All posts filed under: 19th Century

The Scarlet 1860s elliptical hoopskirt

Sorry, I know I promised to post this Wednesday, but I needed to post the final HSF challenge and the Robe de Cour terminology post instead! So here, without further ado, is my (finally) finished 1860s elliptical hoopskirt: I based it (roughly) on this hoopskirt at the V&A, because I was so excited by the red twill tape that I found, and I love the idea of having a red hoopskirt instead of the usual basic white ones. Sadly, I don’t feel mine is as pretty as its inspiration, though it does look better on me than on Isabella the dressform. I’m hoping I’ll warm up to it, because I was so excited about the project, and expended such a lot of effort on it. Each tape had to be individually hand-sewn to each hoop. And even before that, there was the shoving of metres of hoop wire into metres of sewn-tape casing, and since the wires are very snug in their tape channels, I got rather sore arms. I think my next project needs …

Terminology: What are aniline dyes? (or, the history of mauve and mauveine)

Published by The Dreamstress

Up until the mid-19th century, almost all dyes were made from materials found in plants (indigo, woad, woad, madder, brazilwood, tumeric and others), animals (shellfish purple, cochineal), and minerals. While these dyes could produce an amazing range of colours, there were still some colours that couldn’t be produced by natural means, and some of the colours that could be produced by natural means were inclined to run, fade, or to destroy the very fabrics they dyed. Then, in 1856 William Henry Perkin, a young chemistry student, working at home, after hours, in a makeshift laboratory, trying to create a chemically identical artificial version of quinine (a very valuable plant-based drug which was used to treat malaria), thought to experiment with the results of another failed attempt. The result of his experiment on his experiment was mauveine (also known as Perkin’s mauve, aniline purple, harmaline,Tyrian purple, plain old mauve, and, if you want to be extremely technical, 3-amino-2, ±9-dimethyl-5-phenyl-7-(p-tolylamino)phenazinium acetate). Mauveine was a combination of aniline (a common extract of coal tar) and other compounds which …

Rate the Dress: 1860s paisley & swiss waists

Published by The Dreamstress

There were a whole range of ratings on last week’s quite embellished stripey ca. 1880s frock, from “Want it now!” to “Ewwww….armpit ruffles.” I’m very much in the LOVE.MUST.RECREATE.NOW camp, but I think if I did recreate it, I’d end up tweaking a lot of things just a tiny bit, so I can understand the final rating of 7.3 out of 10. I don’t know what the logic of this week’s dress is in relation to last week’s frock, except that I woke up today and thought “I’ll post that dress”. So here it is: Early 1860s. Coral-y orange-y pink. Paisley, ruffles, a swiss waist bodice, but all quite restrained. It has some slight display issues in the back, with an odd skirt fastening, and a poor replacement lace, but I’m sure you can overlook that and focus on the dress as it was meant to be worn. What do you think? It’s a dress that could be either too simple, or too frilly, depending on how you look at it. The colour is a …