All posts tagged: undergarments

Just a boring old petticoat

One of the problems with my sewing is that I sew A LOT, and not all of it looks particularly interesting and dynamic unless I manage to do a whole photoshoot in it, in a picturesque locale (which, luckily, there are lots of in the Wellington region!). Thing is, photoshoots take a lot of time and planning, and a willing photographer (which, unluckily, Mr D is not often). So I do a bit of self-timed photos, and a lot of mannequin photos. Even with good images, some sewing isn’t that interesting without a really good story, and it’s too easy for too many blog posts to be summed up as: tl:dr – I sewed something and there were a few tiny problems but I fixed them and now I mostly like it. There isn’t a particularly interesting story for this sew. It’s a petticoat suitable for wear under late Victorian and early 1900s garments. It’s a basic 5-gore pattern with a bit of back gathers and a placket closure. It has tucks and a layer …

Mark your calendars!

Published by The Dreamstress

Mark your calendars for Saturday Sept 10th because I’ll be featuring at Wellington’s very popular Dr Sketchy, talking about historical undergarments while my ‘Timeless Beauties’ pose in corsets and bustles. If you aren’t busy ‘Squee’-ing in excitement, you may be wondering “What’s Dr Sketchy?” Dr Sketchy is life drawing for cool people. There are branches all over the world, so in Paris or Tokyo or Topeka (OK, not sure if there is a branch in the last one yet) you can get together with a bunch of other awesome people from all walks of life, in an awesome, totally not boring art school location, and draw even awesome-er models. Wellington’s Dr Sketchy has featured Roller Derby girls, Burlesque dancers, and Mexican wrestlers. And now they are featuring me! And my Timeless Beauties (is that not the best phrase ever!?!) So come along to try your art skills, admire the models, learn a bit about historical undergarments & how they inspired artists from Boucher to Toulouse-Lautrec, listen to some great music, and maybe win a prize!

A quick quilted petticoat for Ninon

Published by The Dreamstress

I think the undergarments for Ninon’s dress are just fated to not be historically accurate. It’s a complete contrast to the dress, which is nitpickingly so. The problem is that there just isn’t enough research and evidence and extent 17th century undergarments, and I’m not willing to put a huge amount of effort into a garment that might not work. So I’m doing quick and dirty prototype undergarments to go with Ninon’s dress, and later, when I’ve worked out all the details, I’ll make proper historically plausible versions of them. For now though, quick and dirty will have to do. So for my quick and dirty skirt supports I made a quilted petticoat. We have lots of examples of quilted 18th century petticoats, and there are quite a few mentions of quilted petticoats in 17th century writings, so the idea is sound even if we don’t know exactly how they were constructed. For my petticoat I used a few metres of yellow polished cotton that I picked up cheap at an op shop (not that …