What was the last ten years even

 So let me catch the blog up on a massive historical costuming project I'm working on. 

I was around +-10 years away from the last time I'd actually done any functional sewing like I used to - most of my wardrobe was made up of circle skirts and Victorian riding pants, the last significant thing I'd made was a test corset that I never made an actual copy of:

Finished in 2015, nothing futther happened:

Circle skirt and petticoat that was most of my wardrobe 2013:

I made Simplicity 1139, this was for myself, another I made for a museum:

Here's the least accurate Edwardian outfit:

Probably the best thing I ever made:

I learned how to crochet:

I made this for a museum:

I knitted a festive jumper:

I started knitting another one:

Looks pretty good, if you don't consider this a ten year period of desolation. 

With all of that in the dust behind me, I was frustrated and plagued by intrusive thoughts. I decided to map some of the good ones:

I put in what I was obsessing over, the colours, patterns, connections, impulses. I sat on it and thought about it all, and thought about the headings and branches and tried to make other connections. I thought about fast fashion, about cultural/ethnic/folk dress.

I discovered the Outlander series. I found it was based on a book series, and started reading it. I no longer actually read for pleasure anymore, my Honours year of Critical Theory killed that in me. I now only read before bed, to try ease myself into sleep. The series is both incredibly well written and really terrible. I think there are a few hooks that are well used and that's why I'm still reading it. And I think I was still looking at 18th century costume with disdain at that point, though I'd never seen that much of it depicted in something I was interested in. 

There's a Facebook group I'm part of, Plus-Sized historical costuming, and two posts suddenly changed everything. I saw two different women in stays, looking.... absolutely incredible, and like myself. And that was it, I wanted to know everything about 18th century dress. 

And I thought about my family, how we have no cultural dress. My paternal line emigrated to Southern Africa in the 1600s as part of the Huguenot movement, partially religious flight and colonial delight. And I wondered what we would have worn then, setting up in the mid and late 1600s. We were French, from near Paris, and assimilated to the Dutch over the centuries. But never into African culture. We still have not, and the lines between us in South Africa are so thin you'd never think they were there. But for all that we do not cross them, it might as well be a castle keep, metres thick to keep anything out.

And this is where my project started to form, after researching my family's "origins" (what about my mom's side? Where do you determine is your family? At what point do you say they're from somewhere?), reading through and looking at images, blogs, trying to find books.

Here is a where a derisive thought began, and a critical opinion of Afrikaners in South Africa developed that I wanted to research and pin down, and think of what could have happened instead, and how a cultural dress that assimilated beyond European influence might have looked. 

To be continued.