Month: October 2010

Felicity – the sweet and the not-so-sweet

I adore Felicity. She is wonderful, and lovable and undeniably cute. But she does have some flaws (she had a difficult kittenhood – what can I say?). Ten things that are sweet about Felicity: She loves me. She follows me around from room to room, all day, because wherever I am is where she wants to be. She loves Mr Dreamy. Whenever he sits down she crawls on his lap and cuddles up. She is very gentle with old people, and children. She was exceptionally sweet to Nana when she met her. She never tries to eat people food. You can leave anything – milk, fish, steak, butter, anything – on the counter and she won’t eat it. She never begs for food, or demands that we wake up to feed her. She isn’t whiney. I can’t abide cats that whine. She comes and sits with you when you are upset. If I started crying, Felicity will be cuddled up to me in less than a minute. She comes when you call. Always. She chirps …

18th century muslin/calico dresses: historically plausible?

Published by The Dreamstress

I think about historical plausibility a lot. Historical costumers worry about accuracy, but I think that ‘accurate’ often gets confused with ‘common’. Just because most seamstresses did something one way, doesn’t necessarily mean that one or two might not have done it completely differently. Lots of things happen today that aren’t mainstream. Even with the plethora of information on the internet today, people sew, and create, and live in ways that aren’t documented. It is reasonable to assume that historically, there were also seamstresses who created in unusual ways, and used unusual materials. The costumer who asked me about 18th century masquerade outfits also asked about ideas for making her dress on a limited budget. I’ve been turning the question over in my mind, and last night (well, 4am in the morning) I had an epiphany. Why not use muslin/calico? Raw, unpatterned cotton calico (which American’s call muslin) existed in late 18th century Europe. In fact, huge amounts of it were imported, because many countries had passed laws making it illegal to import patterned calico …

Flourish, polls and other bits and bobs

Published by The Dreamstress

First off, if you check out the Events page, you will notice a new event (in addition to my Pompeii to Paris talk): Flourish. “To flourish is to grow, thrive and blossom. To flourish is to develop succeed and prosper. To flourish is to attract attention, make bold gestures, standout from the crowd.” The textile design students at Massey University have been creating gorgeous one-off silk scarves as a fundraiser for Downstage Theatre. If you are lucky enough to be in Wellington you can visit an exhibition of the scarves at Thistle Hall, and attend a fantastic evening at Downstage to bid on one of the fabulous scarves. And the scarves are fabulous – I’ve been watching the students create them and drooling over the designs! They have put hours and hours of work into the designs, and they can only get one true printing off of them. Second, you may have noticed my new poll function on the sidebar. I’ll be running weekly lighthearted polls about textiles and fashion and pretty much anything and …