The Industrious Lady

1860's Swiss Waist Plaid Tartan From the Ebay Seller Beautiful early 1860s civil war era yellow silk tartan evening corset bodice. Great condition, a small stain left lower waist. Some tiny tearing at loopholes. No original cordage. Please message for any questions! Perfect for display as it is quite small. 28" bust, 20" waist From the Industrious Lady This is really quite a lovely Swiss Waist. I would refer to the color more as a windowpane than a tartan or a plaid.. The self fabric is ruched with a chain stitch in black around the outside edge. It is piped along the outside edge. The back has hand sewn eyelets. The three tails caught my eye as reminiscent from this blue waist from the Why Not Then blog. It can be seen here:  https://whynotthen.com/2015/12/16/c-mid-1860s-swiss-waist/ .  Swiss Waists are a highly stylized item, it would be made of silk taffeta or other such material. It was more of a style for youn

Start of a New Era IN the age of the internet, information is only a click away. We use it to converse with friends, do our banking, teach our kids, and even connect the future to the past. One of my favorite sources for this  is the wonderful  All the Pretty Dresses blog found here  http://www.extantgowns.com/ . It is an online collection of antique dresses, for the purpose of education. It is invaluable and in my opinion one of the most important sources for viewing original garments.  CDV's and written clothing sources can only give so much information, CDV's cannot give us color, it cannot show us multiple angles of the clothing, or the details of the inside of a dress. Written sources can give us a description in black and white, but words are limited by the ability of the readers mind to translate it to an image.  That was what made the All The Pretty Dresses blog so great, it gave a place for these extant garments from around the web to be gathered togethe

 Princess Capote Hood Part 2 The next step for the hood was to sew in a casing for the ties for the hood to run through. This will run around the neck and tie under the chin. I chose to place mine around six inches from the top of the main piece. I did use a machine for this part but sometimes you really do just need to use modern technology for the sake of ingenuity and industry.  To start off the application of the pearl beads, I ran a thread along the entire outside of the main piece (minus that side that will be sewn to the hood piece. The beads were spaced out at around 3/8' inbetween each one. Two parrallel rows were placed next to each other.  To create the further spaced pearl beads, I used chalk and a 1.25" ruler to create a grid. Following those lines, the individual bead was placed where the lines intersected. Using this system each one was placed an equal distance apart. After applying the decorations, the steam on an iron can be used to get

Princess Capote Hood Part 1 So I must make a confession, my early knitting projects were.. interesting. The sweet knitted opera hood that took nearly 20 hours to complete bit the dust in a long trail of unravelled horror. I actually saw the cute little hood above in Heidi Marsh's book on period headwear. It seemed pretty, feminine, and for certain the perfect item to keep my ears from doing their best smurf impression.  For material, I chose to reproduce an original hood in a private collection that was just begging to be made. This hood was made of velvet, with a border of closely placed white pearls with pearls placed in a grid pattern on top. In essence, sheer perfection. Thanksfully Jo-Ann fabrics stocks a nice cotton velveteen that was marked down to a mere $10 a yard. The small pearls came from my sister, and the lining was a re purposed flannel sheet. All in all the project cost a mere $10. So at 2:00am in the morning, the Princess Capote hood started to tak

We've all heard the stories about the 19th century person who could be smelt before they were seen and how they only took a bath once a week. Stories of water so dirty that the baby would get lost in (hence the saying don't throw the baby out with the bath water). Or of water being shared by multiple family members. Original bathtub from the 1860's. It currently resides in the collection at the Smithsonian museum In Peterson's magazine Vol 45-46 pg.114 "To be sure our transient home was blessed with some of the modern improvements, including a bath; but the water had to be pumped up two stories, employing the coachman's time during the entire day'; and, as the well was low on account of the dry season, there was scarcely enough for domestic purposes. I decided it "wouldn't pay," and so came to consider a bath an especial luxury, to be enjoyed only at rare intervals." The story continues that the main character would travel several