All posts filed under: Miscellenia

Five last-minute historical Halloween costumes

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Halloween, of course! If you are still in search of inspiration, here are five fabulous and ridiculous historical costumes that really wouldn’t be that hard to make. #5 Candy Girl: To make: 1) Take any outfit. 2) Staple candy all over it. 3) Be most popular person at the party! #4 Wild Men There is a long tradition of wild men costumes, and they are really easy to make: just glue grass and leaves all over a onsie. Historical, awesome, and scary. Just try not to light yourself on fire, OK? A more modern (and less flammable) would be to go as a head of cabbage: just stick cabbage leaves to yourself: #3 The Scrap Album: Scrap Albums were fashionable throughout the later 19th century, and were just albums filled with cutouts of pretty images – they were so popular they could could buy specifically made pre-cut out images in thousands of themes. I LOVE that this fancy dress actually is a scrap album, with real scrap …

Seven little looks into my life

Published by The Dreamstress

Here are seven things I’ve been doing over the last week and a bit: 1. Organising A couple of friends and I spent a delightful day sorting my pattern stash and sorting it into 6 big boxes. I still need two more boxes, one for menswear and one for my printed-out patterns, but it certainly feels tidier! Of course, as soon as we did this I realised I’d missed an entire box of 1940s patterns! That’s OK, I can sort them and add in these two latest additions to the stash while I do so. 2. Sewing Yes! Lots of it! I’ve been demolishing the UFO pile, but I have also been working on a historical project: I know. It is not exactly exciting at the moment. It will get there. 3. Celebrating spring My bluebells and rock irises are well up, and the full irises are just starting. I can just tell that my first two tulips are going to be yellow and coral, respectively, but the freesias are still just masses of …

Five for Friday: Pet Peeves

Published by The Dreamstress

A few months ago I shared five things I love (that many people find weird), which started quite an interesting discussion. And yay, I discovered lots of other people who like sardines! (mmmm…sardines…and cardboard crackers….) This week I thought I’d share five of my pet peeves with you: completely random things that I find inordinately annoying/cringe worthy/disgusting: 1) Orange juice. OK, not orange juice as a whole. Orange juice is fine if A) it’s being served with breakfast, or B) you’re under 10 years old. Even then, it’s not the best juice. Orange juice, however, is NOT fine if you’re at a black tie event and everyone else is walking around with champagne and you ask for something non-alcoholic and they say “Oh, we have orange juice.” Seriously? Orange juice? Is it before noon? Am I five years old? No? Then why are you offering me orange juice? Orange juice is brightly coloured (thus making it super obvious you are not drinking, which has tons of drawbacks), has pulp, and is incredibly acidic, making …