Year: 2011

Finished projects: Judith’s hoop panniers

Judith contacted me wanting two set of panniers for a show she is doing. This is the first set, a hoop pannier based off of my 1770s yellow panniers (which are based off a set in the KCI) The panniers will be worn as outer wear, so we chose fabrics a pretty, but inexpensive poly-cotton with a faux indigo-dyed chintz type pattern. The print evokes the 18th century without being too obvious, and the allover patterns of winding flowers work well in the tight gathers of the hoop panniers. Rather than using the nifty plastic hooping I used on my yellow pair (which I, unfortunately, haven’t been able to source since), I used hoop wire from Lacis. It actually worked even better than the plastic. The uprights hoops stay up really well, and the whole thing is a bit lighter. Sewn-in tapes underneath hold the panniers in their elongated shape: Overall, I’m quite pleased with the panniers and the pattern as a whole. It’s such a nice melding of 18th century accuracy and the taste …

Doilie, doily, doyley, doiley, d’oyley or d’oilie?

Published by The Dreamstress

I came across a copy of the Girl’s Own Paper from 1912, and was very intrigued by the handwork section, and in particular, by the spellings in the handwork section. You see, the Girl’s Own Paper spells doily d’oilie. How peculiar! At first I thought it might just have been an old-fashioned term for doily, and I have never noticed it before. To make matters more confusing, the magazines ads spell it d’oyley So I thought a bit more, and realised that I was sure I had read 19th century articles about doilies, and d’oyleys, but never d’oilies. So I did a bit of research, and guess what? I can’t find a single mention of d’oilies or by that spelling in anything but the Girl’s Own Paper. New Zealand newspapers from the turn of the century spell it doily, d’oyley, doyley, and doilie, with the first spelling being vastly more common, and the last only appearing for a brief period at the turn of the century. But why all the variants? I think I have …

Emily’s 1903 evening gown: the fabric

Published by The Dreamstress

The museum record for Emily’s pink dress states that it is ‘silk grosgrain’, which is true in a sense, but also highlights the problem with fabric terminologies (they aren’t precise! They change all the time! We don’t always know what they meant in the past!). My challenge was to try to identify what Emily’s seamstress would have called the fabric, and to find the same fabric to make my recreation out of. Both of those objectives turned out to be hideously difficult, and while I’ve arrived at some solutions, I’m not entirely happy with either result. First, what is the fabric like? It’s silk. It’s a pink with just a hint of yellow/orange that manages to be both very vivid, and quite subtle, at the same time. It has a very fine, very even rib running horizontally across the fabric (in other words, a weftwise rib). It handles like a very soft taffeta – flowing rather than rustling, but holding in the position it gets folded or sculpted to. The weight is also similar to …