All posts tagged: Historical Sew-Fortnightly

Five for Friday: HSF favourites so far

When I first posted the Historical Sew Fortnightly I promised to post my favourite item for each challenge. And then the HSF got so big that I’ve spent so much more time than I had planned on organising and administering it and I ran out of time to post about favourites. To make this up, here is a quick round up of my favourites for the first 5 challenges (plus a bonus for the bonus challenge). It was REALLY hard to pick favourites – there are so many amazing things that have been produced, and such a range of periods, experience levels, and personal taste. I’ve chosen the items I thought best represent the spirit of the Historical Sew Fortnightly; the quest to explore history, raise our skill levels and standard, stretch ourselves (or sometimes just get something done, rather than just procrastinating); and the spirit of the individual challenge. Inevitably there are some projects that I adored that I just haven’t been able to post about. I didn’t purposely try to pick different seamstresses …

Striped and pleated petticoat details

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve already shown you all the glamour shots of my new subtly-striped 1780s petticoat, but I thought some of you might be interested in the construction details. For the overall look of my petticoat I was inspired by fashion plates like this one from 1778: Obviously my petticoat doesn’t match my pet-en-l’aire, and I’ve made my ruffle a little narrower – less than 1/3 of the petticoat length, rather than almost 1/2 of the length, but I’m comfortable with the overall look. The skirt is made from three 36″ long widths of 45″ wide cotton muslin with a subtle self-stripe in bamboo. The widths are sewn together with a 10″ long gap for the skirt opening left unstitched at the top of one seam. Sewn together, I had 132″ of skirt to gather in to my waistband. This is a little too much width for an 18th century petticoat – most examples that I can find are no more than 112″ wide, and if I did it again I’d probably omit that extra 20″. To …

The ‘brown’ linen shift

Published by The Dreamstress

After many, many hours of hand-sewing, and a stupid mistake and far too much angst, my 5th proper Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge: Peasants & Pioneers, is done. I was inspired to make an 18th century brown linen (brown indicating unbleached, rather than dyed brown) shift when I scored a 1.3m length of enzyme washed linen in the $5 end-of-roll bin at Fabric Warehouse. At first I was disappointed that it wasn’t white, and then a helpful blog follower reminded me that brown linen was used to make lower-class shifts throughout the 18th century. I did a bunch more research on brown linen (which I will be sharing with you on Thursday), and made up my shift: I didn’t have enough fabric to make up a mid-18th century style shift, so I went for late 18th century, when shifts became narrower. While they are still slightly puffed, late 18th century sleeves also become narrower, with widths the same as their length. Since I had such lovely fabric to work with, I decided to go the whole …