If You Like Crafting And Also Free Things, Might I Suggest The Antique Pattern Library?

One of my favorites. Still planning to make my green version someday.

yellow silk evening dress with oak leaf design

c.1902

House of Worth

Fashion Museum of Bath

My latest finished project, based off a couple of extant bodices and a fashion plate which all had this snazzy cross-over front feature.

I actually made the skirt a long time ago as a historybounding, everyday thing to wear. It has alternating panels of striped and solid black cotton, and has a scalloped hem. I love it and wear it often, and decided that I was going to make a matching bodice so I could wear it to costume events, too.

I draped the pattern myself, based off of a couple of extants. Each seam is boned with artificial whalebone and the seam allowances were tacked down by hand with a herringbone stitch. The peplum is lined with black cotton, but the rest is just lined with cheap plain white muslin to save on cost. The bodice closes up the center front with hooks and eyes, and then the wrap panels are folded over and closed at the side seams.

Brain gremlins about my weight are under the cut for those that don't want to read it.

I finished this outfit a while back, but I've been struggling with whether or not I wanted to post it. It's not the outfit, I think that it turned out fabulously. But I've been really unhappy about my weight, and it's been a fight to remind myself that my weight is not my worth. I keep hearing the negative things my mother would say whenever I would gain a pound or two or the "positive" things she'd say when I lost them (things like "oh, you have a chin again!" or "I can actually see your waist now.")

So I'm trying to ignore all that and remind myself how awesome this dress turned out, how hard I worked on it, and how proud I am of the construction of it.

Jacket

1590-1630

Great Britain

This simple unlined jacket represents an informal style of clothing worn by women in the early 17th century. Unlike more fitted waistcoats, this loose, unshaped jacket may have been worn during pregnancy. A repeating pattern of curving scrolls covers the linen from which spring sweet peas, oak leaves, acorns, columbine, lilies, pansies, borage, hawthorn, strawberries and honeysuckle embroidered in coloured silks, silver and silver-gilt threads. The embroidery stitches include chain, stem, satin, dot and double-plait stitch, as well as knots and couching of the metal threads. Sleeves and sides are embroidered together with an insertion stitch in two shades of green instead of a conventionally sewn seam. Although exquisitely worked, this jacket is crudely cut from a single layer of linen, indicating the work of a seamstress or embroiderer, someone without a tailor's training. It has no cuffs, collar or lining, and the sleeves are cut in one piece. The jacket was later altered to fit a thinner person. The sleeves were taken off, the armholes re-shaped, the sides cut down, and the sleeves set in again.

The Victoria & Albert Museum (Accession number: 919-1873)

This is magnificent!

Holy shit, y’all have got to see this art deco dream of a quilt from Reddit:

Elizabethan Jewelry Chains

 Let’s talk Elizabethan shiny things!

Left: Portrait of a Nobelwoman in a cartwheel ruff, attributed to John Bettes the Younger, 1585 Right: Portrait of a Lady Aged 21, Unknown Artist, c.1590

Specifically, I want to talk about jewelry chains. They were often worn just like necklaces, but they were also draped around the shoulders or draped in loops at the front of the bodice. They could be extremely long – one found in the Cheapside Hoard was 8 feet long! 

These chains are featured heavily in portraiture from the 16th and 17th centuries, and thanks to the Cheapside Hoard, we have quite a few extant examples of these jewelry chains.

The Cheapside Hoard was found during the demolition of a house near St. Paul’s Cathedral, back in 1912. As they broke through the floorboards of the house and into the much older basement, they discovered a cache of over 500 pieces of late Elizabethan and early Stuart-era jewelry. The jewels featured emeralds from Columbia, diamonds and rubies from India and Burma, ancient Egyptian and Byzantine jewels and coins, as well as delicate gold and enamelwork crafted by the goldsmiths in London. At the time, Cheapside was London’s main shopping center and the home to the majority of the goldsmiths. It’s thought that the hoard was buried to keep it safe, possibly during the English Civil War.

I set out on a hunt to find jewelry bits that resembled the links we see in the Cheapside Hoard pieces. Amazingly, I came across some suitable pieces on AliExpress!

Left: Chain from AliExpress Right: Detail of Cheapside Hoard chain, Museum of London

I didn’t set out to copy any one chain from the Hoard, but instead used the shapes and sizes of those chains to help guide me while I was buying my bits and pieces.

Finding the suitable pieces was really the most difficult part of making these chains. Once everything arrived, assembly was quick and simple.

I ended up with quite a variety of finished chains. None of them are as long as their cousins in the museums, but I think they’re a good start to my Elizabethan jewelry collection, and will definitely grace the front of many a bodice at future events.

Bibliography:

Cheapside Hoard Chains, London Museum —Enameled Chain of Flowers, Bows, and Leaves https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-119591/enamelled-chain-of-flowers-bows-and-leaves/ —Enameled Floral Chain https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-119585/enamelled-floral-chain/ —Diamond and Enamel Chain https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-119584/diamond-and-enamel-chain/

Cheapside Hoard Chian, V&A Museum —Chain, 1590-1620 https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74076/cheapside-hoard-chain-unknown/

Forsyth, H. (2013). London’s Lost Jewels: The Cheapside Hoard. Philip Wilson Publishers.

Wheeler, R. M. (1928). The Cheapside Hoard of Elizabethan and Jacobean Jewelry. Antiquity: A Review of World Archaeology, 2(8). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/the-cheapside-hoard-of-elizabethan-and-jacobean-jewellery-by-r-e-mortimer-wheeler-london-museum-catalogues-no-2-1928-1s/1E585E583A88D8B55DB29EE30B85D79E

Ganoksin. (2016, October 19). The Cheapside Hoard – Ganoksin jewelry making community. https://www.ganoksin.com/article/the-cheapside-hoard/

Hackenbroch, Y. (1941). A jewelled necklace in the British Museum. The Antiquaries Journal, 21(4), 342–344. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003581500048381 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquaries-journal/article/abs/jewelled-necklace-in-the-british-museum/965C70079702E42C7096519CBF7A8470

Was sifting through some late 16th/early 17th century stammbucher (basically little scrapbooks that people would collect cards, stamps, drawings, etc in, especially while travelling; their friends and family could also add little entries to your book, like memories, poems, drawings, or well wishes) in online libraries, and thought I'd share some fun images of people doing who knows what. Bowling for ladies? Running from cupid and getting tied to trees for it? Rolling around your really bendy dude? Just another Tuesday in 17th century Germany.

Lok’Tar Ogar

(As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.  LONG POST so press “J” to skip or start scrolling because I can’t make cuts work for Moblie, sorry.)

Back in 2004 I went to a cousin’s wedding and my mom got into Fandom.

Ruth, my Mom’s-college-roommate’s-daughter was getting married to a man of mixed reputability in what had been for several months had been the primary sitcom of the family- mushroom vs. champagne draperies, the bride wanted a small ceremony and the mother of the groom wanted to invite every business contact she had, and then there was the problem of the Rabbis- Ruth’s rabbi had mostly retired but had promised to marry her in her youth, David’s had promised the same and the current Rabbi of Ruth’s synagogue wanted in too, so they agreed to be married by all three Rabbis.  Furthermore, any Jewish wedding requires a Chuppah- a canopy under which the ceremony takes place.  Mom agreed to make one for Ruth and David’s wedding, (MUSHROOM-colored of course, not champagne) and escort it there personally as we were attending the ceremonies.

Alas, the wedding was in Columbus, a terrible place. 

Southeast Ohio is generally a rather nice place- on the far northern end of the appalachia it has lovely rolling hills of deep hardwood forests, a spectacular zoo and many other things a scientifically inclined teenager might enjoy but I was not going to those, I was going to a Wedding, where I had been guilted into being a flower girl on account of being the youngest available cousin, along with my sister.  I spent most of the drive from Colorado in a state of spectacular teenage misery, which was almost entirely obliterated when we got to the hotel.

The guests of the Hotel consisted thusly:

My family (4)

A small herd of fancy-suited businessmen there for some obscure finance meeting (30ish)

A jolly and boisterous horde of Gamers, Cosplayers, Geeks and Freaks present for the World Of Warcraft convention immediately across the street (several hundred)

I didn’t actually know a damn thing about WoW, other than it was something my geekier friends in middle school played, and that it had elves with ridiculous eyebrows, but I know how to make friends with the kind of people who wear nothing but bodypaint and prosthetic ears in public and started talking to the gang of Blood Elves at the breakfast bar while the businessmen huddled together at their table like a group of musk oxen forming up against a pack of wolves.

Eventually mom wandered over and joined in the conversation- after years of making Halloween costumes, stage props, miscellaneous fabric constructions like the Chuppah and so forth, she’d gained an extensive knowledge of what fiber can be made to do, but wanted to know what marvelous things these people were doing with plastics.  She hit it off particularly well with the Troll over his teeth, and they decided to confide in her.

“Hey, here’s a fun thing to do-” Said the blood elf, before trotting over to the edge of the mezzanine overlooking the lobby.  

“LOK’TAR OGAR!”  she bellowed as loudly as her tiny, corseted frame could manage. “FOR THE HORDE!!!” Roared back several dozen Warcrafters, shaking their con-safe weaponry and causing several of the businessmen to duck for cover.

“Yeah, if you need anything, just yell that.”  she nodded, before we parted ways.

Later that night, Mom slipped in the shower and sprained her ankle, which resulted in a moderately panicked but ultimately boring visit to a clinic to get it X-ray’d and acquire a wheelchair.  The next morning, however, we had to proceed to the wedding, and discovered that the elevator was out of service.

A Chuppah, if you’re not familiar with one, is roughly the same dimensions and weight as those pop-up tents they use at gentrified outdoor craft fairs, or about 9 feet long and close to 60lbs when folded up.  This one was closer to 100 once all the memorial images and sentimental fabrics and special tent poles had been added on.    Mom was stuck in the wheelchair, Dad was in a state of near panic at Mom being injured and also having to be somewhere On Time, and my sister and I were liquefying in the summer heat and the bride-mandated mushroom-colored seven goddamn layers of itchy-ass tulle flower girl dresses, barely able to lift the chuppah between us.

In short stairs were not happening and three quarters of us were about to riot but Mom is definitely the smart person in the family because she remembered-

“LOK’TAR OGAR!!”

“FOR THE HORDE!!”

“I NEED SOME HELP!”

Instantly the cosplayers from the night before were there, along with a dozen more.  Two beefy trolls carried Mom down the stairs and clean out to the parking garage, someone else got the chuppah, and the Blood elf managed to get concierge to bring our car around to the curb with our destination already programmed into the (VERY PRIMITIVE) gps.  I thought my dad was going to cry with relief.

“So [Gallus].”  Mom asked me on the way to the wedding.  “People who like videogames. Do they all have Magic Words?”

“Yeah most of them have some kind of phrase like ‘may the force be with you’ or ‘live long and prosper’.  Why?”

She just nodded, storing that fact away for later.

The wedding turned out to be an event in and of itself- The mother of the bride fainted when they kissed, the rabbis nearly got into a fistfight, the mother of the groom fell off the chair and needed stitches, uncle Larry tore his pants on the dance floor then elected to remove them and keep dancing- and I managed to forget entirely about Mom’s question.

*

Last year, we were doing theater set-in at the same time the local theater and culture complex was hosting the small city convention.  It was July, hotter than satan’s own asshole, and the stage pieces were too large for both of our 5’2-and-under asses to move.

I came back out from wresting a Magic tree into the complex to find mom squinting calculatingly at a group of Marvel cosplayers.

“What are their Magic Words?”

“Huh?”

“The words you say when you want to summon them- ‘Use the Force’ or something?”

I blinked a few times, as my heat stroke-addled brain translated that.  “…Avengers Assemble?”

“HEY AVENGERS!” Hollered Mom. “ASSEMBLE!!”

INSTANTLY, an Iron Man and three Captains America sprinted over.

“What can we do Ma’am?” asked one of the captains, sticking rigorously to character.

“We need help moving these set pieces in and you have muscles.”  she explained, and without question everyone pitched in to move a magical forest, the front half of a castle and a dragon’s cave into the Children’s Theater backstage.  The Iron Man politely answered questions about painting metallics on Cardboard for her and all three Captains America lines up and saluted her upon emptying the truck.

“You’re dangerous.” I teased her as they returned to Con.

“Tell me more Magic Words- I need that tall one in purple to help with the lights.”  she said, gesturing to a Waluigi that was about to become familiar with the Children’s Theater Lighting System.

_________________________________

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Embroidery on the 18th Century court suit is moving right along! This project started way back in February but had to be put aside because of how much schoolwork I was doing this semester. Now that school is out, I’m finally getting the chance to go back to it.

This suit is based on extant 18th Century court suits. The waistcoat is a cream duchess silk satin with cotton embroidery and metal spangles. So many spangles! I’m glad I have a fella that will let me make his clothes sparkly.

I’m hoping to finish up this week and finally begin the construction. I also need to make a new shirt for him before I can move on to the coat, so that’s in the queue, as well. Now to decide what embroidery pattern to use for the coat...

The petticoat is finished! It didn't even take as long as I anticipated, even with all the hand-sewing that was involved. Everything but the long interior seams had to be hand-sewn, which was a bit of a pain, but it makes the finished skirt so much nicer looking. The next step will be to pattern out the under-bodice before starting on the levite itself. This particular dress is a little unusual, in that the under-bodice actually closes under a stomacher rather than down the center-front, which is more typical for levites and polonaises. I'm so pleased with how quickly and smoothly this project has gone so far! Of course, I haven't started on the gown itself, so we'll see if my good luck streak lasts