something I'm willing to do (for many reasons), so I stole was inspired by Jen Thompson's idea of making one of those fluffy cap/turban things you see so often in the late 18th century to wear with my habit. I went for a simple, undecorated look like these two portraits:
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