I’ll be doing favourites posts every four challenges this year, which highlight the creations I feel best captured the spirit of the challenge, but I’m going to do a special post all about the Innovations challenge, because I loved what came out of that challenge so much. Of every Challenge we’ve ever had in the HSF, this was my favourite by far.  I was so impressed and inspired by all the research.  I learned so much from reading all the blog posts about it, and seeing the way that people considered innovations.  It’s all very well to create pretty things fortnight after fortnight: this challenge let us show off the understanding behind all of the items.  I can’t thank all the participants enough for entering into the spirit of the challenge, for researching, considering, and bringing a multitude of fascinating innovations to light through their creations.  I’m really hoping that the research and investigation doesn’t stop with this challenge, but continues on throughout the HSF 2014! Here are five of my favourite Challenge posts for …

The Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge #9, due Thur 15 May, is Black and White.  For this challenge you can make anything in black, or anything in white (and cream, ivory etc.), or (best of all) something in black and white. I’ll let you find your own black or white inspiration (though my white inspiration post from last year might be a good starting point), and will just share a few of my favourite historical costumes in black and white. This 14th century illustration shows a strikingly patterned gown in black and white on the far left (2nd from the left is pretty spectacular too!). There are other versions of the image that show the gown in gold and white, but as there are extent woodblock-printed fabrics from a similar period in black and white, it’s plausible that the gown might have been made up in black and white: 15th century Netherlandish artists such as Hans Memling made frequent use of the visual impact of black and white, as in this panel from a donor triptych: …

I’m a wee bit behind posting challenge pages for the HSF, because I got rather stumped about what to post for Challenge #8, due Thur May 1: UFOs & PHDs.  It’s not like you need inspiration: you either have that stack of UFOs & PHDs, or don’t! In sewing parlance, a UFO is an Un-Finished Project, and a PHD is a Project Half Done. I prefer the term PHD: it’s so much more positive than UFO: it’s the ‘glass half full’ speak of sewing, and besides, it sounds posher!  And who doesn’t enjoy saying that they have multiple PHDs? 😉 I certainly have A LOT of PHDs – far more than I would like to. I’ve got Emily’s Dress (all those bloody pintucks…): And the Frou Frou francaise, which is what I plan to do. And the Chinoiserie ensemble is only half done, so technically it’s a PHD… And I need to do some work on the Tea Gown, which makes it kind of a PHD (and man, is making a portfolio for that long …