firstbreathofwinter

[firstbreathofwinter]

Reblog if you’re polyamorous, support polyamorous people, or think polyamorous people and relationships are valid

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so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

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a world without trans people has never existed and never will

prints

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making a moodboard called "why i would die in a fantasy realm"

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‘The data speaks for itself’ is the biggest lie in academia. The data mumbles, and you must be its translator.

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with everything being what it's been this week i think it's important to state emphatically that my life is genuinely so much better for having trans people in it. my trans friends are some of the coolest kindest people around and I dread to think what kind of person I'd be without them. if you don't have any trans friends I hope you get the opportunity to make one or two or several and let them expand your world and I hope that you care for them in turn. I love you trans men I love you trans women I love you nonbinary friends you are all beautiful handsome radiant and cool

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I got inspired to make my girlfriend a lovely southern breakfast!

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true 2000′s nonsense was finding an amv with a cool song and revisiting the amv for the song instead of actually looking it up

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I'm itching to make another corset, so I start looking on etsy to find some nice patterns.

I almost bought one, but I start looking at the other patterns the seller offers and... wow... that looks kinda weird....

It's AI, it's all fucking AI. I almost bought that pattern.

So then I go down a rabbit hole and apparently the Etsy seller stole Aranea Black's patterns (that are free) and rebranded them with AI photos.

[firstbreathofwinter]

with everything being what it's been this week i think it's important to state emphatically that my life is genuinely so much better for having trans people in it. my trans friends are some of the coolest kindest people around and I dread to think what kind of person I'd be without them. if you don't have any trans friends I hope you get the opportunity to make one or two or several and let them expand your world and I hope that you care for them in turn. I love you trans men I love you trans women I love you nonbinary friends you are all beautiful handsome radiant and cool

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1915 Dress

Callot Soeurs

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I wrote this elsewhere for someone who was struggling to find information, and then realised it was probably relevant to many other people too, so I’ve expanded it a bit. Therefore I present;

Which boning do I want? A guide

Flat steel; flat steel flexes front and back, not side to side. Heaviest option. Pricy. Difficult to cut and finish (will tear holes in your project if you leave raw edges). Expect bolt cutters and a metal file, or faffing around with “tipping liquid” which may or may not be illegal to post in your country (Nail polish is only a temporary alternative in my experience). Will last a million years. Extremely robust shaping. If you want to hold up an entire garment on 3 bones; flat steel. DO NOT WASH (I’m not your real dad but also it does corrode eventually if you keep getting/leaving it wet)

Lot of people swear that even if you use different bones everywhere else, you want flat steel next to your eyelets. Personally; eh. This appears to be convention rather than based in solid evidence (bunch of extant Victorian corsets don’t have steel by the eyelets, some do, a lot we don’t actually know). Go with your heart and your wallet, especially for special occasion pieces

Spiral steel: flexes side to side as well as front to back. Lighter than flats (in theory). Pretty robust and long lived. Easier to cut than flat (still metal, still bolt cutters), but made of wire, basically, so you have to buy metal end caps and fit every single one with pliers. Cheaper than flat steel. Generally agreed to be more comfortable than flat steel but again. Still metal. DO NOT WASH NO REALLY I MEAN IT THIS TIME this stuff loves corrosion

A lot of modern corsets are a mix of flat and spiral and they will tell you that’s for flexibility but it’s usually for budget

Zip ties: cheap and they work, pretty much, but mainly cheap, extremely variable in thickness/size/flexibility, did I mention cheap? Don’t buy random ones online; you want to handle them and be sure they’re the size/rigidity you’re after (or even just feel good about. Some zip ties are incredibly flimsy. Heavy duty ones tend to also be thicc). Generally washable, but with highly variable results

Rigilene/other generic plastic boning: wafers of flimsy plastic. Surprisingly expensive and won’t hold up to a stiff breeze. Disappointment city. Washing sometimes also kills it? When people whine about plastic boning, this is what they’re thinking of

“Synthetic whalebone”: really fancy plastic. Consistent width/thickness/rigidity. Several options of width usually. Very light. Good balance of support and flexibility. Can cut with heavy duty scissors and finish with a nail file. Mouldable with heat. You gotta buy a lot at once, but not ultimately expensive in comparable amounts (big rolls, per metre, more cost effective than heavy duty zip ties; but are you gonna use 50 metres of boning?). Washable in a way steel just isn’t; must warn you that the whole “mouldable with heat” thing also means “very occasionally the tumble dryer kills one of my kirtles and I have to dig out a bone and replace it”

Synthetic whalebone means adjusting the way you think about boning a bit; one bone is not as strong as a flat steel. That doesn’t mean (as I’ve seen some people say) you can’t use synthetic whalebone if you’re fat; it means you’re going to want two, three or four bones side by side to do the same job. This is exactly what people did with real whalebone (good lord if you’re making 18th century stays or equivalent don’t use steel, it’ll be so heavy and uncomfortable). You can even put two bones in the same channel stacked on top of each other if you make it big enough. You tend to use more of it than you would steel, but it still usually works out cheaper - the “extra boning” channels thing only really comes into play for aesthetics (it is COMPLETELY FINE to pick the more expensive and difficult option for aesthetics and anyone who tells you otherwise is a coward)

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I bought a quarterly needlepoint magazine from 1991 today for $1 at an op shop, and there’s a four page spread about a woman who completely faithfully remakes samplers from the 1600s and the part that blows me away is that she was keeping women in history alive.

The original sampler maker was a teenaged girl called Loara she’s the only one known of seven siblings in that family. She was born approximately 1632 and had passed before her father had in 1656 which they know because it was mentioned in his will.

So in the 1630-40s a girl made a sampler, in 1991 a woman had put in years of research before recreating the sampler as Loara had 350 years earlier , and I’m reading about it in 2024.

Embroidery keeps women alive in history, and it’s part of why I love samplers so much.

Here’s a quote from samplers that I think about often:

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Medieval Bathing Dress

Alright y'all, here's another finished project update! This is my medieval bathing dress, which I wore under my Ren faire costume. I absolutely love this dress, but it’s practically impossible to get in and out of quickly (especially by myself) and I really wanted this to be a lounge around the house kind of dress. So while I adore it, I might have to take it apart for some modifications if I can’t find a workaround. I have a few ideas I want to experiment with first, but unfortunately, I think it’s going to need to go back to the worktable.

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Just sharing the outfit I wore to renfair a few months ago

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Bern face reveal? Never. Bern hand stitched 1880s corset reveal? Yes.