Interview

I did a fun interview with Carbon Costume, a site whose theme is "Famous outfits made from everyday gear" - if you'd like to check it out, it's here:

http://carboncostume.com/interview-with-maggie-from-costumers-guide/

I talk about how I got into costuming and started my websites, Mad Men, the origin story of the "You don't have the buns to be Princess Leia" meme, and more!

Enjoy!

Ball-jointed sized 18th century muff

After making an 18th century muff for myself, my mom suggested I try making a doll-sized one.  So that's what I did today - I already had some smaller silk printed portraits from spoonflower (I got them when I got the bigger ones, to play with using them for pins.) and I still had just enough tiny sequins left. The green ribbon is vintage (which actually ended up being a problem because it broke when tried to use it as a drawstring. So I had to redo it more carefully.

Here's the result.  The first picture shows the tiny muff next to my big one and the second shows it being held by one of my ball-jointed dolls:

Time for another jewelry round-up

I scored two more Maggie Victorian name pins off ebay, coincidentally off the same seller:

I really like the first one - it's different than anything else I have. It's actually really small and pretty, and I was really pleased with it.  Pics are from the ebay auctions.

I got this paste silver heart a little while ago from one of my favorite sellers, Mary Fine. It's really pretty and I wear it a lot.

Another muff cover

I made another one - this one out of a piece of slubby blue dupioni I had.  It's too slubby to do much with, but I thought I'd try a muff cover with it.  On this one I used real pearls, and more flat sequins. Silver this time.  Plus some small flowers and blue silk ribbon.  Everything came from the stash, except the portrait, which was printed at Spoonflower on silk.

I once again followed Katherine's directions - you can see links on my original muff/cover page:
http://costumersguide.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-muff-and-cover.html

A muff and cover

Katherine put together these awesome tutorials and I followed them to make my own muff and cover.  I have to say that making the covers is pretty satisfying since you can make them relatively quickly.

Like Katherine, I uploaded a portrait to Spoonflower and had it printed on silk.  I actually was able to have the portrait tile so that I was able to get more than one on a single test swatch.

This project was also great because I managed to use things from my stash, which included muslin, cotton batting I had leftover (and I had to pull it all apart because it was flat and not the loose stuff), cream dupioni, flat gold sequins, and cream silk satin ribbon. 

The portrait I used is one of my favorite portraits, "Portrait of Mrs Russell nee Cox 1781" by John Smart. (Larger version and more detail here.)

Here are Katherine's tutorial links:

Muff base: http://koshka-the-cat.blogspot.com/2013/01/an-18th-century-muff-base-tutorial.html
Muff Cover: http://koshka-the-cat.blogspot.com/2013/01/an-18th-century-muff-cover-tutorial.html
Decorating the Cover: http://koshka-the-cat.blogspot.com/2013/01/another-muff-cover-mini-tutorial.html

And here's how mine turned out. It's not perfect, but I like it! And I want to do another!

I actually later upgraded to one of The Lady Detalle's muffs, because she makes really down ones for a totally reasonable price, especially for the amount of work they take to make. It's way nicer than my polyfilled one! https://www.etsy.com/shop/theladydetalle

For my own future reference, this muff cover is 13.5"x 25".

The cover before decoration: