Month: November 2013

Bits & Bobs

Every once in a while I accumulate a little pile of interesting tidbits that aren’t big enough for a post apiece, but that I really want to share with you. First off, the latest issue of Glory Days, the New Zealand vintage magazine, is out. The theme is ‘Victorian Christmas’ so there are all sort of fun goodies, from instructions on how to make Christmas Crackers, to an article on one of the few New Zealand living history museums. In addition to my feature on corset history (page 64) I was interviewed about my collection for the Other People’s Wardrobes (page 59) feature, though ‘Wardrobe’ is bit of a mis-nomer in my case, as I don’t wear most of my collection! Here is one of the images I took for the corset article: Be sure to like Glory Days on Facebook to get notifications of new issues and other fun stuff! Moving on to the next bit, remember the charming vintage sun-frocks I made for S back in July? She sent me photos of the …

Rate the Dress: 1870s florals & stripes

Published by The Dreamstress

Poor Lanvin! Apparently fancy dress isn’t her thing. Despite the beautiful gold lace and luscious orange silk (I can’t believe some of you didn’t like the fabric!) her Byzantine/Stuart/Turkish Elizabethan/Restoration/What the Heck is It fancy dress frock rated a dismal 5.2 out of 10. This fortnights HSF theme is Gratitude, which isn’t very helpful as guide to picking Rate the Dresses. When I was looking for inspiration for the HSF Pink Challenge I came across this dress, which has been in my ‘Rate the Dress’ inspiration folder for ages. Right now I’m just grateful for such an easy pick: it’s been a full-on few weeks for me! It’s really a pity that there aren’t more images of this dress – the close ups are fascinating, and there are so many hints of amazing details in the overall image, but this is all we see: What do you think? Do you like the unusual-but-obsessively matched fabrics? The stripes and florals and bows? Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10

Historical Sew Fortnightly ’14 Challenge #3: Pink

Published by The Dreamstress

Just in time for that rosiest and most romantic of holidays, the theme of the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge #3, due Sat 15 Feb, is Pink. Pink is an interesting choice for a historical based colour challenge, because pink is, in itself, a fairly modern concept as a colour in the West. More than a few hundred years ago, the shades that we might term pink were considered variants of red or brown. To make pink even trickier, when you look at older garments and older illustrations of garments, it’s hard to tell if a fabric was intended to be a pinkish tone, or has faded to that from brown or red. So, in choosing inspiration for your pink item, and your pink materials, you’ll have to use your own discretion to decide if your colour is a shade of pink, and if that pink would have been appropriate to your timeperiod and the status of the wearer, as such things matter to you. To give you a jumpstart, I’ve created a pinterest board of …