Eyelet progress (a year later)

I'm working on Regency stays. I did not want to share the progress, because I had no idea whether the process was right or not (and did not want to baffle other beginner seamstresses with my unconventional method). Now it seems the process was right, more or less (although it's still possible that the cording will totally mess with it and it will turn out not to be right in the end). So I'll share a bit.

I'll share the eyelets I've made so far, because I've witnessed a strange phenomenon there.

A year ago, I made my first eyelet.


Not bad for a first eyelet, I thought, and then I had other things to do and the stays got stoved away and I didn't get back to them until a year later.

A year later, I made another eyelet.

Which looked like this:

So I went on and made two others. Which looked like this:

I wonder what happened in that year to account for picture-perfect eyelets. It certainly wasn't eyelet-making.

The Baltics 2011: Tallinn, part 2

Back to Tallinn!


I've seen a house with a hook/pulley like this before, in Riga. Both Tallinn and Riga used to be Hanseatic cities. I assume it has something to do with that, with trade.


This one's from 1627.


And it's actually the town hall!



Some houses on the town square...







The town square and the surrounding streets reminded me a lot of the Old Town in Prague - with its amount of tourists and tourist-oriented shops and venues. It's certainly beautiful, but you cannot really enjoy it. It somehow feels a bit fake already. Fortunately, that's really just a small number of streets in Tallinn. There are tourists everywhere in the old town, but most of it is still more or less real, which is also evidenced in the number of shops that are still designated mostly in Estonian.



One of the museums I had no time for.



So at least I photographed it, and took the Edwardian lady out of the photo for you to enjoy.





It was sunny. Not exactly hot, but I was hot - it was cold in Latvia that morning, and I was wearing black corduroy trousers: not exactly an item of clothing known for its suitability for sunny weather.
So when I found this little courtyard with a church inside (the St. Peter and Paul church), I was glad. I went in, and there were benches, so I sat down, and drank and ate, and rested a bit.
There was a wedding in the church, so I did not go inside the church (although other tourists did). I just sat there and photographed in the courtyard.















There was a walkway running along the old city walls. I din't figure out how to get there, and didn't exactly mind.


Next: Just more of Tallinn. Perhaps some flowers?

Grande ASSIETTE in modern designer wear

First, let me apologise for using the wrong word in the term until now. I'm going to correct it retroactively. Apparently, aissette means adze. That's not what we're talking about here. Sorry. I really don't speak any French and my linguistic common sense did not steer me in the right way here.

So this is grande ASSIETTE.

It's one of the main reasons why I'm talking about it now that all of you want to see more of Tallinn... right? If you don't like having the series interrupted, you can always just click on the "The Baltics 2011" label and see only them. Otherwise, I'm going to assume that if you visit a blog designated "dress diaries", you like seeing dresses. :-)


Second, I'm not featuring designer clothes prominently. Other people and their blogs are shaped out for doing exactly that; I'm not. Not too long ago, I didn't know many designers. Almost none. Now that I'm part of the online sewing community, I know of more designers than I ever thought possible, but I'm still not following fashion; I think it's a waste of time. I'm just stumbling upon it every now and then.

But when I see a designer's work very obviously and out-spokenly inspired by historical fashions, and not by their extremes (many designers do that, it seems), but rather by their subtle beauty, I cannot stay quiet.
That designer in question is Thierry Colson. I don't know much about him (just what I've discovered yesterday while browsing his site), and I do not desire to buy his clothes - if nothing else, a lot of them are too indecent for my liking (so if you don't like that, proceed to his site with caution). But the construction... ah, that's pure joy!

In particular, the Antoinette dress. That's just... wow. Everything I love about Regency turned into a modern dress.

Skirt gathered/pleated in the back? Check. Bodice shorter in the back, with a cute and statuesque curve? Check. Grande assiette? CHECK.

Grecian influences: Check.

Fun fabrics: Check.

All photos except the last one come from Thierry Colson's website. The last one is from Al Ostoura.com, an Arab site that sells designer clothing. Their zoom is priceless for a poking hobby seamstress.

This really must be the best reinterpretation of Regency I've seen so far. True to the original, yet making it work in today's setting. That's what I would love to do myself.

The Baltics 2011: Tallinn, part 1

Did I say one or two posts on Tallinn? What was I thinking?! I practically filled a memory card with photos in one afternoon in Tallinn! (Albeit it was only a 1 GB card. But still.)

Tallinn is a place I had wanted to visit for a long time; ever since my sister first went there, which might have been ten years ago, I don’t remember anymore.
Well, now the dream has come true. Enriched by my new knowledge of the basics of Estonian, so I was able to buy myself a glass of apple juice. For buying something to eat, I still had to employ some English... :P But I could understand the signs quite well, which was nice.

I arrived to Tallinn some time after noon; in the evening I was to meet more of the people from the camp. So I had an afternoon by myself in the city I've long wanted to visit. I only had time for the Old Town, and not all of it - no time for museums or anything like that. Still, I saw a lot and took loads of photos. So, no, it won't be two posts. It will be much more.

This is still outside the Old Town, on the way from the bus station. This church is, if I remember correctly, on Liivalaia. The house below is in a small street next to Liivalaia. I think. It's standing next to a huge, modern hotel.





This is the Opera. Or theatre, or both. It's impossible to get a nice photo of it, because there's a rather busy street, with trams and buses, in front of it. And a parking lot, and street lamps. I think it's a law of the universe that if there's a landmark in a city centre with lots of room in front of it, there will be a busy street. See the National Museum in Prague, or, for that matter, Louvre.



A house designed by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, conveniently designated as Saarineni maja.



Entering the Old Town.





This could be quite romantic in the evening...



Niguliste kirik. (Kirik is church. I have no idea what Niguliste is, other than it's also a street running next to it.)





There's a sort of park underneath the church, with benches and sunbeds. Estonian summer may only come on Friday (that comes from a joke my sister told me ;-), but when it comes, the Estonians certainly know how to make the best of it. When I was in Estonia, it happened to be really summer. Even too hot at times (while there was 12 degrees Celsius in Prague when father was leaving. Speak of travelling to the North!)







Still Niguliste kirik...











One of the ways the Baltic nations enjoy their summer is through flowers.



And first hints of what was to become my photographic obsession in Estonia: colourful panel doors.





Next: the town square with the town hall and a nice quiet corner.