The Industrious Lady

Recovering a Modern Parasol So next to velvet, moire is my favorite fabric. And this lovely stuff showed up  at a local thrift store and just had to come home with me. Now this would be considered more of a bengaline than a moire but for sake of post turkey coma and commonly used terminology, any fabric with a "wood grain" pattern hot rolled into the fabric is normally called moire by the modern humans and thus will be dubbed in this article. So I cut a hole in my fabric for the top spoke, stuck it on the middle spoke, and pinched the excess fabric and draped it. Drew a chalk line with tailor's chalk and stuck it through the machine. Through sheer luck, I was able to get the seam lines to basically match up with the ribs so it looked pretty good. I then pinned the raw edges up underneath to do a raw hem. Probably should have ironed this. Part of any good creative process is staring at you creation for a good 2 hours trying to decide what to fix and what imperfections you ...

Mid 1870's Trained Petticoat  So what is a girl to do when she needs both a balayeuse and a petticoat for a mid 1870's ensemble? Why the handy dandy trained petticoat! There is a great source on facebook called 19th century sewing patterns, and has over a thousand patterns and fashion plates from just the early bustle and early natural form years. Yesterday's thimble has a great post about balayeuse that you can read about here  http://yesterdaysthimble.com/tutorials/balayeuse/ So this sweet little number is the best of both worlds of protecting the hem of my dress safe from dirt, especially that expensive silk that my heart yearned for for months. But, we have a problem... I am very, very, very American. Suckled on the teat of the standard system since I could hold a tape... on the original pattern is in centimeters. But have no fear, standard to metric conversion calculator is here.  Boom, there ya go. One converted drawing and somewhat kinda the right shapes. There wer...

 1860s CIVIL WAR era Victorian Greek key trim silk BODICE jacket top 1800s antique vintage 1850s From the Seller Wonderful VICTORIAN blue striped silk bodice with applied ribbon trim in a Greek key pattern. Hand stitched buttons and light boning. Beaded tassels at the shoulders. Drop shoulder and period tailoring. A mixture of machine and hand stitching. MEASURES : bust= 36 length= 17.5 Very good condition. Sturdy without shattering or underarm yellowing ! Repairs at the cuff and a stain on the sleeve.  From the Industrious Lady Hello waist tape! and if you notice, there is machine stitching along the inside seams. We see this more towards the late 1860's, although sewing shops in the early 1860's commonly had sewing machines. One option women during the early sewing machine era would do is have the dressmaker do the major cutting and sewing with her much more industrious and faster machine, then take the garment home and finish it by hand. This way the owner could cut costs. ...

Making Moire Memories Well it finally happened. I've been dying to wear this dress somewhere, but you know, pandemic. So it finally got the dust blown and off and made its debut. And where better than at the lovely Ella Sharp Museum in Jackson Michigan. So it was masks up and hoops on! The moire dress was finally going to be moire than just a pretty dress handing in my closet. (sorry guys, I promise that will be the last moire pun... maybe) All in all I like how the dress turned out. I do wish I had made it a little shorter so its not getting stepped on so easily. My poor fiance wanted to do a hike, I wanted to wear a big dress. Who says you can't wear a 19th century dress to hike two miles and walk through a culvert. 

 Poofy and Perfect This skirt was a bit interesting, the mysterious bustle with its gravity defying witchcraft baffling my poor tiered hoop skirt era mind. What could cause these poofy magic? The secret is all in the tapes, and the rule of threes. Three tapes running vertically on the inside with three specific spots on the skirt that are attached to each tape.  By attaching a piece of cloth onto these tapes, it can be arranged to create a  poof and support from where these tapes are attached. just those little stitches are enough to support the skirt and create the bustling effect. there is also a drawstring running across under the bustle that is drawn tight to help also create the shape. The basic of a bustle is putting a lot of fabric in a little area so it is forced out and giving it lift, that's why a stiff fabric or lining is needed.  Another part of the skirt that I wanted to add was the pleated trim that is often seen on the bottom of period skirts, these dr...