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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 to participate, a lot more people will do EVERY challenge, and we’ll all be able to devote more time to really researching and making really beautifully made and thought out garments.  I can’t wait to see them!

If you really, really want to do more than 12 challenges, you can always go back and do 2013 or 2014 again!

Delegating & Crowdsourcing ideas

A lot of you suggested delegating, or getting the whole group to decide on everything, and while that sounds like a great idea, anyone who has ever managed a committee (or done group work in school) can tell you that unless you have exactly the right group, it’s way easier to do a lot of things yourself!

(I’m going to put myself out there a little bit and admit that some of the suggestions for getting everyone to do something  would be so much work to organize and coordinate  that I instantly started having mini panic attacks  and had to remind myself that I don’t have to take the  suggestions.)

But there will be a little bit of delegating and a small committee.  Sarah & Elizabeth have been fantastic to work with this year (So fantastic.  Even better than I could possibly have hoped.  Please pop over to their blogs and tell them thank you too!), so I am very, very pleased to have them onboard again next  year.  And we will be getting a few other people onboard this year as FB moderators and to fill other roles.  But it has to stay really small and tight, because me spending all my time answering emails and questions and managing people is way harder and less fun than writing inspiration posts.

How you can help

– Beyond the personal satisfaction of making a beautiful item, I think the biggest thing many of us want is acknowledgement for our work.  So the best possible thing you can do as a HSF participant is to follow links to finished items through the project page comments, and read and leave a comment on peoples blogs, and to comment on photos of finished items in the HSF facebook albums.  This also has the added benefit of making the HSF community even stronger, as you all get to know each other more, and that would be fabulous.

– Feel free to write your own favourites posts.  Anyone is welcome to make lists of things you think are awesome!

-If someone wants to volunteer to assemble  a list of participating blogs, and email it to me in HTML, I’m happy to host it here, but I won’t be compiling the list myself this year.

–  I’m going to write a post at the end of the year asking for participants to leave comments with links to all their finished projects – so we have a list of all the participants.  Please do come back and leave your comment when it comes up!

– I’m sure I’ll think of more, but I don’t want to overwhelm all of us all at once!

Challenges

Unfortunately there will be no democracy at all in challenges this year, because the Fortnightliers Choice takes too much time and energy to coordinate.  Thinking up all the other  challenges for 2014 and writing descriptions was  easy, and took approximately 3% as much time as coordinating the Fortnightliers Choice challenge.  But we will be using lots of the ideas that were suggested for Fortnightliers Choice last year, so you’re all included that way!

And the challenges are meant to be CHALLENGES  – they are meant to push our boundaries as sewers/creators/historians, and push our taste and idea boundaries.  I  learned a lot having to make things I wasn’t keen on in the Sew Weekly, and I learn a lot having to make class samples for items I would never have thought I would wear or make.  One of the things I often learn is that I actually love the item, or am at least pleased I attempted it.

I really believe in the idea of trying things that you don’t like, and usually wouldn’t think to make, and not just staying within a usual, safe groove.  Unless we try things we don’t like, and challenge our ingrained perceptions, we can’t grow as people.  The HSF is meant to encourage all kinds of growth.  So in 2013 and 2014  there was a challenge I haven’t personally been keen on, but that I jump into to keep in the spirit of it, and next year will be no different.  And there will probably be ones next year you don’t like, but hopefully you’ll do them anyway, in the spirit of the HSF!

Facebook vs. Blogs vs. Message Boards.  

The HSF  will not and will never be a Facebook only group/challenge/event/thingumy.

Why not?  First, the FB group takes the most time, and is the least fun for me.  Running my blog is easy, and really rewarding, the FB group is a constant headache as FB changes things, spammers and trolls get in, and people ask the moderators to deal with personal spats.

Second, and far more importantly, the FB format encourages shorter, fluffier conversations, and doesn’t preserve information.  The same questions get asked multiple times, because the old questions, with all the links and information that people have supplied, disappear down the page.  Or a question gets asked, and people keep giving the same answers, or missing clarifications to the questions, because FB has hidden earlier replies.  Blogs are a MUCH better way to provide lasting information and references, and to have extensive, informative posts and really in-depth conversations, and I have seen a lot of that happen on HSF blogs over the last two years (you just have to get away from FB and look for it!).

Although I am frustrated by its limitations, I amm really pleased that the FB message board is so popular, active, and vibrant and I think that’s a great thing.  Thank you everyone who contributes to it!

I love the idea of a HSF message board, but I’ve seen too many historical message boards fade and die, and I’m worried it might do the same.  Unless I could afford to set up a website with its own message board (and 24/7 tech support, so REALLY, REALLY expensive) I’d probably pass.

And finally…

Now that you know there will only be 12, you are all probably wondering what the challenges will be.  Sarah, Elizabeth & I aren’t quite ready to announce them, but they will be out soon.  For now, you can get excited about  January’s challenge.

The first challenge of the year, due by the 31st of Jan, is Foundations: make something that is the foundation of an outfit (however you interpret that).

 

I hope some of you are excited about participating – I’m definitely back to being excited!

Rate the Dress: A visit to Paris, ca 1890

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I showed you a luxurious silk frock inspired by simple folk embroidery.  The scores were all over the place: mad love, complete revulsion.  Quite a few of you expressed doubt that it would look good on most women, which didn’t help  its score.  Overall, the dress came in at 6.9 out of 10 – very close to the 7 that was the most commonly given score.

This week, we’re leaving peasant chic behind, and going very upscale: Paris couturier fashions in the 1890s.  It’s not quite Worth, but this gown reflects the decadence of late 19th fashion that he helped to inspire,  and the cache that his work lent to Parisian fashions.

This gown was purchased by American heiress Cara Leland (nee Rogers) Broughton, either  on  a European tour just before her first marriage, or after she was widowed a year later in 1891, but  before she married (only slightly) upper class Englishman, Urban H Broughton in 1895.  His work as an MP and during WWI led to Cara being given the title of Lady Fairhaven after his death, meaning that Cara is sometimes  used  as an example of a Dollar Princess or a Buccaneer (though only in a fast and loose usage of the terms,  I would contend).

While purchased by Cara, the dress may have been worn  by her older sister Anne.  The restrained black and white colour scheme  means it is possible that the gown was used for the later stages of mourning by Cara, or by Anne, who would have had a much shorter, more relaxed mourning period for her brother-in-law (or either one  could have been in morning for another family member).

While the colour scheme is restrained, the rest of the dress is anything but.  There are lines of lace, ribbon, and bows.  Layers of light frothy cloth and lace.  Texture upon texture.

The entire dress is  quite muted and diffused, until you get to  the unexpectedly bold stripes of the back skirt panel.

The more you look at the dress, the more details there are to find: the way the lines of ribbon keep the tulle flat over the hips, allowing it to escape in gathers below.  The unexpected asymmetry of a few lines of lace on one side of the black and white striped panel.

What do you think of the dress?  Is it an interesting way to do a very simple colour scheme, perhaps for mourning?  Is it the garish vulgarity of nouveau riche that the term ‘Dollar Princess’ usually implied (Cara’s family had been reasonably prominent for generations, so nouveau riche isn’t quite accurate).  Does it say ‘widow seeking exciting new husband!’ or ‘woman with a more interesting story than meets the eye’?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10

A gentleman’s handkerchief (or, the most pitiful HSF item I will make all year)

Published by The Dreamstress

I have finally finishes an item for the HSF Gentlemen challenge (well, actually I finished it on Wed the 3rd), but I have very ambivalent feelings about counting it.

This is my hand sewn, 16th century blackwork embroidered linen handkerchief:

Embroidered handkerchief thedreamstress.com

Only it isn’t.

Why not?  And why am I so hesitant to include it?

Because it is completely and utterly historically inaccurate.

Yes, it’s linen.  And it’s handsewn. And the embroidery uses period stitches, and a motif taken from a period source.  And the lace isn’t too bad as a modern approximation of a late Renaissance lace.

Embroidered handkerchief thedreamstress.com

The handkerchief is, in fact, the perfect example of how you can use period materials, and period techniques, and period inspiration, but end up with something that is just a terrible, un-historical pastiche.

The problem is that I depended on memory rather than checking my sources.  I knew that there were numerous 16th century portraits that show women holding handkerchiefs, some plain, some with blackwork, some with lace (this seems to be most common in Spanish portraits).  I thought I had also seen portraits depicting men holding handkerchiefs.

I thought a handkerchief would be a nice unisex item, and to further masculine-ise mine I picked a traditionally masculine motif: oak leaves (OK, so the really masculine part is the acorn, but I preferred to keep the reference subtle rather than blatant).  Oak leaves are also a nice play on my name,  and every Renaissance artist loves a good name pun.

I found myself with a couple of hours, some spare linen, a print out of some 17th century  blackwork motifs and no access to other sources (it’s a long story).  So I cut out a linen square,  modified a motif to fit my vision, embroidered away, hemmed it, and came home and added the lace, and THEN looked at my sources.

This is when I realised that:

1) A closer inspection of the  portraits I thought were of men holding handkerchiefs reveals that the men are actually holding gloves.  I cannot find a single 16th century depiction of a man holding a handkerchief.

2) Because I was remembering portraits of men holding gloves, my handkerchief is really small (9″ square plus lace): the size of a glove in a man’s  hand, not the size of a 16th century handkerchief based on their size in portraits of women (more like 16″ -18″ square).

3) There don’t seem to be any depictions of handkerchiefs with single blackwork motifs in one corner, instead of full blackwork borders.

Embroidered handkerchief thedreamstress.com

So, I have a item that  may not have been used by a man at all (though logically, they probably did use handkerchiefs), is ridiculously too small for the period, and has a completely un-period application of the motif.

Handsewn?  Yes.  Linen?  Yes?  Blackwork?  Yes.  Period?  No.

The Challenge: #22 Fort-nightliers Choice (Gentlemen)

Fabric:  a 25cm square of linen

Pattern:  I used the really basic introduction to blackwork here, and adapted the oak leaf motif in the top right corner of the second page of motifs from adapted from Shorleykers 1624 A Schole-House for the Needle (the pages are clearly scans from a book.  Anyone know which one?).  Only I adapted it more.

Year:  Was meant to be from sometime  between 1560-1630

Notions:  linen thread, cotton embroidery thread, cotton lace.

How historically accurate is it?:  Let’s face it.  Not, because it wouldn’t make sense in period, despite using period fabric and techniques.

Hours to complete:  2 or 3

First worn:  Not yet.  Not sure what I’m going to do with it.  Maybe actually use it as a handkerchief!

Total cost:  Essentially free, because all the bits were left over from other projects.  At least it was cheap!