The countdown & pretty dresses.

One month and three days. That is all that is left of my recent Roman life. I have been trying to make the most of it, which is why I haven't posted in awhile. We have also had loads of visitors, which meant eating out, seeing the city sights again, more eating out and (more importantly) the sewing machine stayed tucked away.

I have a few things that I have done between visitors and am currently working on, but taking pictures may take a few days. But it will happen before I leave for home. I kind of promise.

In the meantime I have been meaning to post these pictures of an exhibit I saw while Laurel was in town, a little over a month ago. We found (actually *she* found) a really small museum dedicated to fashion in Rome called the Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi.  I will tell you that the website is pretty horrible, usually only having any exhibit info on the Italian version, but the museum is worth going to, it is in a lovely area of town and the entrance is free. While we were there an exhibit featuring vintage costume jewelry was on display. They also had a few dresses on display made my Italian dressmakers that were beautiful (see first pic), and we assume part of the permanent collection. The nice lady in the museum said we could take some pics, since we were the only ones there. Even still we were not too greedy, only taking a few pictures of notable dresses. Check out the cape that you can see peeking from the last picture. It was layered scalloped black velvet with a fur collar from the 20's or 30's. Gorgeous.

If you are in Rome from the 31st of May to the 25 of September there is an exhibit of an Italian fashion journalist Maria Vittorio Alfonsi Caruso. From what I can gather from the limited press and my base level of Italian there will be dresses (I read 80 somewhere, but the museum is small, so I doubt it), photographs and accessories on display.

As for my goals now, I do plan on posting a few of the things that I have been up to before I leave and trying to get a few more things sewn or at least in muslin form. I am also about to teach one of the faculty how to sew a circle skirt, so I will try to take pics of that as well. I figured it would be an easy first project for a first time sewer. But, any thoughts? My last circle skirt (which is now back in the states and was never blogged about) was a disaster, but when I get home I will try to resurrect it. I made a muslin of a half circle skirt last weekend to make sure I knew what I was doing and that turned out fine. I do know that we need to hang it for a couple days before hemming, but any other advice would be greatly appreciated!