The Industrious Lady

  Empress Sissi Dress: Side Story Diversity is what makes the world interesting. 10 people could look at the same painting and come away with 10 different interpretations of it. This was the case with the Winterhalter Sissi painting dress. However, Otto from facebook was different.  I posted the photos below in a sewing group on facebook, and my rendition of the dress was apparently an insult to him and an insult to his Empress. I had made the dress the wrong shape, the sleeves were too puffy, and I believe he called the tulle shawl a "fluffy abhoration."  Which is fine, he clearly loves his Empress. Otto from facebook is entitled to his opinion. Until about two weeks later. This man, all the way over in Italy and across the world tagged me in a facebook post. What was in this post? Otto's rendition of the Sissi dress and he had tagged me in it and expressed again how much he hated my floofy concoction and had made his own better version.  He had made a dress out of ...

Sissi Wedding Dress Part 3: Skirts and Floof So in the original Winterhalter painting, I can see two layer of fabric. First we have the base in a white or cream color, then the sheer overlay. For information on how the fabric was selected or a more in depth look at the research process follow this link  There are different ways of constructing historical skirts, my preferred method is the one used by Mrs. Marion Pullan in her 1860 book "Beadle's Dime Guide to Dress-Making and Millinery." Here Mrs. Pullan instructs "At the preset time a skirt should be at least four and a half yards around the bottom... Seven breadths of the ordinary 21 inch wide silks are sufficient for a skirt." At the time fabrics were only 21" wide and could not be made into the tube that we see today, instead the author writes that the fabric should be cut into breadths or panels as we might call them today. She also suggests that the skirts be made of 7 panels or 21 inches. Giving half...