Sewing Inspired by Marie Antoinette (Part 2)

Sewing Project Inspired by a visit back to 1779

You might enjoy catching up on the first part of this article at Sewing Inspired by Marie Antoinette: Part 1


In my last posting, I made a slight reference to one of my recent trips back through time to Marie Antoinette's court at Versailles. So...wouldn't you like to hear more about this particular trip? 


When I first started taking these little jaunts my biggest bit of culture shock involved the state of royal sanitation. But, I'm not sure you really want the down-and-dirty on the suspicious puddles that kept turning up in unexpected corners of the palace's wood parquet floors. Let's just leave it that I manage to avoid tripping or slipping in the you-know-what and go on from there, OK?


In this particular case, I had elected a visit back to 1779, nine years after Antonia first arrived at court as a gentle, demur, Austrian archduchess. It's hard not to feel for a teenaged girl in her circumstances, even one with that bucks and standing of the entire Hapsburg empire behind her, isn't it?


Not being well-connected at court, and also not wanting to put in the way-beyond dawn to dusk travail of servitude, my Period Pilots guide recommended that I adopt the persona of an artist. After all if  Anne Vallayer-Coster could make it, why not me? I was please to find that the very accessible public galleries at the palace made it easy to establish myself at a little table among the fruit sellers, ribbon-merchants and other hawkers. I must admit, though, that I sadly missed having access to a digital camera during my time in the galleries. And oh, what I could have done with Photoshop and a few jpeg's to capture the joi-de-vivre and bustle of the thousands of vendors and visitors that thronged that incredibly accessible royal community. I mean...Mademoiselle Vallayer-Coster's Still Life with Ham would have been nothing to what I could have come up with. 


I like to say that one of my little peintures caused la Reine to gasp in excitement and send off a billet to one of her Buds at  the Royal Académie, but no such luck. Still, I got a chance to see her more than once as she promenaded by on her way to visit her little Mousseline. 


And you can just bet what this sewist was doing... That's right, checking out Madame Deficit's frocks. 

To Be Continued.. 

This Resource Might Come in Handy for your Own Travels
Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution 

Sewing INSPIRED by Marie Antoinette (Part 1)

Co-Published with Me Encanta Coser

http://meencantacoser.blogspot.com/ 

Thanks to Babylon Baroque for posting this lovely image of Marie Antoinette in one of her Court Dresses

(http://babylonbaroque.files.wordpress.com)

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only sewist with an enduring fascination for the ill-fated youngest daughter of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. 

Marie Antoinette had the goods when it came to wardrobing. Any gal would feel like  Cinderella in one of those bow-bedecked, lace-trimmed confections. Of course the hairdo has got to go, and those pannier-enhanced court dresses were a real pain to learn to walk in, in little Antonia's case she had to learn to do the Versaille glide before she left home. Then there were the challenges of breathing in seventeenth-century corsets, something that the queen herself tried to avoid. In fact her Mama the Empress sent her daughter more than one scolding in regards to the letters she had received back in Austria, complaining about her daughter's abandonment of her hated corset.

Still, every time I've tripped back in time (those Period Pilots weekend specials are just too good a deal to pass up!) and spy Marie Antoinette in one of those luxurious rich fabrics, I head straight for my fabric stash when I get home. Surely I could pull off that heavily embroidered satin'y look in a nicely fitted blouse. Wouldn't it look great over  jeans? I know I've got a $6.99 a yard brocade somewhere in here...

(Part 2 of this article is continued at Me Encanta Coser)