Tea, Poe and Great Company

Saturday was an awesome day! I emailed bauhausfrau  on when to meet and she suggested about 12 pm. Given that it was then 9, I figured...what the heck? Why not try to make a gown. Yes, insane, I know.

Amazingly, I got the whole bodice complete and was well on my way to cutting sleeves when she arrived. She looked at my dummy, the mess surrounding me in the basement and shook her head, trying to hold back laughter. I grimaced and started to try to formulate plan B. Her old gown was out, my old gown was out...then I thought of the old calico gown she'd given me. I hastily threw it on my dummy, figured out where to shorten it, cut off the extra and stitched down brush braid. The braid was really lucky--a quick trawl through my trim tub dragged up some vintage braid I'd bought several years back--that matched the calico perfectly. The result--in half an hour I managed to finish off a really nice work dress. I helped Bauhausfrau into a fantastic dark red silk gown--a sight to behold with matching boots (Robert Land, no less!), bonnet and jacket. Then I quickly found boots & shawl, added my mourning jewelry and put up my hair. We headed off to Baltimore and met for the tea.

We met up with the lovely missphilomena , her mom (wearing a stunning gown as well) and a family friend.  Miss P. told us all about her classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology, shopping in NYC and how she does such amazing work so fast. She wore a tiered gown in velvet trimmed silk plaid (very apropos of the Walter Scott mania of the era) with a matching jacket. Soon she was followed by padawansguide  who wore her truly stupendous gathered black silk gown with a new fur-trimmed paletot. It looked fabulous. jennylafleur arrived about the same time, wearing a grey stripped silk dress with hand drawn bias ruffles and a terribly pretty pelerine (I think it might have been detatchable, but I couldn't tell). She was joined by two other ladies--sadievale  and girliegirl32786. I wondered if jennylafleur  and sadievale  conspired beforehand, since sadievale  wore a striped gown, made of a darker fabric featuring perfectly matched panels (I spent a good part of tea staring at the precision in amazement) and an exceptionally lovely cut. girliegirl32786 --who had travelled the day before from West VA--wore a well-fit plum wool gown with a delicate white collar and a fantastic jacquard shawl. Set in the luxurious elegance of the Harbor Court Intercontinental, we had a leisurely tea, then headed over to watch the evening's program.

The entertainments were exceptionally well performed--the organizers had outstanding taste in blending serious scholarly presentation with comedy, music and terrifyingly gripping stories. By the end, when we lined up to meet John Astin, I felt like Edgar was there in our midst, pouring all the complex emotions of his life into our presence.

Thanks to everyone, but especially bauhausfrau for organizing it all--it was a fantastic day!