Evenstar Designs

After watching a Facebook live stream of the milliner's at Colonial Williamsburg making a Robe a la Francaise in a day, I was inspired to make a pet en l'air . What is a pet en l'air ? Glad you asked. A pet en l'air is similar to a Robe a la Francaise , but it is shorter. I guess you could call it the 18th century "mini dress".  Pet en l'airs were considered "undress" (   deshabille in French) or in other words, casual attire . One thing I noticed that the mantua makers in CW did was that they started the gown in the front, and worked backwards, whic h makes sense. (I've had great difficulties in the past getting a gown to fit properly in the front because I had already finished the back and sides.) So I draped the pleats in the back, basted them in place, then un-basted them a few days later because I didn't like the way they looked, and then re-basted them. Story of my life. Next I made the stomacher. It attaches with hooks and eyes ...

To make this little headpiece, I simply took apart a store-bought hat, and redecorated it.

The question "what to wear?" becomes a lot harder to answer when it comes to shoes. Of corse there are wonderful shoe reproduction companies, but I didn't want to spend a large amount of money on something I wouldn't  wear all to often. So I settled on dancing slippers for footwear at the spring ball. I had those black ballet slippers, but you know how much fun a new pair of shoes is! Of corse they were rather plain... So I added some twinkle to the toes.