The Dreamstress

One year, a challenge every fortnight, and at the end of it, 26 fabulous historical garments.

How it works:

Every fortnight in 2013 I’ll post a themed challenge and we’ll each sew (or knit, or crochet, or tatt, or embroider, or whatever it is you call making a hat, or otherwise create) a historical garment or accessory that fits the theme.

I’ll post the challenges 7 ahead, so that you have plenty of time to plan and work on more elaborate challenges. You can do as many or as few of the challenges you want — I’ll be trying my best to do all 26, but if you can only do 6, that’s fine.

For the purpose of the Historical Sew Fortnightly, ‘historical’ means 75 years or older, so pre 1938.

Your item can be as basic or elaborate as you want, from a simple fichu to fill in the neckline of a gown, to a full ensemble from the undergarments outward: whatever you need and can can handle time and skill-wise.

I’m hoping that the HSF encourages research and historical accuracy, but (unless that is the nature of the challenge), but the level of accuracy is really up to you, your desires, skills, and your resources.

The dates for the challenges are the dates that the challenge is due (post it anytime in the fortnight after).  You can start your project as early as you need to get it done in time – it doesn’t have to be done in the two weeks.

Feel free to blog about the process of making your project, or use an UFO that you have already blogged about.

How to participate:

• Join the Historical Sew Fortnightly group on Facebook. The challenges are listed as events, and you can choose to ‘attend’ them, chat with other attendees, get ideas, encouragement, and work through difficulties. Then, when your item is done, you can post photos in the album for each challenge, give a description, and link to an online photo album or a blog post if you have one.

Or…

• Participate through the Historical Sew Fortnightly page  on my blog. There will be a page for each challenge as they come up. I’ll post inspiration for the challenge, perhaps a tutorial or links to helpful sites, and, when the challenge comes due, my creation.You can leave a comment on the page with links to your blog post or online photo album to show off your creation. I’ll pick my favourite interpretation of each challenge to feature on my blog each fortnight.

  Grab the button below or the slightly larger version in my sidebar, and post it in your sidebar.  Be sure to link it to the Historical Sew Fortnightly page.  With WordPress your html will look like this:

  <a href=” https://thedreamstress.com/the-historical-sew-fortnightly/”><img src=”https://thedreamstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HSFsm.jpg” ></a>  (unless, of course, you save the image to your computer and re-upload it, in which case your image address will look different)

The goals:

• To encourage collaborations and interactions in the historical costuming community;
• To encourage all of us to do more historical research, to improve our standards of historical accuracy, and to expand our historical sewing skills;
• To provide excuses to sew amazing garments from throughout history;
• To provide incentive to photograph these garments so they can be shared and appreciated;
• And most of all…
• To have fun!