All posts tagged: Historical Sew-Fortnightly

The HSF Challenge #22: Masquerade

Just in time for Halloween and the biggest costume celebration of the year, the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge # 22, due Monday November 4, is Masquerade. Fancy dresses and Masquerades have been popular for centuries, both as very organised pageants that blended into theatre, and as balls where all organization and constraints were abandoned. Masquerades as pageants were about creating another world, and as balls symbolised an escape from your ordinary life, and the rules of society. In fancy dress, with your face covered by a mask, you could step out of yourself. The Queen had as much responsibility as a peasant girl, a peasant girl (in the right dress) could rub elbows with a queen. In this challenge, be inspired by historical fancy dress and masquerade, go whole-hog in an elaborate allegory (or a hog costume, or a side of bacon costume, because those exist), or keep it simple with just a mask and a domino. Because masquerades were a loosening of the rules, and a step into a fantasy, the Historical Sew Fortnightly …

Announcing: Polly / Oliver!

Published by The Dreamstress

Well, it’s been five years, a lot of fabric, a lot of thread, a lot of buttons, a lot of gold braid, and a bit of moaning and swearing and threatening the garment with dire consequences (“I will DYE you blue. I’ll do it! I swear! You’ll be an abomination unto Nuggan from head to toe. Behave or dye!”) but I have finally finished the whole Polly / Oliver Perks ensemble, and Polly is ready to stand for Borogravia and women’s rights and well-maintained pubs and clean socks everywhere. (well, not quite everywhere, but not just on feet and in the sock drawer and other places you might normally expect to find them). This dress and I have done battle, I lost some skirmishes, but I’ve come out the winner in the end, and I’m rather pleased with it. It’s Borogravia does girlie-military, with lots of gold braid and fitting, meets historically plausible 1880s fancy dress. After seeing the photoshoot images, there are a few places where I need to tack the skirt panels into …

HSF Challenge #21: Green

Published by The Dreamstress

When I introduced the first HSF colour challenge (White) I hinted that there would be a second colour challenge this year, and that it would be a little more challenging. The challenge? Green – from palest spring green through to darkest pine green, and from barely-there eu de nil, to vibrant chartreuse. White, I think, is easy: almost every historical costumer has a number of white items, just because for most periods white would be the standard colour for most underthings. Green might be a little harder. It has been used in most periods, and while it’s never been the pre-eminent dye, redolent of status and riches, it’s often been a very expensive desirable colour. Green, for all that it is the colour of nature, is actually a very hard dye to achieve with natural dyes, and for most of history it took a double dye bath (first yellow weld, and then an over-dye of indigo or woad (which is indigo, but that’s another story) to achieve green. Green was complicated to dye, and has …