Wake Up Babe A New Open Access Review About Ice Age Fashion Just Dropped.

For those interested in Victorian menswear, be sure to check out The Gazette of Fashion and Cutting Room Companion. It was a 19th century periodical that is geared toward tailors and is focused almost exclusively on menswear. Every volume is stuffed full of patterns, and the articles talk about trends in cut, style, and color each season. It's a fantastic resource and almost no one knows about it.

I've included a link to one of them (1870), but there are multiple volumes available for free on Google Books.

Google Books

Gazette of fashion, and cutting-room companion [afterw.] Minister's gazette of fashion

Really says something about the dire state of offerings for men interested in sewing their own clothes that even searching things like "interesting men's clothing patterns" brings up articles with links to four or five whole websites that primarily offer admittedly nice but practically identical patterns for making button-ups and work pants and maybe a varsity/bomber jacket if you're lucky.

(Branching out into historical costuming for everyday wear is like your one shot at variation, and even then, the ratio of men's to women's patterns on every website is frustrating to say the least.)

Patternmakers as a trans man I am begging you. Give me a little more to work with here.

This hits so many of my niche interests, it's perfect. ♥

Bookbinding: A Stitch in Time

My mom has been hoping to get her hands on a hard copy of A Stitch in Time, which, as I'm sure most of you are aware, tends to be pricey if you can find it. (It's currently listed for ~$115 on eBay, and more expensive elsewhere.)

So, I decided to put my bookbinding skills to use and make her one for her birthday.

Notes on the design and construction:

The cover design was inspired by (or rather adapted from via considerable photoshopping) this book cover from 1901 that happened to cross my dashboard in a post with a bunch of other cool old book covers:

I created the Cardassian building silhouettes based on a screencap, and the DS9 silhouette is borrowed from the Niners logo. The orchid on the back cover emerging from the Obsidian Order logo is one I found in Cricut Design Space.

(Feel free to use these in your own projects, if you like.)

The bookcloth is by BOOKCRAFTSUPPLYCO on Etsy (dark green). The cover designs are HTV, Cricut Everyday Iron-On (black), Cricut Foil Iron-On (gold), and Vinyl Frog Metallic Foil (holographic silver). The Cardassian Union logos on the end pages were done using Cricut's foil transfer system (gold). The fonts on the cover are DS9 Title and DS9 Credits from st-minutiae.com.

I do not knit, but I have seriously considered learning how, exclusively so I could make one of these.

We have a surprising number of these knitted jackets in museums, most of them of Italian origin, most likely from Naples or Venice. According to the V&A, it seems that they were made in workshops as individual panels that were sold as sets that could be sewn together at home. I'm partial to the green and gold ones, like this one from the Cleveland Museum of Art.

clevelandart.org

Knitted Hunting Jacket Italy, 17th century | Cleveland Museum of Art

Knitted Jacket

1600s-1690s

Italy

Knitted silk jackets were fashionable in the early 17th century as informal dress. This example is very finely knit by hand in plain silk yarn and silk partially wrapped in silver thread, in contrasting colours of blue and yellow. Characteristic of this style of jacket, it has a border of basket weave stitch and an abstract floral design worked in stocking and reverse stocking stitches. The pattern imitates the designs seen in woven silk textiles. The jacket is finely finished with the sleeves lined in silk and completed with knitted cuffs. Along each centre front, a narrow strip of linen covered in blue silk has been added, with button holes and passementerie buttons, worked in silver thread. The provenance of the jacket indicates that it is probably Italian.

Victoria & Albert Museum (Accession number: 473-1893)

I have finished my black and plaid 1890s winter dress! While it’s based on an extant piece from the 1890s, I used different materials, as I was trying to make the entire thing with fabrics I already had on hand. I’m very proud to say that I bought NOTHING new to make this dress! Everything, from the plaid wool and the black velvet, to the red silk and the buckram, came out of my fabric stash.

The dress is made from 5 yards of black and grey wool, three yards of black cotton velvet, and about two yards of black taffeta, mainly for linings, which I had to finagle from scraps leftover from other projects. The hat is a buckram and wire frame hat covered in red silk. I was going to embellish it with grey feathers, but I didn’t have any in my collection, so that will have to wait until I have some spare cash on hand.

You can read all about how I made the dress, and see more pictures, on my main dress blog. http://mistress-of-disguise.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-black-plaid-1890s-winter-dress.html

Day Dress

c.1855

England

This type of widely protruding skirt that appeared around the middle of the 19th century came to be known later under the name of the "crinoline style." As can be seen with this dress, large design motifs proved immensely effective on these voluminous skirts. The border pattern here is wood-block printed and repeats every 20.6 cm. Compared to small-scale designs, large patterns require a solid technique to avoid misalignment of the print colors. Considering that this mixed fabric of silk and wool is a material hard to print on, this dress with its bright and cheerful colors is a particularly fine example on how much cloth printing techniques had evolved.

The Kyoto Costume Institute

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.

if you like crafting and also free things, might i suggest the antique pattern library?

it’s a not for profit that’s gathering books, patterns, and other materials related to crafting that are out of copyright (or getting permission from copyright holders in some cases) in order to share them online. they scan items, clean them up, then make everything available for free!

free things are great, especially when you’re just starting to get into something. like oh, i’m supposed to spend money on this hobby i just picked up 20 minutes ago???

the first time i ended up on the site, i seriously spent hours just trawling through everything. there’s the usual suspects like knitting, crochet, embroidery, but there’s also woodwork, calligraphy, and books on things like how to mount and frame pictures. with cross stitch patterns, they also make modern charts with the dmc colour codes available.

links to their webbed site and instagram:

https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/

https://www.instagram.com/theantiquepatternlibrary/

behold, a glorious cat cross stitch pattern (link goes to antique pattern library page):

[image id: Multicolour charted cross stitch design of a cat sitting on a red pillow with tassels, holding a green ball]

Had a last minute notion to make an Elizabethan-inspired embroidery pattern to celebrate the eclipse. I originally thought of doing a coif pattern, but thought the eclipse would get lost in the folds of the cap, so I ultimately went with a sweet bag. Since it was cloudy throughout totality, I thought it would be fun to incorporate the stars & clouds embroidery from a c.1600 waistcoat at the Bath Fashion Museum. The sun design is inspired by various period illustrations of sun motifs, minus the face they always seemed to put on every sun/moon design because I just couldn't make it not look silly.

I have no idea what stitches I would use for this bag, since sweet bags tend to use all sorts of different stitches. The original stars & clouds design is in blackwork, but I haven't seen any evidence of blackwork used on sweet bags. I'd probably do the background in a black or darkest blue metallic gobelin stitch (also ahistorical, but pretty!), the clouds/stars in silver stem stitch, the corona and rays in satin stitch or plaited braid, and the moon in black detatched buttonhole or some other fill stitch. Or I'd do the entire thing in blackwork except the corona and rays of the sun, which I'd do in gilt, documentation be damned.

Whipped up a quick mantelet to keep me warm at yesterday’s Georgian Picnic. The outer fabric is a champagne colored taffeta, and it has a warm fleece lining. I edged the entire thing with marabou to simulate fur. It was nice and warm in our cool fall weather!

The fill pattern on one half of the waistcoat is finished! Tonight I’ll work on the other side and the remainder of the embroidery on the second pocket flap, and hopefully have all the embroidery wrapped up by tomorrow. Then it’s on to construction!