Duchie Award!

I was reward to checking on all the blogs I like to follow today by finding out that Edyth at The Completely Dressed Anachronist nominated me for a Duchie Award!  I now feel shamed into actually sewing something historical this week, not just making knitting needle cases and taking naps (why oh why am I so sleepy?!)

Anyway, the rules for receiving the Duchie Award are to post on your blog, in any order:

1. Five things you love about historical costuming
2. At least three blogs to pass the Duchie Award onto
3. A link back to the blogger who awarded you the Duchie

 Starting from the top...five things I love about historical costuming.  Just five?  
Cloths as experimental archeology - I think is this is more obvious as applied to medieval and earlier clothing, but the same can be said for later periods of fashion as well, but you get a better sense of how people actually lived when you try to live in their clothing.  Literally walking a mile in their shoes gives you a whole new insight into how it was to live/sleep/eat as an Elizabethan, Victorian, Roman or whatever.
Attention to detail - Unless you are lucky enough to wear couture, modern clothing is mass produced usually in sweatshops.  The finishing is sloppy at best.  Sewing allows me to focus on the detail work, finishing things properly.  Historical sewing opens up a whole new level of detail, not just finishing the seams and paying attention to details of fit, but doing it in different ways than we use today.
Gotta love a challenge - Everything about period costuming, from researching to pattern drafting to sourcing materials is challenging.  Some things are certainly easier to do than others, but there is always a way to make it better, more authentic.  Even a simple tunic can be a huge challenge if I want it to be, and that keeps me interested in what I'm doing.
Playing with colors - In real life I wear jeans and a lot of grey, browns and black.  Sometimes I get crazy and throw some pink in there, maybe burgundy.  When I create historical costumes I get to put aside what modern tastes say are fashionable, what "goes" and get creative.  I can wear goose-turd green and pink and red all at the same time.  Or crazy striped fabric that gives most people a headache, or red shoes with yellow stockings and blue garters.  And this is fashionable.  Plus I get to figure out how to do all this with plants, and that's just plain old cool.
Geek out!!- The best thing, if I have to pick just one best thing, about all of this, if that I get to geek out on stuff that I'm interested in.  I like pretty things and playing dress-up, but I also like the technical parts of all this and figuring things out.  It turns out there are people, and sort of a lot of them, out there who  are just as geeky as me about weave structure and sheep breeds and dye materials and how to set a sleeve as I am.

And lastly (because I already did #3 at the very top), my nominees,

Demode - because Kendra is amazing.  She makes beautiful cloths (not costumes, cloths) and does excellent research.  Her focus is later period that what I've been doing of late, but it's still inspiring and I know where to go when I get around to making an 18th century gown!

The Costumers Closet - again with the mostly later period than me stuff, but the work is beautiful and really inspiring!  I appreciate that she  posts a lot of in-progress pictures so we can see how she's putting things together, something I aspire to do more faithfully.

Katie Jacobs - Lovely work, again later period, but more importantly she posts how-tos and sourcing tips, and other great information useful if you going to actually *wear* some of the cloths you have made to a reenactment.  She gets the looks head-to-toe, which so many people miss.