A Regency gown, and a Christmas tree

This weekend, I departed greatly from my favorite genres and made myself my first ever Regency gown. The husband just acquired a gentleman's suit from this era, so I needed something to match his splendor. Regency is one of my favorite eras for men's clothing, and one of my least favorite for women's. Men get gorgeous cutaway jackets and tight pants and women get empire waistlines. Trying on this gown, my thought was that my top portion looked like an overstuffed sausage, and the bottom half looked like I was trying to disguise the fact that I was ~6 months pregnant. (I'm not, by the way, but that's what any Empire waistline dress ends up looking like on a body, no matter that body's shape.)

They're very simple dresses to assemble. The only part that was a chore was tacking down the Venice lace I used:



You need to sew down both edges, and that meant somewhere between an hour and an hour and half of sew one inch, turn the needle, sew another inch, turn the needle, ... oh just shoot me now!

I haven't finished the fastener on the robe yet, but here's the 99.5% completed dress:



After I got the gown finished, we put up our Christmas tree. My color preferences have prevailed over the years, and there is an abundance of burgundy and silver on our tree:



There's a few surprises hidden away though.

Here's Drexel, an ornament the then boyfriend/now husband and I acquired for our very first Christmas together, 15 years ago:


Drexel by *dbvictoria on deviantART

And also hidden away is a favorite toon:



Keeping the lights going by the power of the Dark Side of the Force, Emperor Palpatine hovers in the tree:


Emperor Palpatine's Christmas by *dbvictoria on deviantART

All three of them are wishing you a happy holiday season, as am I!