All posts filed under: Historical Sew Fortnightly

The ‘Amazon Queen’ pair of bodies

Despite being a self-confessed magpie, I’ve gone for something quite subtle for the ‘All that Glitters’ HSF challenge: a pair of bodies (Elizabethan stays/corset) in gilt linen. The linen is the same fabric that I used for my 1770s silver linen stays, because I have a LOT of that linen, and couldn’t find a single other piece of fabric in stash that said ‘make me into a pair of bodies’.  Sometimes you just have to listen to the fabric.  So now I own two historical corsets in gilt linen. Gilt linen is a slightly dubious fabric choice for a  16th c.  pair of bodies, but I’ve made these as a very nice working toile (I’ve even, gasp.shock.horror, used metal grommets for the back lacing), so I’m OK with a bit of inaccuracy.  And they do look rather smashing in it! When I tried the mostly-completed pair of bodies on I realised that 1) I actually really love them (I had extreme doubts about Elizabethan fashion in the first place, and the un-boned bust sections of …

The Hepburn in Hakatere trousers

I’m developing an awful habit of finishing Historical Sew Fortnightly challenges on time, and then running around like a mad chicken  for two weeks before I have the opportunity  to photograph them. Case in point: my 1940s inspired ‘Hepburn in Hakatere’ trousers, for #23, the Modern History challenge. I put the last stitch in these trousers the evening of Saturday  the 14th of December, after starting them in April and abandoning them for 8 months in my PHd pile when the weather got too chilly for light cotton trousers, and I ran out of steam. I wore them on Sunday (to great admiration and aplomb) for an end-of-year Baha’i children’s class barbecue, followed by the Wellington Sewing Bloggers it-was-supposed-to-be-a-picnic-but-the-weather-packed-in-at-the-critical-moment (and then of course fined up when it was too late to change) afternoon tea at my house. I had intended to get photos at either or both events, but I  did the running-around-like-a-chicken thing instead.  Farmyard avian insanity is also what happened to the rest of the week while I wrapped up my classes for …

The Historical Sew Monthly 2015: The Challenges

The Historical Sew Fortnightly Monthly 2015 is on!  I’ve been incredibly busy this week, so I’m a little behind on getting answers to all the bits and responding to people who offered help.  I’ll be putting up  a HSF ’15 page with all the information (other than being monthly the main guidelines  of the HSF will remain basically as they were last year) up in the next few days, and a button out for you to pin on your own blog if you have one. I did promise the challenges, so without further ado  here they are: January –  Foundations:  make something that is the foundation of a period outfit. February –  Colour Challenge Blue: Make an item that features blue, in any shade from azure to zaffre. March – Stashbusting:  Make something using only fabric, patterns, trims & notions that you already have in stash. April  – War & Peace: the extremes of conflict and long periods of peacetime both influence what people wear.  Make something that shows the effects of war, or of …