All posts filed under: Admire

1911-12 Miss Muffet dress thedreamstress.com

A photoshoot in the 1911-12 Little Miss Muffet at the Village Fête frock

Some time ago  Regional News Wellington contacted me to see if I wanted to be interviewed (of course I did! – read the resulting interview on page 9). Naturally, they asked if I had any pictures of myself in historical dress to include with the article, and, as it turned out, none of the stuff I had was suitable, so they offered to have their photographer take pictures.  Oooh, fun! For my outfit, I chose the 1911-12 ‘Little Miss Muffet at the Village Fête’ frock, because I’d never had the chance to wear it, whatever I chose needed to be something I could put on without any assistance and drive from my house to the studio in, and (for a reason I can’t remember) I thought I was being photographed against a dark ground – so light colours seemed a good idea. As it turned out, the studio backdrop was white.  If I could choose again I’d probably have gone with something dark, like the 1813 Kashmiri dress, or my 1914-16 Cobwebs gown. Still, I’m …

Girls Attire for May 1906 from the Girl’s Own Paper

I’ve finally managed to find the time to scan all the fashion pages from my Girl’s Own Papers from 1905-07, and I’ll be posting them over the coming months (themed to the correct month, of course!). I found the pages at a car boot sale in Napier during Art Deco weekend.  Sadly, they were loose papers, and the magazines are incomplete.  I’ve done my best to sort them based on the months given, and the page numbers, and to date them, but I’m not always 100% sure I’ve got the year correct. I’m reasonably sure today’s pages are from 1906, thanks to some help from the incomparable Daniel in definitively dating a  page I shared a few years back to March 1906.  The page numbers suggest these two pages  are from the same year (though those also repeated on an annual basis, so these may be from 1905!). These images are as large as my blog format will support, so hopefully you can read them. Some delightful excerpts: The white cloths and velvets and other …

At last, a first layer to my medieval ensemble (HSM 2017 Challenge #1)

I’ve been terribly backwards with my medieval sewing, making the gown, veil, belt and circlet, but not a proper shift (the nettle shift doesn’t really count). It was so easy to skip the shift when I could  get away with using one of my 18th c shifts, but the problem with using 18th c shifts is that they have 3/4 length sleeves, which get caught beneath the long medieval sleeves, and make a horribly bulky line on your arm. So a medieval shift was a must, and I’ve actually been working on one for over a year, doing bits of hand-sewing whenever I had a plane ride or a lecture to attend.  This shift didn’t make either long trip to the US, as it had too little left to do to, and would have ended up done, and useless weight in my luggage, far too soon. But it did get finished over New Years, though when I tried it on in preparation for the Levin Medieval Market, the neckline was a bit high, so I …