All posts filed under: Sewing

Things I sew – historical and modern

My wedding dress: the fabric

I went wedding dress fabric shopping in the spring and summer of 2005. It was not a good season for bridal fabric. Or even for bridesmaid fabric. Everything was deadly boring. I looked, and looked, and looked. I looked in Wellington. I looked online. I looked in San Francisco. I looked in Oakland. I looked in Palo Alto. New York City was my last resort. So, when I wasn’t visiting museums and taking photos of flowers*, I scoured the fabric district. I’d seen a piece of stonewashed silk charmeuse in Oakland, and I was in love with the fabric (not the colour though – it was bright coral). But there was no stonewashed silk to be found, and the only things that I found that I liked even half as much were over $60 a yard – too much to pay. Finally, digging in a huge pile of rolls in a little tiny designer ends fabric store , I found the holy grain – a roll of palest ivory stonewashed silk charmeuse. It was a …

Vionnet’s 1920s chiton dress – a catch up post

Published by The Dreamstress

I ran out of time to post about the finished Vionnet chiton dress before Pompeii to Paris (though I did post about the initial construction), so I feel it is well time you got a proper catch up. The really fabulous thing about making the chiton dress was that the inspiration frock practically came with a pattern. There was a picture of it laid out flat: And an image of Vionnet’s original design sketch, showing how she envisioned it looking on a model: And finally, an image of the surviving original dress on a mannequin: Between these three images it was very easy to calculate the approximate dimensions of the original dress, and cut out a reasonable replica from vintage kimono crepe: Two hours of picot edging and darning stitch to join the pieces later, I had a dress: It fits me very snugly (very modern, it shows off what a great bottom I have), Isabella the mannequin like a glove, and itsy-bitsy petite Anna in a perfectly period, slightly loose 1920s style. The dress …

Finished project: a Hawaiian quilt.

Published by The Dreamstress

There is clearly something in my temperament that makes me suited for hobbies that most people would consider slightly obsessive and insane,* or at the very least extremely labour intensive. I hand-sew anything I can, create historical clothing that involves massive amounts of engineering, insist on buying my furniture second-hand so that I can take it apart and re-finish or re-cover it with a finish or fabric I like, and finally, make Hawaiian quilts. Hawaiian quilts (at least the proper hand-sewn ones) are quite possible one of the the most labour intensive quilts out there. First a stylised pattern, symmetrical across four quarters and usually representing a plant or something else in nature, is basted and appliqued to the base fabric. Then the top, batting, and bottom fabric are all quilted together with little tiny hand-quilting stitches that mirror the lines of the pattern. Even if I work at it pretty much non-stop, it takes me about 6 months just to make 1 baby quilt. If I have it as a nice hand sewing project …