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1882 Drawers
These drawers are a part of the 1880s underwear set for my historical underwear collection project. They are made from the pattern for pantalons in La Mode Illustrée 1882, number 32. I’ve made them the size of the pattern pieces (plus seam allowance), without alteration. The finished waist is about 68cm (26.5inches). The drawers are…
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1918 Dress
A project from 2018, re-made 2019 The centenary of the Armistice that ended hostilities in the First World War was on November 11th, 2018. Our local Folk Museum mounted a commemorative display, Sorrow, Celebration and Social Change. My contribution to the display included a small curated selection from the museum’s collection showing the rapid changes…
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Linen shirt 1750-1820
Men’s shirts remained fairly constant during the eighteenth century. All fabric was hand spun and hand woven, and shirts were cut to make maximum use of the linen in a series of squares and rectangles. The construction is both genius and practical. Shirts were the main undergarment for men and were made of linen; fine…
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1830s morning jacket
We found this lovely cotton morning jacket in one of the last clothing boxes we opened to document at the museum. It’s a wonderful example of a garment a woman would wear at home in the morning, before dressing properly for leaving the house later in the day. We were particularly excited to find this…
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1920s Robe de Style
The movie Downton Abbey, which opened in September, was the perfect excuse for our costume group to have a 1920s outing. I decided to make Robe de Style, a fashion of the mid 1920s that varies a little from the typical androgynous straight lines of many 1920s styles. A Robe de Style has the long-waisted…
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Handsewn 1790s dress
A project from 2016 I didn’t exactly start out to hand-sew an entire dress. However, at the time I was doing a fair amount of travelling so I took the bodice pieces with me and stitched on them here and there. When I’ve been home, I’ve been concentrating on writing, and I like to have…
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Regency Dress
A project from 2016 As well as a costumer, I’m also a novelist, and back in 2016 when starting my latest book, The Clothier’s Daughter, I began planning the cover as I knew I would be independently publishing it, and therefore had control over all the choices. Stock images of reasonably accurate Regency dress are rather hard…
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Linen Cap
A project from about 2016 – originally posted as a portfolio project but this WordPress theme doesn’t support portfolios. This linen cap is a very simple one, suitable for the late 18th and early nineteenth centuries. It was entirely hand-stitched from scraps of linen left over from a chemise. The fabric is from fabrics-store.com, and…