All posts tagged: Historical Sew-Fortnightly

Gather Ye Rosebuds CoCo 2017 Gala Gown thedreamstress.com

Gather ye Rosebuds… a 1916 crinoline evening dress

And here it is! My 1916 crinoline revival evening dress: Officially, it’s been dubbed the ‘Gather ye Rosebuds’ dress – I felt I needed to make it before I was too old to get away with this look, it’s trimmed with roses, and there was lots of gathering (my gosh was there so much gathering. I gathered, and gathered, and gathered some more….). Unofficially….it’s the Jellyfish. I assembled all the pieces, put them together, put the dress on, looked at myself, and said “Oh dear, I’ve made a jellyfish!” I have mixed feelings about the Jellyfish. I really enjoyed wearing it. It was very bouncy, and I bounced a lot (lots of people took videos of me bouncing and spinning in it, but so far I’ve only seen one and I can’t figure out how to download it!). And I knew it was far from perfect so I didn’t feel the need to be precious about it. But…I know it’s far (so far…) from perfect. It started out really thought-out and precise and beautifully finished, …

A 1914 Cobwebs evening gown, thedreamstress.com

My CoCo evening dress 2016: A ‘Cobweb’ evening gown of 1914-15

Published by The Dreamstress

While it was tempting to just wear old things for Costume College, and not stress about making new items, it was also tempting to try to make all the things. I compromised by only making one new gown: a 1914-15 evening gown for the Gala Ball. I couldn’t really not make this gown. I have an amazing 1910s metallic lace with a spiderweb and roses pattern* that I wore as my wedding veil, and it’s been sitting in my stash ever since, waiting for the perfect opportunity to be made into a dress. With the theme of the Gala being ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’, using it for a cobweb fairy dress was practically mandatory! 1914-15 was also a shoe-in for a time period. The mid-1910s (1914-19) is pretty much my all-time favourite era, and, having done the Fortnight in 1916 project, a dress of that era seemed more than appropriate. Rather than making a 1916 gown, I decided that something summer-before-the-war, or from the first months of the war, when fancy going-away balls were still …

The 1924 Hula Goddess dress

Published by The Dreamstress

After a bit of modification to my design idea, and some hemming-while-wearing the dress fun, my 1920s green dress is done. I’d originally planned to make the dress entirely out of the amazing green silk, but it was a little overwhelming en-masse and I ended up breaking it up slightly with a shoulder strap and sash of gilt linen (the same stuff I made my silver stays out of, only gilt gold not silver) The design was mostly based on a process of basting things and draping until things looked good. The dress ended up looking like a lot of frocks and sketches from 1923-24: very low waistline, low calf length, asymmetrical draping, low straight-or-asymmetrical neckline. I’m calling it the Hula Goddess dress, because I spent a lot of time dancing around the house in it after my post on hula dancing, and the draping is both very pa’u/sarong/lavalava-y, and rather Grecian. I feel like it’s exactly the dress that a 1920s Hollywood starlet would have worn to a fancy party in Honolulu. A rather …