Costume Spangles

The dress diary and craft blog of Rachel Midgley, costume historian and historic textile enthusiast ABOUT ME CURRENT PROJECTS COMPLETED PROJECTS PROFESSIONAL BLOG

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Some of the Christmas decorations I made this year, most of them got wrapped and given away before I had time to take pictures!

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Christmas decorations all finished so I’m getting on with my patchwork. It’s now big enough to use as a blanket to keep warm while sewing it!

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Finished the wreath Christmas tree decoration at last!

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Wow, I've been away for so long... but I have been sewing a lot so I have plenty of things to post about in the near future. I've spent the last few days reorganising and tidying my room so I could create a little sewing corner. It is almost finished so I'm trying it out by finishing off some last minute Christmas tree decorations!

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This weekend I went to Tewkesbury medieval festival and bought a ton of stuff!

I’m joining a reenactment society and there’s an event I want to go to in two weeks, so I’ve got my work cut out to get an outfit made but hopefully I’ll get it done.

In the picture you can see almost everything I bought. The wooden bowl with wooden spoon, metal utensil set, stoneware tankard and cup will make up my basic food and drink kit. I’m hoping to spend time while I’m there sewing and maybe learning tablet weaving if I can persuade sometime to teach me, so I got a few sewing bits and pieces including wooden reels for thread, beeswax, thread snips and my parents got me a little leather drawstring pouch to keep them in. Finally I got some fabric for my dress; a nice blue linen with white linen to line it, plus a leather belt and a belt purse.

I’m now torn between wanting the event to come sooner because I can’t wait to try out my shiny new things and wishing it was two months away so I had more time to get my costume made!

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This evening I made three more diamonds for my patchwork bedcover. I'm trying to work on it in as much of my spare time as possible to keep up some momentum on it. I've ended up packing a little 'travel kit' of cut fabric hexagons, papers, my threads, needle and scissors into an old tin so I can pick it up whenever I'm headed out and about and think I'll have time to do some. I only need to make four more diamonds before I have enough to add another row all the round the section I've already got done. I will need to cover a lot more of the plain cream ones as well though; it is amazing how quickly you get through those once you start joining the diamonds together!

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Over the last month or so I’ve been working on my patchwork bedcover in every spare moment. I even took it on holiday with me to Reykjavik so it is becoming quite well travelled. I took this photo whilst I was there at the end of April and I can’t believe how much it had grown since then!

In the other image you can see the lovely fabrics I bought at Virka, a great fabric shop just outside Reykjavik.

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Well it has been rather a long time since I posted anything here, but not because I haven't been making things! So to kick start myself posting again here are some long overdue photos of my early 19th century crochet reticule. It was finished quite a while ago but I never got round to photographing it, so here it is at last! My last post was about starting the beading so that was finished off, then the front and back pieces joined together with whip stitch. I then added a twisted fringe of the steel coloured beads along the straight bottom edge. Next I worked on the pull up cords which are made of plaited silk thread, I think I used silk como thread from Empress Mills and it is just a simple three strand plait. Once made up these were fine enough to be threaded through the crochet stitches. As a final bit of decoration I made some simple silk ribbon rosettes for each side of the opening and sewed a few of the steel coloured beads in the middle to add a bit more detail and sparkle. I've kept doing bits an pieces of sewing while I haven't been posting but I've just been very busy with work, you can read about some of it on my work blog which is now updated with images of the lovely textiles I get to work on so if you're a fan of historic textiles you may want to check it out.

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Whilst in Oslo this weekend I also visited the Kunstindustrimuseet and saw some lovely costumes, costume accessories, jewellery and ceramics. Most of the costume galleries were really dark so my camera was struggling to take pictures and sadly none of my photos of the Queen Maud gowns came out very well. But the ones they had on display were all in the book about her anyway so I already have good photos of them. Setting them in person I think the first thing you notice is how small her figure really was!

In addition to the Queen Maud dresses there were some other beautiful evening gowns, some worn by members of the royal family, from the 1930s, 40s and 50s and a gallery with around 20 costumes giving an overview of fashions from the mid 18th century up to the 1950s along with accessories and pieces of needlework.

Definitely worth a visit for any fellow costume fans if you find yourself in Oslo!

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This weekend I was in Oslo and finally got to visit the Norsk Folkemuseum, which I've wanted to go to for several years now. It is normally closed for most of the Winter but luckily it was open on Sunday and I managed to have a lovely walk round all the old buildings and had a look at some of the items from their amazing collection in the exhibition building. I'm really looking forward to visiting it one day in the summer when they have costumed guides, living history and traditional craft workshops, but even in winter it was a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

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Here is the final rather belated post from my European trip this summer. My last stop was the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which just happened to have a temporary exhibition on fashion plates! I didn’t have a lot of time there as it was the last day and I was cutting it close to get to the airport but I made it round the exhibition after spending about an hour aimlessly wandering through pretty much every other part of the museum, except the fashion galleries which I somehow missed. Oh well, I guess there is anyways next time!

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Since I’m very close to finishing my crochet reticule I figured it was time I got round to posting some more of the many, many photos I took on holiday in Europe this summer. These are all from the Museum of Handbags in Amsterdam. I’ve been wanting to go there since I first heard about it a few years ago and I was worried I might be hyping it up to much but it actually surpassed all my expectations!

It is housed in a beautiful old canal house, has plenty on display, allows photographs (without flash of course) and the cafe does a very good apple cake; all the makings of the perfect museum!

I was really impressed by the huge variety of items on display, and to think it is only a fraction of their collection! I ended up buying a book with lovely photos of lots more of the collection from the shop, it made excellent eye candy for the plane home.

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Last night I got started on beading my crochet reticule and I’m hoping to get it finished off tonight. Then I just have to sew the front and back together, make a cord for the drawstring and sort out the fringe along the bottom edge and any extra bits of decoration.

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The beads I ordered for my crochet reticule arrived today!

The steel coloured ones are Czech size 15/0 charlottes in colour ‘Marcasite’ from The Bead Shop Scotland. The golden bronze ones are Toho size 15/0 charlottes in ‘Bronze’ from i-Beads. The white ones are Toho size 15/0 seed beads in ‘Opaque White’ from i-Beads.

I have a couple more rows to do on the second half of the bag and then I’m ready to start beading!

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My second foray into crochet is going to be an early 19th century reticule, if it comes out okay I’ll probably use it with my 1824 outfit when that is done. I’m basing the shape on several ones I’ve seen dating from various points between 1790-1820; it is a u-shape but squared off so the bottom looks like a half-octagon.

As soon as I saw this green cotton at Yarndale it reminded me of a lovely miser purse (see bottom image) I saw last year at Chertsey Museum. I couldn’t find it in their online catalogue but I believe it is early to mid 19th century. It isn’t crochet, but I like the colour combination and beadwork so I’ll be basing my decoration on this.

To get a similar design to the Chertsey purse I will be embroidering the beads on after the bag panels are finished being crocheted, not sure if this is a big no-no or not, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to incorporate beads into the actual crochet process yet! I’m using the same Adriafil Uno a Ritorto no.8 and 1.25 hook I used on my mini miser purse pin cushion.

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More gorgeous fabrics that arrived in the post today, this time some much needed extra blues for my 1820s Hexagon Diamonds bedcover.

The paisley in the bottom image is a bit too bright for this period I think, but I do like it, so I’m sure I can find another use for it.

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A couple of weeks ago I bought this lovely fabric from eBay seller sanskriti, it is a hand block printed cotton voile from India and the moment I saw it I was instantly reminded of those amazing dresses you get from the very late 18th and early 19th century in chintzes and printed cottons with a dark brown ground. I had recently seen a lovely example of this type of dress in one of my favourite fashion plates in the New For Now exhibition at the Rijksmuseum this summer (bottom left image). The two extant dresses in the photos are both from the Norsk Folkemuseum.

Now the fabric has arrived and I love it!! I know it can be a bit hit and miss with block printed fabrics because sometimes there can be pretty substantial misprints that make sections of the fabric unusable but this is almost perfect!  The quality of the cotton is really soft and the print is quite crisp so I’m very happy with it. It was £24.99 for 10 yards so it works out at £2.49 a metre - such a bargain!

I’ve got a few other things planned before I will get round to making anything with this, but I’m already excited about it!