All posts filed under: Historical Sew Fortnightly

A very fancy farthingale

One of my goals this year was to costume in a period I haven’t worked in before. I wanted to do 14th century, but so far I have not found the right fabric for anything but the shift. With the year winding up, I decided to think about other periods, and remembered Miranda’s farthingale from the Innovations challenge back in January. I have done 16th c, but only Flemish working class, and that was over a decade ago. Formal English or French Elizabethan is a whole new ballgame! But I own Arnold’s 16thc pattern book, and Elizabethan is a period with LOTS of resources, so I though I’d give it a try. The place to start, of course, is undergarments, and a rummage in my stash revealed that I had exactly the right fabric for a farthingale: a spectacular acetate (or one of the other manufactured natural fibres) jacquard in dark jade green. Not a natural fibre, but exactly the right amount of fabric for a farthingale, and I’m willing to be a little inaccurate …

The HS(not)F 2015 – it’s on!

Published by The Dreamstress

Thank you all for your input on the HSF ’14 and what you want from the HSF ’15. I really appreciated your feedback, insights, and (most of all), encouragement. I’m thrilled that so many of you are getting so much out of the Historical Sew Fortnightly, and that so many of you would like it to continue in some form next year. I’ve really thought about the HSF, what I want, what you want, and what is feasible. So here is what is going to happen next year, and a response to a lot of the topics that got brought up (since, much as I would like to answer all 100+ comments, that definitely falls in the not-feasible basket!) There will be a Historical Sew Fortnightly 2015, but it will not be the HSF – we’re cutting the challenges down from 24 to 12, so 2015 will be the year of the Historical Sew Monthly, with challenges due on the last day of every month. Hopefully that means a lot more people will be able …

The HSF ’14: Favourites for Challenges 13-16

Published by The Dreamstress

Thank you all for your input on a HSF ’15 – I really appreciated getting your input, and am just mulling through ideas and figuring things out. You’ll hear something from me soon! For now, here is the long overdue favourites post for Challenges 13-16. I do these posts to highlight submissions that really inspired me, to show of pieces that you may have missed yourself, and to make it easier for those of you not on FB to see more of the creations. It’s always really hard to pick, but I choose items that I think best demonstrate the goals of the Historical Sew Fortnightly; the quest to explore history, raise our skill levels and standard, stretch ourselves (and actually finish items); and the spirit of the individual challenge. Entries without photos link to blog posts, and entries with photos come from Facebook. Follow the links to the blog posts for pretty, pretty pictures and the full story. To see the full facebook albums, you’ll need to belong to the Historical Sew Fortnightly …