All posts filed under: Textiles & Costume

Spring Styles for Blouses & Skirts, Feb 1928

Spring is almost over here in the Southern Hemisphere, and winter is well on the way for you in the Northern Hemisphere, but I’m still in love with these spring styles from the February 1928 issue of The Women’s Magazine. This is really the moment when vintage fashions become totally wearable in a modern sense. You could wear any one of these skirts or blouses to the office in NZ today, and no one would blink an eye. I’m particularly loving 5007, and 9898, because I have a little obsession with 1910s and 20s waistcoat-blouses. Also of interest is the fabrics they recommend. Both ‘Rigosil’ and ‘Delysia’ were early rayon fabrics.

A lucky sixpence hussif (and what are hussuf or housewives)

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I stopped by one of my favourite op-shops between errands, and had a rummage in their $3 fill-a-bag fabric bin. I didn’t find any fabric, but I did find something even better. This: This is a hussif, hussuf, hussy, huswif, hussive or housewife (so, basically any way you can spell a contraction of housewife). A hussuf is a fabric case for carrying all your sewing implements. The most common form is a long rectangle of padded fabric that rolls up into a small packet, so that you can easily take all your sewing bits with you everywhere. A 1910s dictionary describes it as: Husszf, that is, house-wife; a roll of flannel with a pin-cushion attached, used for the purpose of holding pins, needles, and thread The term housewife (and its derivatives) for a sewing kit dates back to the mid-18th century. The many variants of housewife are theorised to have originated in the regional dialect of Lancashire: during the 18th and 19th century the port of Lancaster was one of the busiest in …

Terminology: What are Bizarre silks?

Published by The Dreamstress

Bizarre silks are silk fabrics (obviously) that were fashionable in Europe from the mid 1690s to the 1720s. They featured large, asymmetrical designs, vivid colours, fantastical floral designs which were Oriental in inspiration, and an emphasis on the diagonal ‘serpentine line’ which would later come to characterise the Rococo style. The first bizarre silks were woven in Lyons, France, but by the early 1700s they were also being made in Spitalfelds, England, and to a lesser extent in Italy. The name ‘Bizarre Silks’ is not period – it wasn’t used until 1957 when art historian Dr. Vilhelm Sloman coined the term to describe the style. Dr Sloman believed that bizarre silks were made in India and imported into Europe, but subsequent scholarship has made it clear that they were exclusively produced in Europe. According to my research, there is no particular set of term that was used in the late 17th & 18th centuries for the fabric design – they might be described as Oriental, but generally they were just the popular style, and no …