2016 Holiday Tea

This year's holiday team had a fairly wide open theme, and since I was tired and stressed, and I just wasn't in a mood for corsets or stays, I decided to go 20s. I have exactly one 20s dress (I need more!!) but I had bought a vintagey sweater and modified the belt to closer resemble the photo of 20s sweater jackets I had. Added a new hat from Etsy, and some Forever 21 glasses (thanks for the find, Judy!) that resemble ones worn by Miss Fisher, and my new Miss L Fire shoes that sorta go. I also made use of a brooch and a 20sish necklace from Sweet Romance. Everything was slightly not matchy, but I liked the end look. And the tea was really fun! It was at Tea on the Tiber at Ellicott City. The food was delicious (those cinnamon scones!!) and the company was great as always!

Here's the look I was going for - funny, I didn't realize the lady in the brown sweater was wearing a pink dress with black trim! :-)













Oh, and I wore my great-grandmother's watch from the nineteens:



Oh, the food! That lemon cake!



Scones! Fruit! Cheese!







Jess and Judy wore 20s too!



I loved Amanda's cheerful plaid dress!



Kristin brought her sweet new baby and hubby as well! It was little E's first costume event! At least outside the womb!







Ellicott City had pretty holiday lights:



Group pic:

Downton Abbey Exhibit - our costumes plus Winterthur grounds

So ages ago - was it May? (I am so behind) we had a group outing to see the Downton Abbey exhibit at Winterthur in Delaware. Everyone dressed in teens or 20s and we saw the exhibit, had a picnic, and then spent a bunch of time tromping around the gorgeous grounds in smaller groups. It was so much fun, the weather could not have been more perfect, and the company was also great.

For my dress, I had bought a couple of the 1-hour dress books to study since I know little about the 20s styles other than that 1) I like them and 2) I'm not convinced I have the right figure for them.

The fabrics mentioned in the 1 hour dress books included "flannel" - not being a 20s expert, I don't know (and even doubt?) that means the same thing as today's flannel... but hey, flannel can be soft and lightweight and I found some pretty pale pink striped stuff for cheap, so I decided to give it a try. I ended up using the wrong side of the fabric because it was not as strongly colored.

After following the 1 hour dress measurement system, I realized that the body of the dress was about 3 inches wide. So I threw out those directions and just used Jen Thompson's 1 hour dress blog as a guide and it worked perfectly. So consult the 1 hour book so you have an idea what they are doing and then use her more realistically scaled measurements. OR have SUPER wide fabric - then you'll be fine with the 1 hour measurements. http://www.festiveattyre.com/2014/01/downton-esque-1-hour-dress.html

You can see the results below, worn with a vintage cloche I got on ebay ages ago and that added a new lining to (to protect the original shattered one which is safely inside), my vintage Victorian jet necklace (probably glass?), and since they were good for early 20s as well as Edwardian, American Duchess shoes. I wore white stockings after googling 20s stocking colors and finding white represented there. I also used my Titanic "flying" replica bag I got ages ago from a seller that is no longer in business. And I also used a Chinese parasol I bought online a while ago.







Picture by and vintaged up by Isabella, taken in front of the backdrop provided by the museum


Amanda, doing a Lady Mary face










Picnicking!


Doug and Mike, Gloria's husband also came along in Muggle clothes to be sherpas and enjoy the weather.






Now that the picnicking is done, let's stroll the grounds, shall we?