Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe

I'm a total cliche.  I admit it.  Which is why The Boyfriend and I hosted a Poe party last weekend for Poe's birthday (which is actually today).  And you know what me hosting a theme party means: ridiculous costumes!

I see you there, way in the back.  Mumbling that I have an Edgar Allan Poe costume already.  Most people didn't know who I was when I wore that costume, and you know me, any excuse to sew.  My first plan was to be Virginia Clemm (Poe's wife).  Aside from the ickiness of her being his cousin and only 13 when they married (whether or not they had a traditional marriage is debated; there is some argument that they were more like siblings than a married couple), she died during the Victorian era and I knew I wasn't going to have time to make a full-on Victorian costume.  The Georgian era, which proceeded it, had empire waistlines and simpler dresses.  So I decided to be Lenore, as the poem only states she's "lost" and not when.  She could have been dead for twenty years, right?

Yeah, I know no one would care about such things except me.

I went through the pattern stash to find something appropriate to the era.  Burda 2493 fit the bill.  I went with this purple linen so it would drape nicely and I could actually wear it in the summer.  I'm kind of disappointed in the color, which looked deeper and richer online.  If I knew it was going to looked so washed out (which is appropriate for a corpse, I suppose), I think I would have gone with grey instead.

This dress is pretty simple and came together in an afternoon.  Since linen likes to cease being linen, I had to finish every seam.  I had planned to replace the elastic casing on the neckline with ribbon to make the dress less plain; it ended up being necessary because I had exactly the amount of elastic needed for the underbust and sleeves.  Surprisingly, I did not have spider ribbon in the stash, though I did have spider webs, but it was white.  Straight-up black it is.

Since the dress looked so plain, I hemmed it with purple and black spider lace.  I didn't have time to do the sleeves before the party.  I also grabbed these cute spider buttons from my stash to sew them on.  I think these aren't enough, so I ordered more and I will add them at later date.

The bird here is the raven from my Poe costume a few years ago.

The Boyfriend chose to be Montresor; I purchased a ridiculous Mardi Gras hat and he carried around a cake server (which he has now started to call a "cake trowel").