All posts tagged: 1910s

The Anzac Day Wearing History 1916 skirt

April 25, Anzac Day, honouring anyone who has served in New Zealand’s armed forces, is probably New Zealand’s most widely commemorated holiday. Waitangi Day is just awkward and slightly anger or guilt inducing. Almost everyone does something for Christmas, but New Zealand is a mainly secular nation, and few people really celebrate or commemorate it. Boxing Day is an excuse for sales, Guy Fawkes an excuse for fireworks, and New Years an excuse to get drunk (or set off fireworks – hopefully not both!). Easter is just a really awesomely long weekend – with the benefit or drawback of closed shops, depending on your views. But Anzac Day is marked by almost everyone I know, regardless of their religion, politics, ethnicity, or age. Every news presenter, shop assistant, and person on the street wears a poppy, and almost everyone I know has, at least once, gotten up to go to the dawn service, if they don’t make an annual event of it. Sporting events in New Zealand and Australia have moments of silence before the …

Working on the Wearing History 1916 Suit

Published by The Dreamstress

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been plugging away on the Wearing History 1916 Suit. It’s going pretty slowly, because I’ve got a lot else on, but progress is being made. For one thing, the skirt is done! Actually, it’s been done for over a week, but I’ve been too busy/sick to blog about it, and haven’t managed to wear it or take proper photos yet. If you are making the full suit, the Wearing History pattern prints out at a whopping 100 A4 pages of pattern pieces – plus instructions. Worth it though: look how fabulous it is! For my fabric, I polled people on The Dreamstress FB page on fabric choices, and settled on a lightweight worsted wool in black with charcoal stripes (the other options were a black & white rayon check and a brown linen). Then I settled down to tape pages together. And tape. And tape. I rather like taping print-at-home patterns. It’s quite meditative, and you get into a rhythm. Here is how I do it, if you …

Rate the Dress: Blue & White chiffon & lace

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I showed you something a bit more recent than the usual Rate the Dress fare: a 1970s avante garde swimsuit. It, uh, mostly wasn’t liked. At all. Which wasn’t actually a surprise. In fact, I was surprised and delighted by those of you who did like it (and by a certain delicious rant – who doesn’t like a good rant?). Despite a handful of enthusiastic likes, it only managed 4.3 out of 10, which is one of the lowest scores ever. In addition to not liking it, many of you thought it was just for lounging by the pool, not getting in the pool. You’re probably technically right that it was more of a sunning suit than actual swimming suit, but I both liked it, and would like to see it in the water. There is a tradition in Hawaii of swimming in muu’muu, and there is a Hawaiian artist who paints lovely dreamy underwater images of girls in muu’muu swimming (sadly I cannot recall the name of the artist, and google searches …