Theresa in all the ruffles
My Frou Frou Francaise is silk taffeta covered in ruffles and lace, and there’s an equally ruffly Marie Mantle to pair with it. What’s not to love?
My Frou Frou Francaise is silk taffeta covered in ruffles and lace, and there’s an equally ruffly Marie Mantle to pair with it. What’s not to love?
I’ve been so uplifted by the response to my post on the climate crisis. In addition to many comments and expressions of support, there has been immediate action. Sewstine has started a group: Costumers for Climate Action, with the goal to use our visibility and voice to help raise environmental awareness and to create change, both as costumers, and in the wider world. We’re working on bigger plans, but to start off, every member has been encouraged to blog or post about the topic this week. While costuming isn’t a huge contributor to climate change in the bigger picture, it could still be more eco friendly as a hobby. We’ve been talking about ways to make it more so, and one of the big things that has come up is re-use. As costumers we feel so much pressure to have a new outfit for every event, and to keep making new things. But, both for the environment, and for all the work that goes into a thing, it’s sad to only wear it once. So …
I went to write a post about how fabulous Theresa looked in the Little Miss Muffet 1910-11 inspired dress at our photoshoot at Otari Wilton’s Bush, and realised that I’ve never done a post about the dresses construction details. So here is a dual-purpose, word-and-image heavy, post of Miss Muffet dress awesomeness! The dress pattern is based on a number of sources: a couple of pattern diagrams published in NZ newspapers in the early 1910s, as well as one in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion. It has a back fastening, the cut-on sleeves that had just become popular in Western fashion, and a two layers skirt. The cut and construction are fairly straightforward**: typical of simpler styles of 1910s lingerie dresses For the back fastening, I used lingerie buttons that face inwards, so no buttons are seen on the outside. A lighter fastening finish, with little hooks and domes/snaps, would have been a more accurate choice of finish. The under-layer of the skirt does fasten with domes/snaps: There is no fastening to the over-layer, though …