now i know you’re thinking, oh, charles, what does a victorian treehouse inspired sunroom reno have to do with sewing, costuming, and historical clothing reconstruction? well. youtube autoplayed another video by the same woman right after it; and that video was a reconstruction of a very very cool dress:
now youtube, for once, decided that it was going to give me actually relevant suggestions. this lead to me falling down the rabbit-hole of a youtuber named bernadette banner, specifically THIS video:
now ms banner has a background in theatre costuming (and apparently did some work on broadway which, uh, cool as all fuck??). she is also an avid lover of historical, specifically victorian/edwardian clothing. she’s absolutely wonderful and her videos are very very good and, in fact, reignited my latent love for sewing, and caused my love of historical clothing to absolutely take off. in the course of the past week, i have learnt how to create pockets, draft patterns, create my own quill boning (!!!! haven’t actually made any yet but. one day), and just generally go fucking wild. now it should be noted that ms banner’s videos are emphatically not tutorials, however, a lot of the things she does will help you get a good understanding of various techniques, and she talks about various other resources to check (foundations revealed, for example, which was founded by another one of my new faves, cathy hay), as well as talking about things like costume college, which is basically a convention for costuming enthusiasts. also she has an entire video series on creating a “lady sherlock” cosplay which is absolutely fantastic. basically my little nerd heart has been dying and i’ve started a sewing project of my own.
