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

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

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 …