1780s Mint Redingote at a Colonial Williamsburg Weekend!

Right at the end of 2017 I had a little dream come true – a costumed weekend at Colonial Williamsburg!

A couple groups of friends decided to get together there to take in the holiday decorations and sport our 18th century winter wear.

*Note*: all watermarked photos are courtesy of In the Long Run Designs – thank you again Gloria & Mike!!

For the occasion, I made a 1780s mint green wool redingote (a project I’d had in mind for a couple of years, ever since I got the fabric) based on the one at LACMA, with the free-to-download scale pattern here.

My hat is inspired by the one in this fashion plate:

However, I’ll save the making-of for its own post – I took lots of in-process photos. This post is for show-and-tell but mostly show.

this is the only photo in this post I took myself, lol. ^

At one point a small group of us broke off to do a carriage ride we’d pre-arranged.

It was myself along with Samantha (Couture Courtesan), Chelsea (of Sartorial Statement) and Katy (@katywerlin on IG).

Apparently we were in the royal coach being pulled by horses who had done so for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip when they last visited about twelve years ago! We thought it was very fitting for us ;oP

Afterwards, we re-joined part of the larger group to wander and take some more photos at the Governor’s Palace.

Mine and Katy’s outfits coordinated so nicely we got several pictures together throughout the day.

Here we are judging you like the aristocratic bitches we are:

Then Katy stole borrowed my walking stick and fur muff for some solo pictures of her:

We even got some fun behind-the-scenes-like photos of the photography, cause we’re meta like that.

Then it was time to make our way to one of the taverns for our dinner reservation

I really liked these ones of us walking as a group across the green.

There was a nice bit of sunset.

My redingote hem got so dirty while walking around that I think I’m just going to have to shorten it so there’s barely or no train!

I still can’t remember which tavern we went to for dinner but I was really impressed with the food! A beautiful crab chowder soup and one of the most delicious salads I’ve ever had!

Playing with the torchlight after dark.

We ended the evening back at the Governor’s Palace with a beautiful concert featuring 2 violins, a clarinet, a harpsichord and a fabulous soprano singer. In the interest of being considerate I took off my hat for the concert, not realizing what hat-head I would have! Lol

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Soooooo……this was actually the 2nd day I’d worn my redingote, as the previous afternoon I put it on with a couple of different accessories for a quick photoshoot around the historical district.

Last spring, after the Big Ass Hat Tea, Cynthia of Redthreaded dared me with this satirical print:

Well, I already had the hat, so why not do the muff too!

It’s not literally as big as in the print but seems to be bigger than anyone else has made that we know of! Lol

Aubry of A Fractured Fairytale was kind enough to play photographer for me and I think she did a great job!

So these are meant to be rather silly pictures, although I actually really like them! Ha!

Oh no! The head-eating hat strikes again!

Our secondary mission was to find some sheep, and eventually we did.

Once they noticed us they came over and just stood there *staring* at me like, what even are you?! You are the weirdest looking human we’ve ever seen!

Seriously, they just kept staring and staring….

And STARING!!!

So, next up will be the construction post – do you have any specific questions you’d like answered about the process?