Hawaiian quilts are fully handsewn. They feature a central motif that’s usually based on a stylised plant, appliquéd on to a plain ground. Different plants represent different things: breadfruit for abundance (popular as wedding gifts) and pineapples for hospitality. My quilt is a…
Welcome to a long, involved story about how a hat went through many design permutations before it finally became a lovely thing that I enjoy wearing! I originally (all the way back in April 2017…) started out wanting to make this Lily Elsie mushroom hat to wear with my Miss Muffet dress: I began with a fairly generic straw sunhat I’d found at an op shop. I soaked it and re-shaped it over a hat-block and towels to get that mushroom shape. Somewhere there are photos of the process, but I just can’t find them. Update: I have found one of the original re-shaping photos! The curved-up back brim is based on a catalogue image from 1913: And…it looked terrible on me. So it went in the naughty pile. And then I needed a hat to go with the 1918-19 Not Another Blue Dress, so it came back out, and I re-shaped it again intp a shape halfway between this painting: And the bottom left hat: And then added a dark blue ribbon under the …
I’m still so excited that we’ve finished the Augusta Stays pattern, and it’s on the market, and have so much I still want to post about it! But I don’t want this blog to become all-Augusta, all the time. So here’s a totally non-Augusta post, catching up on some sewing I did back in October 2017 (eep!). Remember the Levin Medieval Market? I bought some fabulous fabric there, designed by local artist @coppercatkin. It had all sorts of tropical vegetables & spices: taro, tamarind and tumeric, papayas and mangoes. I immediately thought of my parent’s permaculture farm in Hawai’i, and knew exactly what I wanted to do with the fabric. My mum loved the idea of 18th century pockets when I’d posted examples here in various blog posts, and thought they would be perfect for the farm. It’s hard to find clothes that are both cool enough for Hawaii, easy and practical to wear around the farm, and with useful pockets. So portable tie-on pockets like the ones worn in the 18th century would be …
