HSM #3: Copper Colored 1790s Sash

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I finished a project! It’s small, but I’m very pleased with it.

The project is a sash to be worn with an in-progress 1790s dress. The goal is to be slowly progressing towards an entire 1790s outfit, with all of the appropriate accessories.

I’ve enjoyed making lists of what those accessories might be and getting them cut out and lined up for mindless hand sewing. That way, even when life is busy and I don’t have time to think about a project, I can still make progress and have something to sew, which brings me great joy and a sense of calm.

This project takes its inspiration and instruction from The American Duchess Guide To 18th Century Dressmaking, by Lauren Stowell and Abby Cox.

I’m excited that the sash qualifies for the Historical Sew Monthly Challenge #3, Focus on the Fabric:

Make something in which the fabric colour/ texture/print/material etc. is the central feature of the design.

This fits the challenge in that the sash really isn’t at all about the construction details… The only cuts to the fabric were to make strips, and the only sewing is joining them and finishing the edges. So it really is all about the fabric!

Just the facts:

Fabric/Materials: ½ yard or so orange/gold shot polyester taffeta leftover from a very old project and 2 burgundy tassels.

Pattern: 1790s Sash in the book The American Duchess Guide To 18th Century Dressmaking, by Lauren Stowell and Abby Cox.

Year: c. 1790.

Notions: Thread.

How historically accurate is it?: 90%. Polyester is obviously not historically accurate, but the dimensions and hand sewing method are.

Hours to complete: 5.

First worn: Has not been worn yet.

Total cost: $2 for the tassels and let’s say $.50 for the thread. We’ll count the fabric as free. So, $2.50.

A Glamorous 1950s Outing

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Earlier this year, I was able to attend a Greater Boston Vintage Society event held at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum. I chose to wear my 1955 Evening Dress dress with dramatic accessories to fit the 1950s/1960s Casino Royale theme.

The accessories included long black gloves and my oft-worn black American Duchess Seabury shoes as well as a lustrous pale yellow collet necklace and earring set from In The Long Run Designs. This dress, with my giant fluffy petticoat, is always fun to wear and was particularly enjoyable with these new-to-this outfit accessories.

As you can see, the museum really is just that–not only is there a rotating exhibit where these photos were taken, but there is also a standing exhibit of early 20th century vehicles as well. It’s always a treat to see them and imagine traveling or going for a spin in old car style!

The gallery wall in the photo below shows the sorts of vehicles that are on permanent display, as well as glamorously dressed friends. We didn’t coordinate our outfits, but it certainly looks like we might have!

I chose to take most of my outfit photos in front of a 1956 Ferrari 410 Superamerica Series I Coupe. It matched my dress! And wouldn’t it have been fabulous to have arrived at the event in one of these?

I do enjoy cars, but not enough to have remembered the full name of this one! I took a photo of the information about the car in order to reference, and to provide some extra context.

It was fun, as always, to have a reason to wear fancier-than-usual dress and hang out with friends while listening to great music in an unusual and interesting setting!

Ravenclaw Quidditch Sweater

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This project is an old one that I’ve been meaning to get up on the blog for ages!

I finished this project a ‘few’ years ago, in approximately 2016. It has taken me that long to finally get photos and write about it!

I was inspired by the book Charmed Knits: Projects For Fans Of Harry Potter by Alison Hansel. I used the Quidditch Sweater pattern and chose Ravenclaw colors for my version. (I know, I know, Ravenclaw is only blue and silver in the movies, not the books. But these were the colors of yarn I had on hand, so therefore they are the colors that were used.)

The completed sweater is a bit bulky and very warm, as I used acrylic craft yarn because I had them on hand. The shoulders, especially, remind me a bit of football padding! But for the occasional wear in the middle of winter the shape isn’t too bad.

I had fun making the overall ribbed pattern, as well as the ribbed collar and cuffs. I’m very pleased with how nicely the colors transition.

Same with the collar!

I’m also pleased with how successfully the ribbing changes at the cuffs.

I spent 55 1/4 hours knitting this project over the course of about three months. The front and back each took about 14 hours and each sleeve about 13 hours.

Another Update To The 1933 Dramatic Evening Dress

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I didn’t make a new dress… but I did update an old one! In fact, this is the second round of major updates to this dress! The first round, pictured below, is explained in this past post from 2017.

While the dress with the first round of updates was certainly better than it had been in its initial form, I still wasn’t super pleased with the fit. Despite that, it has come in handy for a number of events and just keeps getting worn. So, for an event late last year I decided to do even more updates to the dress to try to feel happier about how it looks on me.

Here is a rundown of the most recent alterations:

  • Maxed out the hem, using 3 different bits of vintage lace hem tape in various shades of ‘navy’ blue that were gifted to me over the years. It’s so nice to be able to use these gifted vintage finds. I appreciate seeing the prices on the packaging changing over the years!

  • Stiffened the hem of the back velvet drape with horsehair hidden under a facing of leftover velvet scraps (during and after photos, below).

  • Added small horizontal tucks at the sides to try to get the hem to be a little more of an A-line shape.
  • Took in the sides under the arms even more than I had previously and tacked down all of the flapping bits.

  • Added a 1″ belt, made from scraps of the fabric, with a rhinestone buckle at the center to help create more of a 1930s and less of a modern look.
  • Opened center front between the two bust pieces to create a deeper V neckline.
  • Added bra cups, covered with scrap fabric and tacked inside.

  • Added tacks as well as hooks and bars to the back velvet drape to help it hang nicely.

I hope to wear this again later this year and get photos of this second iteration of updates!

HSM #11: c. 1785 Hand Sewn Natural Linen Stays (Of Success!)

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I recently finished up a series of blog posts that document the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a new pair of 18th century stays. Here is the link to the most recent post (and I’ll include a link to all of the posts in the series at the end of this post).

I’m really, really excited that this pair of stays is complete! They are entirely hand sewn, which took quite a bit of time. And, they were a struggle to fit that ended in success. For both of those reasons, I’m excited that these qualify for the HSM Challenge #11: Style Starts At Home:

Make something which would generally be seen only within the household (ex: informal at-home wear, nightwear, undergarments)

How do these fit the challenge? Well, stays are an undergarment that would generally only be seen at home!

Just the facts:

Fabric/Materials: ⅔ yard natural linen for exterior (scraps from another project), 1 ⅓ yards thick/heavy white linen for interlining (scraps from another project), and ½ yard cream linen/cotton blend for lining

Pattern: 1785-1788 Half-Boned Stays from Mandy Barrington’s book Stays and Corsets: Historical Patterns Translated for the Modern Body

Year: c. 1785-1788

Notions: 29 10″-14″ zip ties that I cut to be 3/16″ wide for boning, 2 ½ yards 3/16″ wide natural linen twill tape for seam covering, 4 yards 1/2″ wide natural linen plain weave tape for binding, 3 yards white cotton cord for lacing, 1 yard ¼” wide cotton twill tape for front lacing, 2 yards ¾” wide cream cotton twill tape for straps, regular weight thread, and heavy weight thread

How historically accurate is it?: 90%. The pattern and methods are based on historical examples. The materials are pretty close, though the zip ties and cotton/linen blend aren’t perfect replicas of 18th century materials.

Hours to complete: I only kept track of about 50 hours, but my guess is that I spent at least 70-80 on these stays.

First worn: In May 2023 for photos.

Total cost: Approximately $40.

And, a few more photos: side and back view, as well as a view of the stays folded in half from the inside.

You can read previous posts in this series here:

c. 1785 Stays of Success, Part VII: Conclusion, Reflections, and Resources
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part VI: Finishing Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part V: Middle Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part IV: Early Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part III: The Pattern
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part II: Fitting Update
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part I: Beginnings

c. 1785 Stays Of Success Part VII: Conclusions, Reflections, & Resources

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Did you notice the change in the name of these stays??? I’ve decided to call them the Stays of Success instead of the Stays of Fail!

This is partly to give them a more uplifting name that brings joy instead of disappointment, but also because I finally took photos of them… and then proceeded to wear them around the house for a number of hours because they were actually quite comfortable! Success!

Conclusions and Musings

I want to start by exploring why I originally named this pair of stays the ‘Stays of Fail’. That is because, until very recently, I felt that this attempt at stays was a failure in terms of comfort. The comfort is what I based the original name of them on.

By the time the construction was almost done, I felt slightly better and that they were a (very struggle-y) learning opportunity. After adapting them, I was thinking that ‘Stays of Fail’ maybe should turn into ‘Stays of Learning’ (although isn’t that every project?!?) or maybe just c. 1785 Hand Sewn Natural Linen Stays (but that’s not very exciting!).

Stays of Success is more entertaining!

Reflections On The Process

Would I use the book Stays and Corsets: Historical Patterns Translated for the Modern Body by Mandy Barrington again?

My experience, as I moved forward with the construction process, was that I regularly lamented the focus of the book on modern theatrical methods, as I was aiming to produce historical stays. When I wanted to go back and get detailed information about the materials, construction methods, measurements of bindings, etc. I found that information just wasn’t included. It was especially frustrating when information was just missing–such as the locations of the front eyelets–even on a pattern taken from the original.

At one point, I thought I could get around the problem of lack of historical detail in the book by looking for the online record of the Chertsey stays that the pattern was based on. Clever, I thought! However, I can only find two images of them and it seems that aside from that they aren’t available to view online in full. (The back lacing can be seen here and a front view can be seen by Google image searching ‘Chertsey museum stays’, but clicking through to the museum website doesn’t lead to the image.)

This lack of information is why I heavily relied on Patterns of Fashion 5 (PoF5)–because all of the detailed information I wanted (and more!) is there. (I did have to extrapolate and make decisions based on the information in PoF5 since it is all for similar stays but not for the exact pair that I’ve patterned.)

So, while using this book was a valuable experiment, I don’t think I would be inclined to use it to create another historical support garment for myself. However, I can see the benefit of drafting a pattern with similar proportions for someone who is vastly different than the original pattern size, for theatrical purposes in particular. For that purpose, I wouldn’t be interested in replicating the historical details and so the omissions I mentioned would not be a detriment to the garment I would be intending to produce.

In the end, I’ve learned a lot about what this book can, and can’t, do and that is helpful even if I’ve been a bit frustrated along the way due to my goals being different than what the book is aimed at.

Further Experiments

Unfortunately, one of the fitting problems I encountered might be due to an alteration I made in the mockup to take in the waist (I’m taking ownership of my actions!). This inside photo of the mockup shows the center front and side area alterations I made.

After finishing the stays, I was curious to see how the mockup would fit if I compared it to the finished stays. It turns out that I basically had to add in the width I’d taken out in the mockup when I added my back gusset. Sigh!

In theory, my alterations should have made the mockup slightly smaller than the finished stays with the added gusset, but the odd thing is that the mockup dimensions (with the alterations) are pretty similar to the finished stays (with the back gusset added in). So perhaps the real fabric stay pieces shrunk or wound up being smaller than I thought? Who knows?!? I’m done puzzling on this one!

In The Meantime…

While wrestling with these stays, I decided that I didn’t want my lack of stays to hold me back from making dresses any further and so I decided to start a whole new pair of stays instead off dealing with this pair (at least for a short time).

I held off sharing about them for quite awhile because I wanted to finish the saga of these stays… but eventually I gave up, and at the end of 2022 had great fun sharing the success and construction of my c. 1785 Green Linen Stays.

Resources

This is not comprehensive by any standards, but I thought it might be helpful to collect some links that I’ve found useful for anyone who wants to know more, see other people’s stays, or people who are making stays themselves. (These sites were especially useful for seeing the process when I didn’t have PoF5 on my cutting table!)

You can read previous posts in this series here:

c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part VI: Finishing Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part V: Middle Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part IV: Early Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part III: The Pattern
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part II: Fitting Update
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part I: Beginnings

c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part VI: Finishing Construction Details

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This project was on hiatus for a number of months (the last post about it was in October 2022!), but the time has come to wrap it up!

After the progress made in the last post, there weren’t that many steps left to complete. Yay! Below are details about those steps.

Binding

I used ½” natural linen tape. It is whip stitched onto the right side and then wrapped around to the inside and more roughly whipped. The inside stitches will be covered with the lining, so making them invisible and pretty is less important. Below is a photo of the inside of the stays after the binding was sewn on.

Lining

At this point, the stays were almost done. The lining serves to cover up all of the interior construction. To make it, I laid my stays out wrong side face up (as in the above photo) with my lining fabric on top. I pinned in a few strategic places and then roughly penciled where I wanted the cutting lines to be. Then, I cut the lining pieces out.

Once cut, I pinned the center lining piece in place, then pinned the piece next to it, turning under my raw edges at the places I wanted the seam to be and around the edges. Those edges were all pinned in place and then each edge was whip stitched. Additionally, each tab has a separate, small piece of lining whose edges are also whip stitched in place.

Straps

The truly final step was to add straps! I used ¾” ivory cotton twill tape. Each strap was sewn to the front points of the stays and the short raw end hemmed. A scrap of ¼” twill tape was also sewn on each of the side backs for the wider tape to run through.

Then, I tried on the stays and determined where I needed to place the hooks that the straps would attach to. Below is a photo of one of the straps held in place by the sideways hook. The straps are long enough to wrap over the shoulder, cross in back, and wrap around towards the front to catch on the hooks.

After that, all I had to do was attach the hooks… and… after many years… the stays were finally, finally… finally…. DONE! They were finished in April 2023.

You can read previous posts in this series here:

c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part V: Middle Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part IV: Early Construction Details
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part III: The Pattern
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part II: Fitting Update
c. 1785 Stays (Of Fail), Part I: Beginnings

1875 Reception Dress Photo Shoot

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I was really excited to spend lots of time working on and finally completing this dress during the summer of 2020.

At that time, there was no option of finding a fabulous indoor place to take photos, so I had to make do with the outdoors. Don’t get me wrong, I have lovely photos from that short outing, but they didn’t have as much background ambiance as I was hoping to find, someday.

But last year, I had the opportunity to actually wear this dress for an activity! And I was able to convince friends to take oodles of photos so I could better document the dress in appropriate surroundings for its reception status. So now, I present many photos of this dress.

There are dramatic back views, of course.

And front views showing the bust, waist, hip dimensions I worked very hard at in the patterning stages. This is created/augmented with padding. You can read more about that in this past post.

There are also views trying to show both the front and back. A side front view, if you will. This also captures the hat very well. I wrote a detailed post about making it, which you can read here.

And a few more sitting photos, as well. These are great for showing off the train and the layers that support it (this is my past post about constructing the skirt and this is about the balayeuse that supports the skirt, if you’d like to know more).

It was hard to choose favorites! I’m very pleased to have so many photos that capture the glory of this dress in an appropriate location.

Gilded Age Weekend Portraits

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As I shared in my last post, friends and I planned a historical weekend away that had a Gilded Age theme. Part of the idea was to document some of our older and recently made clothing in a fabulous setting. To that end, I have many photos of our outfits that I would like to share!

To start, some daytime outfits, worn for afternoon tea and amusements.

So much detail! Fabulous fabrics, beautiful trims, eye catching hats and hair ornaments… the list goes on and on!

And to follow that, a few of our evening outfits.

Thanks for appreciating and enjoying these with me!

Gilded Age Weekend Highlights

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Last year, friends and I decided to treat ourselves to a historical weekend away. With a number of bustle (1870s and 1880s) and 1890s dresses languishing in our closets, the chosen theme was the Gilded Age. We planned a very busy weekend of parlour games, afternoon tea and amusements, informal dance practice, and a formal ball.

Regular blog readers already saw a hint of this event in my last post, When The Dress No Longer Fits (1896 Evening Gown), but I have a few more posts to share, as well. Today’s post captures some of the amusing highlights from the various weekend activities.

To start, a behind the scenes shot of partially completed hair for my 1875 dress (which you can see in the photo after the one below). The photo below also shows off My Favorite Winter Things Skirt! Yes, I continue to wear this during the winter. The penguins, polar bears, and foxes participating in winter activities–skiing, ice skating, sledding, etc–continues to bring me amusement and joy.

And here, a still of theatre-adjacent people trying to create an amusing atmosphere while not making absolutely ridiculous faces. It brings me such joy to have well dressed friends!

Friends who also enjoy creative pursuits, such as creating homemade tabletop croquet! Not only is this absolutely adorable, but it’s also playable!

Our afternoon amusements also included a stereoscope.

Here is another view of the lovely ensembles at the ball.

I wore my 1896 dress, as you can see in the photo below. This is a classic for us. Moose pose!

And, to wrap it up, this is the bronze 1896 skirt after being stepped out of. The canvas is so stiff it literally stands up on its own, a fact which I’ve found to be amusing ever since I first made this over 10 years ago.

Thanks for joining me in the adventure!

There are more photos to come… a selection of outfit portraits and better-than-my-backyard documentation of my 1875 Reception Ensemble.