All posts filed under: Miscellenia

Here there be Pirates, thedreamstress.com

Arrrrr Matey! A Pirate Picnic

Last October Redthreaded hosted ‘Fall for Costume’ on Instagram, with daily themes.  One of them was ‘Pirates’, and I realised that I’d never dressed up as a pirate! That was clearly an omission that must be rectified, so I threw a pirate picnic. After all, what the point of being a costumer if you can’t let yourself go and be totally dorky every once in a while? So I invited a bunch of friends willing to be dorky with me, and we all raided our wardrobes for striped shirts and big puffy white blouses, and boots and hats, and cutlasses and blunderbusses, and weighed anchor for the treasure coast. The location I picked is conveniently quite deserted, so that we could be blissfully undisturbed in our dorkiness.  Because while I don’t mine being dorky, I like to do it as inconspicuously as possible! Even more conveniently, it was relatively sheltered from the strong, blustery Northerly wind sweeping across Wellington that day. The wind did a lovely job of fluttering our feathers and sweeping our sashes …

Rate the Dress: Moss Green Edwardian Velvet

It’s been so hot in Wellington for the past month, and I long for walks in cool green forests, and mossy swathes under pine trees, and babbling brooks.  Meanwhile, I know that some of you in the Northern Hemisphere are dealing with unusually cold temperatures.  So for this week’s Rate the Dress I chose a moss green velvet Edwardian dress that would hopefully appeal to all of us: cozy enough for winter, in a colour that makes us think of cool things in the summer heat! Last week:  a pink and gold and so-many-florals française Well, for once you were totally unanimous about one aspect of a garment: the silver-trimmed stomacher that the MFA Boston had paired with the pink floral française was just terrible.  Daniel dubbed it a ‘Brillo pad’ and now I’ll never unsee that…  (also his comment included a truly terrible pun, and I always adore those!). Other comments were mixed between loving and not loving the trim, and loving the pleats, but not the very square paniers (always a hangup with …

The Historical Sew Monthly 2018 – it’s on!

As you may have noticed, the Historical Sew Monthly 2018 is on – all the details and challenges are up. Here’s the big secret about 2018… (so big even the other moderators don’t know about it). In my mind it wasn’t going to happen. Participation has dropped a bit, it’s been going for five years (seriously y’all, FIVE YEARS!).   I figured five years was enough.  We’d had a good run, we’d made some amazing things, and it was time to say goodbye. But I was so busy in the last half of 2017, that before I could find time to discuss it with the other moderators it was December, and they, brilliant wonderful people that they are, had planned everything.  There had organised a Challenge theme brainstorming session on FB, collated all the suggestions in our moderator group, had a discussion and poll on the choices, made a Hero image for the year… All I had to do was vote on my favourite challenges in the poll, and write the HSM 2018 page.  So …