2019 is the 150th anniversary of Wellington’s founding as a city, and there will be events across the year to commemorate the anniversary.
These launched off with a Victorian themed picnic at the Wellington Botanical Gardens in late January.
If you were really trying to focus on the anniversary, that would have been clothes for 1869, but hoopskirts and bustles on a hot midsummers day? To sit on the ground on a picnic blanket? No thank you!
My original plan was to wear clothes from 1919, as if I were at the 50th anniversary picnic, but the dress I was working on turned out a little too obscure – not obviously historical, just sort of…strange if you didn’t know what you were looking.
So I went for Edwardian, which is what what the advertising for the picnic showed anyway: and gave me a chance to wear my purple Scroop Fantail Skirt (the pattern is currently not available for sale, as I update the size range, but it will be back on sale shortly).
We had quite a nice time, sitting in the shade and drinking cordial and eating strawberries and enjoying the string music the Gardens put on. We liked the Punch and Judy show they staged significantly less…
Last week’s Rate the Dress was made up in an extremely classic blue and white stripe – a timeless colour combination and pattern. This week I’ve gone for something decidedly more daring, with a tomato red and fuchsia pairing that few decades would presume to attempt.
The blue and white stripe of last week’s Rate the Dress was so classic I was pretty sure no one would actually hate it – and as I predicted, the the ratings were more focused on the few things that weren’t perfect, or the fact that it was lovely but couldn’t really be counted as memorable or spectacular, than on the [amusing but] terrible comparisons that some dresses attract.
The Total: 8.8 out of 10
It really pleases me that last week was 7.9 and this week is 8.8. It just feels like balance has been achieved in the universe…
This week: a 1920s number in tomato red and fuchsia with gold
The 1920s were a daring era for fashion, carrying the style innovations of the 1910s to bold extremes, including the bright colours and improbable hue pairings that started with early 1910s Ballet Russes and ‘exotic’ inspired designs. This dress, which ties tomato red and fuchsia purple together with gold designs that look like they were taken from the margins of illuminated manuscripts, is one such example:
The gold patterning is not the only medieval inspired element to this dress. There is something distinctly tabard or surcote-y about the bold shoulder seam, and the wide sleeves give a nod to the costumes of angels in early Renaissance art:
There is something quite theatrical, almost costume-y about the dress, but at the same time nothing to specifically suggest it’s not exactly what the museum identifies it as: an evening dress
What do you make of the unusual colour combination and equally unusual motif treatment?
Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10
A reminder about rating — feel free to be critical if you don’t like a thing, but make sure that your comments aren’t actually insulting to those who do like a garment. Our different tastes are what make Rate the Dress so interesting. It’s no fun when a comment implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with it, or who would wear a garment, is totally lacking in taste.
(as usual, nothing more complicated than a .5. I also hugely appreciate it if you only do one rating, and set it on a line at the very end of your comment, so I can find it! And 0 is not on a scale of 1 to 10. Thanks in advance!)
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a life catch-up post. So long, that some of the things I’ve been collecting for it feel like they happened years ago… I’m pretty sure it’s only been months, but life is moving very fast for me!
So what have I been up to?
1. Lots of visits to Zealandia
My lovely in-laws gave us annual passes to Zealandia for Christmas (best present ever) and I’ve been blissfully indulging my love of/obsession with New Zealand’s native birds at every possible opportunity.
Mr D is not quite so obsessed with birds, but he’s delighted to go along with any activity that doesn’t involve costumes, movies with subtitles, or the weekend vege markets, so he’s been loving the weekly (or more) trips to Zealandia.
Zealandia has been such a feature of our lives this summer that I’m probably going to gift/inflict you with a post all about it, so I’ll try to restrain myself from posting 1000 pictures in this one.
The photo above is a hihi (stitchbird) – a bird which has the distinction of having the best Maori AND English names!
Hihi are extremely rare nectar eating birds that were driven to extinction on the main islands of NZ, but have been reintroduced through sanctuaries like Zealandia.
2. Re-upholstering some chairs
Our dining room table had chairs that were upholstered in this exceedingly attractive 1980s peach fabric:
So chic…
Re-doing them had been on my to-do list ever since we bought the table, but it never quite made it to the top priority. In mid December I decided it was something that was going to be done before the end of 2018 (or else), and I spent a day with the staple puller and the stapler.
And now I have a set of fun, significantly more attractive, chairs:
Every chair has a different fabric, but they all coordinate.
3. A bit of baking
Finding the time to bake is a huge indulgence for me. Mr D isn’t a baked goods fan, so if I make something it’s either to bestow on friends or students (or friends/students) or to try to work my way through on my own. And I’m time poor, so any time I manage to make something to take somewhere is a huge achievement.
But one place where I always try to make time to bake is peach season. Peach kuchen made from the Tassajara baking book recipe is one of my all time favourite desserts (though it’s easily eclipsed by mango kuchen, its ‘we live in Hawai’i and you can’t buy peaches but we have mangoes coming out of our ears’ cousin’).
Yummm…. Summer in a slice of pie.
4. Sewing!
I’ve done so much modern wardrobe sewing I haven’t blogged, in addition to the historical sewing I have blogged, and the Scroop Patterns stuff you’ve seen as model samples, etc.
I’ve made jeans:
I’ve tried both the Closet Case Ginger Jeans (pretty good pattern, but the grainline is off and makes the legs twist on most people, and the super perky and handholdy instructions aren’t my cup of tea) and the Cashmerette Jeans (great pattern at most sizes, but the grading is off in the pear fit in the smallest 3 sizes, and I slightly prefer the Ginger’s sewing techniques)
And swimsuits:
It’s been extremely warm in Wellington this summer (nice in a very short term way, extremely scary in a long term way) and I’ve been swimming a couple of times a week, so made a couple of swimsuits. I’ll probably do a blog review on those.
And I’ve made a couple of dresses, and a couple of skirts, and a couple of T-shirts, and a couple of blouses, and some pants, and probably more…
But it hasn’t all been work, because I’ve also been:
5. Watching the world’s most spectacular sunset
I’m from Hawai’i, and live in New Zealand, so I have seen some pretty amazing sunsets over the years. This one, however, was beyond special.
We went for a walk around the coast, and it just got better and better as we walked, finishing in a blaze of striped clouds, with the South Island glowing purple in the distance. Wonderful.
Sunset on the west coast of Wellington thedreamstress.com