All posts filed under: Sewing

Things I sew – historical and modern

A bit more Windy Lindy

There have been more lovely images of Madame Ornata and I coming in from various sources, so I’m going to indulge myself and give you one last deluge of photos. The first three are by a professional photographer who was at the dance. HannieSunshine does amazing, beautiful work, and I’m so excited by the gorgeous photos she got of Madame Ornata and I. It was a very difficult venue to get good photographs in, and she got some impressive stuff. I can definitely recommend her. Hannie’s last photo has a story. It is a tradition in Swing circles that when someone has a birthday they get their own personal swing steal set. All the dancers form a circle and the birthday boy (or girl) gets danced with by as many ladies (or men, respectively) as can pop in and steal him away from his previous partner. A special birthday happened the night of Windy Lindy – one of our dancers turned 75, so all of the ladies vied for a chance to get lucky enough …

Windy Lindy: What we wore

Published by The Dreamstress

I’m sure that you are all wondering what I eventually decided on as my Windy Lindy dress. Well, as per popular demand, I wore the green dress. OK, in all honesty, I didn’t feel like wearing the serious undergarments that the white and black dress require, and I didn’t find the red dress until a few hours before the dance. You have excellent taste though, dear readers, as I did feel that I looked rather fetching. I paired the dress with a gold necklace, a silk peony rose and a butterfly in my hair, and gold dancing slippers. Madame Ornata looked rather fetching too. We didn’t quite finish her dress (we had to sew her into it as the back fastenings weren’t done), but I do believe she was the belle of the ball. She just looked so perfectly period, and the sapphire silk was so striking – you could spot it anywhere in the room.

Finished project: 1920’s inspired ‘Tango’ dress

Published by The Dreamstress

I made this dress as a project in university. The brief was to make a basic fitting toile, and then to draft a garment pattern from that. This was not the dress to flat pattern draft. It would have been much, much easier to drape it on a dressform. But it still turned out pretty well. We call it the ‘dress that fits anyone’, because it does. And looks good on them to. I based the design on a image of Edna St Vincent Millay. The patterning isn’t at all accurate for a 1920s dress (princess seams!), but the effect is still charming. The fabric is silk crepe. There was quite a story with the fabric – I looked and looked, but all the reds I could find had an orange tinge. So I spent my entire fabric budget on some muted jade green silk charmeuse because it was soooo beautiful. And then realised that this was the wrong dress for muted jade green silk charmeuse. And whinged about it for days. So my dear, …