16 Search Results for: excella

The Historical Sew Monthly Challenge #9: Historicism

The Historical Sew Monthly Challenge #9 is Historicism:  Make a historical garment that was itself inspired by the fashions of another historical period. Up until the early 19th century, to the best of my knowledge (caveat: my pre 1660 fashion history is pretty weak, so I’m happy to be corrected here!) historicism in fashionable dress was predominantly focused on emulating and borrowing from ancient Greek and Rome.  I say fashionable dress, because regional styles in certain areas often used elements that went out of fashion in the main centres decades, if not centuries, before.  This isn’t historicism in its truest sense, because its a case of styles stagnating, rather than intentionally borrowing from the past. Depending on how you look at historicism, one exception to the reliance on ‘the ancients’ as an inspiration from the past is the robe de coer.  The robe de coer, based on Louis the Sun King’s favourite elements of female dress in his youth in the 1660s and 70s, was implemented as the required court dress in France in the …

The ‘Bambi & Bows’ 1929 dress

Whew!  A day late, but my dress for the HSF ‘Pink’ challenge is done! Things got held up by a nasty attack of hayfever, which turned into a nasty cold.  And at the same time I’ve got a massive, top-secret, super-exciting project to work on: the biggest project I’ve ever had.  And it’s amazing.  And due on the 28th.  And in the meantime I’ve got a trip away to Napier’s Art Deco weekend, and a trip away to Auckland on the weekend of the 2nd of March. So for a while not much happened with the fabric except Felicity lying on it: But this weekend I hauled myself out of bed, and, with the help of a box of tissues, I alternated an hour on The Project and an hour on my dress, and got it done late on Sunday. As you can tell, the fabric is indeed pink, and features darling fawns with bows around their necks scattered  across it.  The English-language edition of ‘Bambi, A Life in the Woods‘ was published in 1928 …

A ‘life fell on me’ post

I have so much to blog about, so many elaborate posts half started, and SO MUCH TO DO. Life has pretty much fallen on me, and it’s big, and heavy, and all you can see of me are little dreamstress hands and feet sticking out from under it, scrabbling wildly at the ground.  You know how that feels? So the solution to that is cute Felicity-ness:   She’s not helping me get stuff done.  She thinks that my slippery, wibbly, tricksy, every so carefully layed-out and placed chiffon is the perfect place to lie, and why am I glaring at her like that anyway? The rather evil bambi fabric is  being turned into this, for the HSF pink challenge: It’s currently driving me crazy because it is so slippery, and it is almost, but not quite, reversible, so you have to keep careful track of fronts and backs as you work with it, and the pattern is asymmetrical, so everything has to be cut out unfolded. So that’s my life (wiggles hand goodbye from under …