Timely Bday Present!

Well, I honestly cannot believe this! This year hubby had to chase me -literally- because I was not sure of wanting a gift. I had some ideas in mind but I didn't want to buy anything or spend money. After some convincing arguments from him, I caved in.

This gift is a book about period clothing, of which I hope to get the other volumes too! It has patterns, but most of all, it teaches about construction, where to measure and so on. And I have so many ideas and projects of period clothing for my dolls. I actually found this book through a girl on the Discord BJD server!

I have some things I want to share of it, and Cookie is helping me! There are several anecdotes and interesting stuff after the cut. And more photos!

Okay, so we got the book from an UK Amazon store, since USA stores do not ship to my country. I got a new copy of the 1980's edition. So, I settled to wait. The bookstore did not gave me a tracking number, despise us paying for one, and when we contacted them they told us the carrier had not provided one. So here I was refreshing the Amazon page in hope for a tracking, when on August 4th the postal guy appears at my house with the book. No fees, no custom, no double shipping cost.

What the actual fuck? It turns out, the book is very thin and the bookstore marked it as "documents" instead of "books". So it got handled by the postal service instead of customs, and arrived directly at home! Books are in theory except of the 50% custom fee, but we still need to pay the local shipping cost (meaning: we always need to pay local postal to deliver the package *facepalm*). But because the book gor marked as a document, and was thin and big enough to pass for one, it when into normal postal service!! WIN-WIN.

Okay, so on the intro there is that lovely sketch (apparently is from a period magazine) and I couldn't stop imagining that they are discussing about a BJD fullset. Also, on the Introduction and when talking about her aims for this book, the author says:"[...] I hope it will prove useful [...] for people of any age who would find making model dolls and dressing them in period custome an enjoyable hobby [...]". I'm quotting this directly because I find it so lovely!!

Something I find interesting, is that the book also has some transcriptions of letters around the topic of fashion, like requests to seamstress and so on. However, there is a doll-related letter fragment that caught my attention. It says: "[...] I have sent you this little young lady dressed in the court dress, which I desire you would show to the queen and when she has done with it, let Mrs Tempest have it [...]" and turns out, that a 'little young lady' is a doll dressed as a pattern of the fashion!

I must confess that being a BJD-hobbyist and loving period fashion, this details did caught my attention and made go squeeing while reading the book!

The next photo is a sequence of how fashion evolved from 1660 to 1860, in England, which is the priod covered in the book. Here we have Cookie wondering about it.

And lastly, here is how the main patterns are presented: a grid-based page, with the pattern drawn there, and anotations by hand to the sides. Construction notes are on the regular pages. At the end, it also has a table for converting inches to centimeters and how to use the grid. Perfect!

I originally wanted Volume 2, because it goes from 1860 to 1940 containing both Victorian periods and the '20s, but then... I realized I love Regency and also have some projects for 1850 and 1680 (aprox), so I went with this one. I'm so happy I got this! I also want Volume 3 has an older period (1560-1660) and also includes male clothing! Must have. And if they get branded as "documents" and skip customs, all the better xD

Anyways... first time I get to show my dolly-related bday present on my bday! And now, the 30 are only one year ahead. Next year, I'm putting a 3-shaped candle on my cake: the 0 does not count *pointedly ignores the fact that this zero is at the right, not at the left*

Hope I didn't bore you too much with my ramblings, but I found those dolly anecdotes very interesting! I have a project for both Coco and Venezia thought out, and hope to have it done for December... alongside a story! Wish me luck! :D