I’ve got a more elaborate finished UFO to show you for the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge #8, but I haven’t managed to take photos of it yet, so for now here is a simple, soft entry, or a really elaborate, long-running entry, depending on how I think about it: I’ve been struggling with engageantes (the false sleeves worn under pagoda  sleeves in the 19th century) for the Greek Key tea dress ever since I first made the dress.  My problem is that 1) none of the engageantes patterns explain exactly how one gets the engageantes to stay attached and up when wearing them, and 2) none of the engageantes patterns make up into something that looks like fashion plates depicting women wearing engageantes.  They just aren’t as full. The second problem I’m ascribing at least in large part to exaggeration in styles in fashion plates. The first problem…well, that’s a sticky one. My most recent trial of engageantes (4 years ago) involved the pattern from Janet Arnold, scaled up slightly on the assumption that I’m …

Another Historical Sew Fortnighly Challenge down. This time I made an 1860s bonnet to wear with my Greek key afternoon dress. I was roughly inspired by this bonnet from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I started out with a simple hat that I’d unsuccessfully reshaped a 1920s cloche.  It was just too big for my head to work. So I cut off the back and trimmed down the sides. The original idea was that  I would use pale pink ribbons, but they simply didn’t look right.  And it turns out I didn’t have any black lace in my stash that worked (how is that possible?).  So I ended up going with palest grey rayon ribbon and a silver and black lace.   Obviously the silver didn’t look right, so I had some fun on the sewing machine: I pinned all the ribbons on the hat until it looked good: And then there was lots, and lots and lots of handsewing. I’m really pleased about the lace – I picked it up over the weekend at …