Saturday, March 22, 2014

A Costumer's Weekend Out

Oh my, I have a lot of catching up to do. Last weekend, some of the local (and some not so local!) costume ladies and I, hit the town together! First stop was Thistle Hill on Friday.


Thistle Hill is this wonderful Georgian style house in Fort Worth. It use to be in a well to do neighborhood back in its glory days, but now it's in the middle of the hospital district! It's this wonderful little oasis of Edwardian charm amidst the chaos of the construction and hospital traffic. It sits on about 1.5 acres of gardens, and the house itself is grand and beautiful.

Our group took the Flashlight Tour, which took us through all the behind-the-scenes areas, like the carriage house, the boiler room, the basements, and the servants quarters. Unlike the main part of the house, there was still quite a bit of renovation yet to be done to these spaces, and I'm looking forward to taking the tour again in the future and seeing the progress that's been made! (There's a house in northern Germany called "Ludwigslust" that I have the same relationship with - the first time I went they had just opened it up for tours and hadn't done many renovations. Going back and seeing the progress they make each year is always a highlight of my visits!)

We had quite a mish-mosh of costumes for the Thistle Hill tour. Some of us were in vintage, some in modern. I had on my 19-teens dress that I made last year for the Titanic exhibit.


The next day was Regency day! We started the day at Log Cabin Village, which turned out to be much more fun than any of us expected. We'd all figured that we would stroll around, take some pics, and get bored with the place rather quickly. But, it was really a fabulous time! There were costumed docents giving history on each house, doing demonstrations for things like candle dipping, spinning, and carpentry, and there was a Celtic music band called Buttermilk Junction playing in the schoolhouse. Of course, with fabulous music, there must be dancing, and the band was so delighted that they began taking requests. We got to polka and waltz, and one of our visiting ladies led some of us in simple set dances.

At around 3:30, the weather, which had held off so nicely until then, decided to turn against us, and the sky opened up. We spent a little bit of time at a nearby antique mall before heading to Jen's hotel room to change for dinner.


Jen had reserved a room at Papadeaux's, and it turned out to be a very lovely little room, all in brick and dark woods, with wine bottles lining the walls. Dinner was delicious, of course, and we spent nearly four hours eating and chatting. It was really delightful!


Afterward, we headed to Ginger's house to relax and watch Austenland, which I very much enjoyed, as I had missed the premier when the rest of the Guild had gone together. It was the perfect end to such a wonderful weekend.

I'll have posts for the dresses I made for the outings up shortly!

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