I was pleased to be able to return to Newport this year for the Greater Boston Vintage Society’s Newport Weekend event! It was a joy to be just a block away from The Breakers, hanging out with friends both new and previously-encountered.
This year my outfits leaned towards the 1950s, which was a fun change. I wore my Fortescue Frock with a sporty-looking coordinating cardigan tied over my shoulders to fit the ‘collegiate’ theme.
The clear blue skies made for toasty weather, but it was reasonably cool in the shade, which was perfect for croquet during the picnic!
Sunday’s outing was to Rose Island, a location that I had not been to before. It was fun to learn about the island’s history! And the breeze on the island made for a very comfortable temperature!
How lovely, to be able to lounge in an Adirondack chair with my feet up and have a charming conversation with a friend while watching the seagulls glide on the breeze!
The birds on Rose Island are quite at home. In fact, most of the island is a preserve for them for most of the year. They had young ones while I was there and they were quite territorial, but I was able to zoom in to get this next photo without getting too close. The fuzzy young gull is cute!
All in all, I greatly enjoyed another lovely summer escape!
I am super belated in posting about this event, but the one benefit of being so slow is that we’ve come full circle back to the appropriate season for these photos! I hope you enjoy recalling this lovely walk with me.
In June of 2024, I attended a 1920s themed Gala Day celebration at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, MA. (More about Gala Day can be read here, on the Rebecca Nurse Homestead site.) It was a beautiful day with sun and blue skies. Not hot, but pleasantly comfortable. And windy!
Hang on to your hats!
One of the parts of the event I enjoyed most was exploring the grounds, which afforded a number of lovely vistas for photos.
Just as with my post about the 2022 Greater Boston Vintage Society Newport Weekend, I’m posting about an event from last summer in the middle of winter. Sometimes it takes awhile to get to posting! Well, as before, late is better than never.
This year the weather was not as cooperative as in the past. It was raining on Saturday, the only full day of the event. Nevertheless, we made the best of it, choosing to still picnic outside, but in the covered areas of the porch.
It was a bit cooler than summer usually is, also due to the rain, so we added hot tea to our picnic spread. Yum!
Who doesn’t carry around a teapot in a picnic basket?
There was a break in the rain long enough for a few outfit photos. For Saturday I chose to wear my 1928 Egyptomania Inspired Dress and American Duchess/Royal Vintage Ginger shoes. The pop of color was nice on the rainy day.
For the Saturday evening ball, I wore my 1927 Blush Sparkle Evening Gown and black American Duchess Seaburies. It’s always neat to wear these shoes in Newport — they are designed based on shoes in the collection of the Newport Historical Society!
On Sunday, I decided to go to a behind-the-scenes tour of The Elms. As with all of the Newport mansions, this one has a grand facade and all sorts of interesting (and expensive!) details to learn about.
For example, the rounded area of greenery (below) actually conceals a sloping driveway to the basement and servants’ entrance. This is where deliveries were dropped off, as well. With the greenery growing on a lattice above this area the family could carry on without needing to see the servants or delivery people come and go.
The servants had very nice quarters on the top floor of the house. They also had access to roof space that ran around the entire house — but of course this was concealed by a parapet. Just as with the servants’ entrance, the family wouldn’t want to see the servants taking leisure time on the roof.
For modern tours, there is a platform that lifts you above the level of the parapet so you can see the view of the grounds and harbor. It’s quite lovely!
Back at the entrance, I was very amused by the shaped trees. They reminded me of mushrooms!
So instead of the usual outfit photos, I chose to take some highlighting the trees and pretending to be a mushroom! The weather had completely changed from the rain the day before! It was warm, and I chose to wear my 1953 Dot Dress with comfy Crocs flats.
In addition to the servants’ area in the basement and on the upper floor, we also toured the boiler room in the house. It’s massive, with multiple boilers! Well, I guess it is a huge house!
Along the lines of the concealed delivery entrance I already shared, this house also has a tunnel that runs from a side street to the boiler room in order to move coal without the family seeing. This is the entrance to the tunnel in the boiler room. Look at the floor! They had ways to turn the carts around and everything!
Finally, after lots of walking around the house and up and down stairs, I finished the trip with a picnic lunch by the water in a new-to-me area in Benton Point State Park. It was lovely, breezy, and the geologic formations in the rocks are beautiful.
And that’s it! After that it was time to head home to await another future adventure.
It’s 2023 now, so that alone is an indication that is post is belated. It will seem even more belated when I share that this event happened in Summer of 2022. Better late than never, though, and I am actually quite excited to share my adventures at this event hosted by the Greater Boston Vintage Society.
To start, a short post sharing some outfits and a brief overview of the weekend’s events. The next post I’ll devote to Newport mansion tour highlights.
The Newport Weekend is a recurring event that takes place in Newport, Rhode Island. In 2022, participants could choose to attend for a single day or stay overnight in the dorms at Salve Regina University. I chose to stay overnight, which allowed for a lengthier stay and therefore more adventures.
On Saturday, I wore my 1925 Blue Coral Dress, a tried and true favorite for hot summer days. Being made of opaque lightweight cotton that doesn’t show wrinkles, it’s an excellent choice for lounging, picnicking, dancing, and being swept about in the occasional breeze. With this dress I wore my Royal Vintage/American Duchess Ginger shoes and 1920s Wide Brim Hat. It’s been awhile since I wore any of these things and the hat, in particular. The large brim is dramatic and enjoyable!
These photos were taken inside and outside the Fairlawn Estate at Salve Regina, which was built in 1852-1853. You can read more about it at the Salve Regina Library site, here.
After various hijinks and shenanigans during the day, I changed into my 1950 Baroness Dress for the evening ball, which I accessorized with sparkly silver jewelry and my silver American Duchess Seabury shoes. I love the dramatic color and massive bow feature on this dress! It was fun to get it out of the closet and wear it again!
Sunday had a bit of picnicking as well as Newport mansion tours. It’s been years since I toured The Breakers, pictured below, so that was fun to do again. The immense expense of Newport ‘cottages’ is jaw dropping, every time. I also chose to visit some of the other mansions that I haven’t visited before. I’ll share photos of those in a separate post.
For now, here’s an outfit photo as though I’m ‘visiting’ The Breakers. I wore my 1930s vintage-inspired Plum Pants with Pointed Pockets, paired with a modern blouse and my Gingers, again. I’ll admit that it was a lot of walking for heels, even comfortable ones… but, they go so well with my outfit that I couldn’t resist!
And that was the weekend! It was fun to see old friends, meet new acquaintances, and make new memories with everyone. Plus, fabulous locations and historical clothes!
Spring may be here now, but I haven’t finished my recounting of winter adventures! I don’t want to wait until next winter for these posts, so I hope you’ll forgive me for being in the wrong season for a bit.
The second day of my 19th century Winter Wonderland Adventure was supposed to include snowshoeing! I haven’t done much snowshoeing in my life, but I did do a little last winter. I was entertained and decided to purchase snowshoes.
Even though there wasn’t tons of snow… I was determined to use the new snowshoes! I thought it would be more fun to wear another warm historical outfit rather than modern clothes (even though the snowshoes are modern!).
I decided on my self-knit 1920 Deauville Sweater, which is acrylic and very warm, as well as a thrifted wool skirt with pleats that looks decidedly vintage to me. The skirt has a surprising mixture of colors in the plaid, including grey, green, blue, yellow, and magenta. The colors are muted enough to go with most things, but the touch of magenta felt like it would tie in with the Deauville Sweater nicely.
These garments were supplemented by modern base layers and fleece leggings. In addition, I wore locally sourced alpaca fiber gloves lined with fleece, modern snow boots, and a felted wool hat I made many years ago when I was learning millinery.
The hat is a nice olive color trimmed in grey. It started life as a derby, with a round crown, but that looks absurd on me, so I squashed in the top to make it look a little more fedora-like. The effect was quite jaunty! I’m very pleased with this first, very belated, hat outing! I hope I find more reasons to wear it!
Our snow shoe path followed along the same route as the sleigh ride the previous day, winding along a river and past the ice skating area. In contrast with the previous day, there was not a flake of snow falling from the sky, just bright sunlight.
It was a beautiful along the river, with rushing water gurgling along and massive chunks of ice thrown up against half submerged rocks and along the banks of bends in the river’s course.
The sunshine was a such a lovely contrast with the light snow of the previous day. It was an excellent adventure. I’m pleased that I managed to use my snowshoes this winter and even more pleased that I got to air out some historical clothes, too!
One of the highlights of Gatsby On The Isles for me last year was running around in my new 1928 green dress and having adventures. That includes playing tennis as well as a lengthy walk and clamber on the rocky back side of the island (photos of tennis are in the Gatsby On The Isles blog post linked above).
This post is going to focus on the rocky ramble part of the adventure. The goal was to document our new clothes (that shouldn’t be surprising!), but it was also just a stunning area to explore and enjoy.
There are many great photos! There are also photos of us taking photos, which is a great behind-the-scenes look, too!
We found this pool high up on the rocks and I found the very angular features of these rocks to be so interesting. As a dabbler in geology, I wonder what process and types of rocks made such angular features.
The pool was a neat place for photos. And photos of the photographer!
I love a good shoe shot. I mentioned this in an earlier post as well, but my American Duchess shoes held up admirably to all of my clambering about on rocks and playing tennis!
Next is one of my favorite silly photos, followed by a more subdued photo in the same location.
To finish things off, here are a few more photos that capture the rock expanse we were exploring as well as all our group in both photographer and sitter action. Thanks for enjoying the adventure with me!
It was super exciting to be able to attend Gatsby On The Isles again last year! There haven’t been many multi-day historical adventures of late, so that made this one extra needed and appreciated!
I’ve loved wearing my 1930s Beach Pajamas to this event over multiple years. They are super comfy and don’t show wrinkles (great for long car and boat rides!). I opted for them again this year but wanted to change them up to create a new outfit. After a look through my closet I decided to try wearing my 1922 silk blouse tucked into the pants for a new take on these old favorites.
I added a decorative head scarf for a bit of a jaunty flair and finished off the bottom of the outfit with my American Duchess Ginger shoes. The scarf is one I’ve had for over 20 years. I used to wear it in the belt loops of my jeans as a decorative belt, I think… I haven’t used it for anything in probably 10 years or so, but I held on to it, thinking that the dusty pink color and gold sheen would be useful for something someday… and it was! I like how it blends the bold color of the pants with the bright white of the blouse.
I might have been slightly distracted from drinking my tea at the clifftop gazebo by the opportunity to take photos (or be in them)… Some with a stereoscope!
Croquet the following morning was also well documented.
The weekend included other opportunities for fun photos, as well. The evening dance had a masquerade theme, for which I turned my 1926 Silver Robe De Style into a star-themed fancy dress outfit. There’s a whole post about the fancy dress inspiration that you can read here.
We also ‘played’ tennis! Or at least, we batted a ball around a bit.
I had no trouble running around in my heels. It was quite fun, actually! I felt very sporty in my Gingers and new 1928 dress!
In addition to playing tennis, we also wandered around the rocky back side of the island in pursuit of stunning photo settings.
We achieved great photos, some alone and some in groups. These are just a few of them… There are are so many fun ones that I’m going to do another post just to share rocky background photos!
My shoes had no trouble on the rocks! I did tread carefully, for safety and so I didn’t bang up my shoes unnecessarily, but I enjoyed proving to myself (as I have before) that one can clamber even in fabulous historical shoes.
It was so nice to have a getaway! And see people! And wear historical clothing!
The theme recommendation for the evening soiree at Gatsby On The Isles earlier this year was a masquerade. I took that to heart and decided to adapt an existing dress in my closet to make it fancy dress. (It turns out that the majority of people who attended didn’t adhere to the guidelines, so I was a bit out of place, but I enjoyed my fancy dress regardless!)
My requirements for this outfit were: to use a dress as a base that was already in my closet, to not cost much, to not take much time, and to have the elements of fancy dress be easily reversible.
I looked through my 20th Century Fancy Dress Pinterest board and settled on the image below as my inspiration. (Unfortunately, I can’t find a source for the image that isn’t Pinterest. If anyone has information, please share.)
I thought the idea of stars would work well with my 1926 Silver Lace Robe de Style. I briefly considered creating the stars myself and then I remembered that I didn’t want this too take too much time and I started researching purchasable stars. I wanted something nice looking but not costly, remember, and I also wanted to stay away from glitter–the shedding! Ugh! While considering various metallic and cardboard style stars I realized that: 1- those may not travel well (I didn’t want bent stars!) and 2- they probably wouldn’t be comfortable to wear. So I started researching felt stars!
I decided on these felt stars. They were a good size, I liked the color, and they weren’t supposed to be too stiff. Not being stiff would be more comfortable to wear and also easier to sew through! I’d considered making garlands of the stars but I figured they would get tangled, so instead I opted to sew the stars directly onto the lace.
I started by placing the stars in a line diagonally across the top of the dress. The goal was to capture the feeling of my inspiration but didn’t feel the need to add as many stars as the drawing has, so I stopped with the one line. I liked the stars hanging from the hem, so I did those next–one star per each dip in the pattern of the lace.
After that I didn’t have many stars left! I used a scrap of metallic knit fabric to make a veil and put a star on each corner. The veil is a square, with one corner turned under, gathered, and stitched to a hair comb.
I also used some black felt scraps to cut a few stars by hand to accent the star at the waist. I thought this might tie in the metallic knit veil and also draw attention to the grey stars on the grey dress!
I added some sparkly shoe clips, pearl bracelets, and sparkly stars for my hair (reused from my 1885 Night Sky Fancy Dress) and the outfit was complete! It pays off to reuse themes for fancy dress, I guess!
I was inspired to make a dress! That seems like quite an accomplishment these days as I’ve been so busy with other things that I haven’t made much for myself this year.
It was summer, you see, and I knew that Gatsby On The Isles was coming up. (I’ve attended in the past, check out the past posts from 2019, 2018, and 2016.)
I have plenty of dresses (and let’s be honest, not many of them have been worn in the last two years or so), but I also had fabric that was waiting to be turned into a dress… So it didn’t take too much self-convincing to decide that the fabric ought to be turned into a dress, right now!
My first idea was to create something like the dress on the bottom right (#2346) in next image, but after making a mockup I realized that I didn’t have enough yardage of my proposed fabric.
Needlework Magazine, March, 1925
I’d bought the fabric thinking I’d make a rather simple 1920s dress, but the dress I’d been pursuing wasn’t quite that–and the length was longer than I had yardage for. So it was back to Pinterest to find another idea. I settled on using the green dress below, another one I’d been eyeing for years, as my inspiration.
My bodice pattern was adapted from my 1925 Blue Coral Dress, to get the general size, in combination with my late 18th century shift, to get the cut on sleeves. The skirt is just a tube made from what was leftover after that. I wanted to get two full widths of 45″ but didn’t have enough, so the skirt is one full width and two additional sections.
I wanted to match the pattern perfectly at the seams, but that ate up too many inches of my circumference so I settled on not matching them–and frankly, you can’t tell! I spent a lot of time making perfect pleats (the print on the fabric makes that pretty easy, actually), but of course they smoothed out as soon as I wore the dress. Oh well!
The dress qualifies for the Historical Sew Monthly Challenge #2
The Roaring 20s: Make something from the 20s (any century) or that somehow incorporates a number in the 20s..
Just the facts:
Fabric/Materials: 2 yds green cotton and 1 yd of teal cotton.
Pattern: Created by me.
Year: 1928.
Notions: Thread.
How historically accurate is it?: 95%. The pattern and construction methods are quite good. The fabrics are a bit stiffer than those that I think would have been used 90 years ago.
Hours to complete: Perhaps 12? I didn’t keep track.
First worn: August 2021.
Total cost: Approximately $9.
This dress is mostly machine sewn. The goal was to entirely machine sew the dress, including attaching and top stitching the trim, but then as I was reaching the end of the sewing process I realized there were a few things that would look nicer with a bit of hand sewing.
Why is this Egyptomaina inspired?
Well, ancient Egypt was all the rage in Europe and America in the 1920s, particularly after Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922. Egyptian motifs were used in Art Deco design elements for furnishings, jewelry, and clothing. So, while not exactly Egyptian… the colors and patterns in my fabrics remind me of Egyptian things: the Nile river, lapis lazuli, the Egyptian lotus flower, and the tops of many ancient Egyptian columns, for example.
Obelisks were often erected in pairs at the entrances to ancient Egyptian temples, so given the Egyptian association of my dress, I wanted to try and get a photo of my dress with the obelisk on the island. The photo is not quite just me and the obelisk, but it will do. (The problem is that the obelisk is so tall that if you’re close to it you can’t tell what it is… but being far enough away to get the full height means that other elements make their way into the photo, too!)
There are lots of additional photos from tromping around looking for good photo opportunities for this dress, so you’ll be seeing more of it and my accompanying adventures in more posts soon!
I’ve picked up a few patterned cotton fabrics over the last few months at my local discount fabric store. (Everything in the store is $3 per yard. Crazy!) I enjoy all of them and want to document their new status here. Hopefully, I can link back to this post when I eventually make garments out of them… This is encouragement to not let them languish in the stash for too long!
First, there is this light blue-ish grey cotton print. The mixture of colors and style of the printing reminds me of fabrics from the 1830s and 1840s. In fact, I used this very fabric to make an 1830s dress for a friend (you saw it in my posts last fall about apple picking). After seeing how wonderfully that dress turned out I decided I needed one of my own. And so… my stash has gained 7 yards of this.
I justify it by the price and the fact that I have very specific plans already. In the spirit of trying out different 1830s sleeve shapes, I want to make a dress from 1836 that has sleeves that are fitted around the upper arms but full around the elbow and down to the wrists.
Second, there is this purple mosaic looking fabric that has an Art Deco vibe. This one doesn’t have a specific plan, but I couldn’t pass up the colors, so I got 1 yard.
The mosaic Art Deco fabric came in four colorways: the purple above, as well as pink, orange, and… lime green! The lime green reminds me of palm fronds and Egyptomania styles.
On its own it’s a bit bright, but I also came across a teal fabric with gold metallic squares on it that I liked but couldn’t think of a use for… until I put it next to the lime green fabric. It helps bring out the blues in the pattern which tones down the lime green a bit. I’m thinking of a short sleeved 1920s summer dress like this using the teal as trim on the lime green.
I’m hoping to get around to the 1830s dress sooner rather than later, but the 1920s dress is lower on the priority list. Unless (maybe) this year brings the ability to reconvene and have 1920s summer events… and then maybe this dress will shoot up the to do list ladder! Ahhh, dreaming!
The Quintessential Clothes Pen 