All posts tagged: WWI

Working on the Wearing History 1916 Suit

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been plugging away on the Wearing History 1916 Suit. It’s going pretty slowly, because I’ve got a lot else on, but progress is being made. For one thing, the skirt is done! Actually, it’s been done for over a week, but I’ve been too busy/sick to blog about it, and haven’t managed to wear it or take proper photos yet. If you are making the full suit, the Wearing History pattern prints out at a whopping 100 A4 pages of pattern pieces – plus instructions. Worth it though: look how fabulous it is! For my fabric, I polled people on The Dreamstress FB page on fabric choices, and settled on a lightweight worsted wool in black with charcoal stripes (the other options were a black & white rayon check and a brown linen). Then I settled down to tape pages together. And tape. And tape. I rather like taping print-at-home patterns. It’s quite meditative, and you get into a rhythm. Here is how I do it, if you …

An ersatz Dazzle swimsuit

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve wanted to make a Dazzle swimsuit for ages, but it’s never fit into my sewing schedule. When I wrote the dazzle terminology post last week the old temptation rose again, but I quashed it firmly. I’ve got so much to do, and no reason to make one. And then, the very day I published the Dazzle post, I walked past an op-shop (I wasn’t even going to go in! I was being very good!) and there, hanging in the window, was an extremely dazzling black and white playsuit. In rayon crepe. With a double strap arrangement that you see on late 1910s frocks, and which I’ve also been obsessing over. For $4.50. By Glassons, of all people (Glassons does cheap, trendy teenager clothing). And, ummm, of course it came home with me! It’s an XS, which means it fits me like a 1920s swimsuit, not a 2015 playsuit. This also means I would never, ever, ever wear it in public just as it is. But…. There is a precedent for dazzle swimsuit stockings: So, …

Poppies for young women

Published by The Dreamstress

Today is ANZAC day, the anniversary of the first major NZ and AU action during WWI. Everywhere across New Zealand, Australia, and some of the rest of the Pacific, people will have little poppies pinned to their lapels in memory of those who served, and those who dies. Remember what happened, so that we never again let ourselves be led into a situation where such a tragic loss of life becomes inevitable.