embroidery

Blood-Stained Violet Embroidered White Victorian Night Dress from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla

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Click for larger version bloody / clean; click for the list of dolls.

So the server held up all right, but I’m still reeling from the Metafilter aftershocks. Usually I get about 400 unique visitors every day, and I was really excited when that turned into 500, late October when everyone was searching for Halloween stuff — how long will it take me to top 2,824?

Even if nothing will ever be as good again, life must go on. I’ve been thinking about all the audiobooks I listened to this year and never did a paperdoll outfit for — just off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen that offered fertile paperdolling grounds. So I think now that the year is coming to a close, it’s a good time to stop regretting the outfits that never were and start making them happen!

This is from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic 1872 vampire novel Carmilla, which isn’t as well known as Dracula but heavily influenced it. I listened to the Librivox version read by Elizabeth Klett a couple months back. Even though it was published so long ago I feel rather like I’m spoiling it, but in any case it’s no surprise that the Carmilla of the title is the vampire, preying on the sheltered and innocent Laura as well as just about everyone else in the town. In one scene she is portrayed as standing at the foot of Laura’s bed, “in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood.” As you know, I aim for accuracy in all things. (Brian said he could hardly stand looking at it…)

Now undoubtedly there are those of you out there thinking not “Poor, poor Laura, so near succumbing to the vampire Carmilla!” but instead thinking “Poor, poor night dress, so beautifully made and so sadly stained with Carmilla’s dinner!” Don’t worry, I’ve learned from my experience with the Good Queen. Look, through the magic of paperdolling you can wake up with Laura and be quite sure that it was all a bad dream…

I still haven’t finished my Halloween poll series. I fear that the nightshade fairy has quite an advantage, though…

poll by twiigs.com

Princess Garnet’s White Gown from Final Fantasy IX

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Brian finished Final Fantasy IX recently, and since I’ve always loved the gown that Garnet a.k.a. Dagger wears at the beginning and end of the game, I just had to paperdoll it. For cutting this one out, it ought to work to cut the sleeve around the ends, and then both arm and sleeve go above the skirt. I am tempted to do a “Fancy Gowns of Final Fantasy Games” series…

Once again, Verithin pencils to the rescue with those vines. I love those things.

Don’t forget to vote for the mermaid tail for next Monday:

more at twiigs.com…

5th Century AD Upper-Class Celtic Woman In Saffron and Green Léinte and Green Brat (for St. Patrick’s Day)

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Wikipedia says that “uncritical acceptance of the Annals of Ulster would imply that he [St. Patrick] lived from 373 to 493″ and for the purpose of paperdolling, I can be uncritical. This is my guess at what an upper-class Celtic woman might have worn during the time of St. Patrick. She wears a sleeveless saffron-dyed, heavily embroidered léine, which is a linen tunic, over another light green sleeved léine. At this point, the sleeves, if there were any, were long and straight; the larger sleeves that you might see at a Renaissance fair come later. The green fabric she wears as a cloak is called a brat, and it’s made of wool and edged with gold. She pins the brat with a white bronze penannular brooch, and she wears a woven leather belt.

I cannot say that this is entirely historically accurate; I’ve read about clothes from that time and done my best to make it so, but I’m no expert. I read a lot of great resources about clothing from this time period:

Ceara ni Neill’s Early Period Online
Paul Du Bois’ Book of Kells Images
Clothing of the Ancient Celts
Echna’s Celtic Clothing Page
Crafty Celts

Also, if you’re looking at the dress and thinking “Well, how would someone actually cut that out? Or were hand amputations common in the 5th century?” my advice would be to cut a line between the edge of the sleeve and the cloak and slip her hand through it. This is, of course, if you have already followed my advice (given somewhere…) to cut Sylvia’s hand away from her hip, so that dresses like Margaret Hale’s gown work better.

Brian told me I should have done something for Saint Urho. Maybe next year.