All posts tagged: 1910s

Ridiculous adorableness: Wearing History’s 1917 combinations

Wearing History just came out with a new late-teens combination pattern taken directly from a period pattern. Naturally, I was super excited about it because I want to expand my 1910s wardrobe this year. I was even more excited about it when Lauren asked if I would pattern test it. Yes I would! (so yes, I got the pattern for free, and yes, I’m a total Wearing History fangirl, but I wasn’t paid anything for this post, any opinions are totally my own, and if anything, as everyone knows, I tend to be hypercritical of patterns.) The print-out e-version of the pattern was very easy to put together, and everything matched up perfectly. I chose the view with the scooped neck and buttoning-over under-extension (because hey, as long as you are making totally crazy 1910s, underwear, let’s go whole hog!). For my fabric I used an old cotton sheet – unfortunately I got my sheets mixed up at the last minute, and cut one I’d set aside for toiles only, because it was quite worn, …

The 1913 paisley skirt

Published by The Dreamstress

All last week Miss Felicity was helping me with my sewing: making a 1913 skirt for the HSF Paisley & Plaid challenge. We finished it last week Saturday, but my blouse wasn’t done and I couldn’t schedule time for a photoshoot. I took some quick documentary shots on Isabella: For the Paisley & Plaid challenge I’d wanted to use an amazing paisley silk jacquard that I found at Fabric-a-brac a few months back, but I just couldn’t get my ideas to come together into the perfect design, and none of my wilder plaids were speaking to me either. Then, a few weeks before the challenge, I found an amazing paisley twill at The Fabric Warehouse in Wellington. I loved the scattered woodblock inspired design, rather than the more common crowded, swirling Victorian paisley, and while orange isn’t usually a colour I gravitate towards, the dark blood-orange shade is really growing on me. For the pattern I used the little diagram of the ‘Side fastening skirt’ from Thornton’s International System, 1913 which is reproduced in Janet …

Rate the Dress: Winnaretta Singer in checks

Published by The Dreamstress

I anticipated that some of you wouldn’t love the paisley patterned 1860s swiss bodice outfit I posted last week, but was completely unprepared for the levels of dislike, and for what you objected to. I thought you might like the clean, graphic paisley shapes, in contrast to the usually fussy details associated with paisley, but instead you called them “black holes burnt in the skirt” and “amoebas” and “blobs”. And if the paisley didn’t kill it for you, the swiss bodice did. As a less-well endowed woman, I would achieve only the most modest swell above that style of swiss bodice in a corset, but many of you imagined the effect of a more boxom bust and were…distracted. Though some of you did like it, it still only managed a 5.7 out of 10. Since you objected to the overt girlishness of last weeks outfit, I thought I should post something a bit more reserved and masculine. This is Winnaretta Singer, Princess de Polignac, daughter of Isaac Singer (of Singer Sewing Machines fame), one of …