gallery

It’s been a weekend for contemplating clothing. I tried on the kirtle from Kentwell last night, and think either I’d have to lose a bit more weight, or give up breathing for a week 🙁 Tried it on Big today and it looks rather more manageable, so will have to discuss with Katy whether to adjust it for Big, or adjust it for me, or go back to the drawing board completely.

Lots of reading of costume notes today, and perusing of accessory and costume websites this evening. This I might buy a copy of The Tudor Tailor to assist, I can’t quite get my head around how to get started. Also been looking into fabric sources – we need unbleached linen (apparently Ikea is a good source, shame there isn’t one anywhere around here!) and then wools in muted colours. The local fabric shop might do some of what we need, difficult to tell given their utterly disastrous website. Will actually have to go down and talk to them I suspect.

Going to have to buy shoes I think, really don’t think that I can make them. So that will set us back over £100. This is turning into a fairly expensive history lesson! Still, talking about the expense is a lesson in itself, and discussing how the Tudors would really have managed. It occurred to me that many of the Kentwell costumes that I’ve seen so far are too pristine. They would have been let out, adjusted, handed down, patched – families would not have been able to outfit everyone in new clothes from scratch all the time.

As a break from Kentwell ponderings, Big and I went off to the local art gallery for a private viewing before their new exhibition opens on Tuesday. I’m not entirely sure how we’ve made it on to the invitation only list, but I’m not complaining. It’s rather nice to go along, and today we got to meet the artist/designer/illustrator Sonya Todd, who is the focus of the current exhibition. It was rather fascinating actually – she worked in fashion design in the 1960s, and the prints and illustrations as well as the clothes on show were utterly of that era. I particularly enjoyed the double spread of pics of fashions for Purdy. Think Tim missed out on that one 😉

Quiet afternoon as we’re all tired here. In fact I have no idea why I’m still up, other than that I’ve been pottering about on twitter and randomly commenting on other ppl’s Silent Sunday posts. And responding to comments on mine. All good though.

And the evening involved the obligatory trip to the leisure centre. Big wasn’t sure she could last the whole evening, so instead of dropping and running as I usually do on Sundays, I stopped with Smallest, having popped baked potatoes in the oven for tea, and got to have a lovely chat with another swim club mum. She’s from the North East too, just like Sonya Todd is, so I got my fix of proper accents twice in one day 😉