THIMBLELESS

Elanor sews her way through history. Stay tuned for bustles, ruffles, corsets, bliauts, hair rats, circle skirts and mountains of velvet.

[thimbleless]

Updates from the sewing room - the only ‘maternity’ wear I’ve made myself whilst pregnant.

Liberty lawn fabric that matches actual manuscripts I copied in embroidery. Pattern by me. Sewn with much help from my new overlocker.

Purposefully baggy for after baby arrives (which is anytime in the next three weeks - and no, that’s not the amount of time until my due date. That’s the amount of time until they would want to induce me. Wtf.)

I also acquired this beautiful wardrobe for the sewing room to free up space for baby related paraphernalia.

Birmingham made and what a beauty.

[jewellery-box]

Brown cotton riding habit from the late 1820s.

Fashion Museum Bath via Instagram

[forthegothicheroine]

I'm a corset centrist. I think it's reasonable for historical fiction characters to not like corsets, but I reserve the right to roll my eyes in that scene in Bridgerton where they tightlace the girl before putting her in an empire waist dress.

[marzipanandminutiae]

I'm team "I will roll my eyes at the cliche every time because of the modern historical fiction baggage around an author making that choice. but as long as the character isn't presented as Objectively Correct by the narrative, and it's clearly just her specific personal opinion, I can let it slide because some women indeed did not like corsets in any form"

but moreover. as you say-

what are you cinching in an empire-waist dress??? your damn ribcage???

[beatrice-otter]

the other thing is, it was not possible to tight-lace in Regency corsets. The fabric would shred! In order to tight-lace, you need metal grommets to put the laces through. If you do not have metal grommets, and the laces are passing through hand-sewn eyelets instead (where it's just thread to keep the hole from fraying), of you put too much pressure on the laces they will tear the fabric apart.

And guess what! Metal grommets were not invented until 1828! And the Regency ended in 1820!

There are multiple levels of why tightlacing a regency corset is absurd, is what I'm saying.

[velvetcloak]

no.s project

[dailyclassicart]

Henri Guillaume Schlesinger - "The Five Senses: Hearing" (1865)

[butchfairy]

[twofingerswhiskey]

The other four of this series are equally as strangely funny:

The last one I find hysterical, because they're using a fucking telescope during the day... a cloudy day, to boot.

[the-haiku-bot]

The other four of

this series are equally

as strangely funny:

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[thimbleless]

I feel like this is the pregnancy experience every expectant lady should have - the chance to wear something lightweight and billowing.

I actually look way more pregnant in this medieval-shift-in-progress than I do in modern clothes. It makes you think about how women hid their pregnancies and how they dressed around them.

For that exact reason it’s on my list to try my high status gowns whilst pregnant to see how they look, but they won’t be worn next season. What I know I need for this summer is an outfit that’s washable, comfortable, roomy, and could be adapted for before and after baby/breast feeding.

My old medieval shift is very form fitted in an attempt to be supportive and fancy. It already doesn’t fit anymore lads.

This new shift is designed to be supportive in a more clever way (inspired by evidence from Germany). The body is cut to the width of my current chest measurement plus some, and then the shoulders are pleated down to size. It allows a linen strip to be tied under the bust for support, and makes the shift fit tight over the shoulders.

The body is also cut asymmetrically with fullness accounted for in one side and gores cut to match for the other. This was introduced to me on a MEDATs lecture by I believe it was Sarah Thursfield.

I’m trying my hand at smocking again across the underarm (based on a German alb of St Hugo) as well as the wrists (based on - you know it you love it - Chartres cathedral and Notre Dame de Corbeil).

For now I won’t be adapting my clothes for breast feeding (It’s just too early to commit) but my research so far suggests putting a faced slit in this shift to belly button that can sewn back up. Paired with open side seams on my dress, it should facilitate feeding.

The evidence is exceptionally sparse for how this was actually accomplished, we can only go based on the manuscripts. Frankly I doubt the monks’ anatomical familiarity and their understanding of women’s clothes.

These ladies seem to be fishing their tits up out of their necklines or pulling them out of magical portals in their dresses…

[basiliskonline]

@lingerie_addict has a really cool thread on ancient fashion over on twitter.

Those source links are here

cambridge.org

Youtube

ucl.ac.uk

[thimbleless]

My mum bought me and my sister matching coats when we were about 8 and 6 respectively.

She bought them big, because she couldn’t afford to get a new one every few years.

I remember walking down the high street in this when it was brand new, sleeves rolled up, hem down to my knee.

What my mum didn’t expect was that I’d still be wearing this ‘ages 11-12’ coat at age 35. For reference I’m 5’6 and about a size 10.

It’s 100% wool, lined with 100% cotton, only using polyester for the sleeve lining. It is perfect - not a button lost, not a seam coming apart. It just needs a dry clean.

Now m&s weren’t expensive at the time, and they weren’t fashionable either. They were boring and solid.

I tried to look for a children’s duffle coat from them in wool this afternoon and I couldn’t find a single one. All of them, even the expensive ones costing £60-£75 were 100% polyester.

Somehow I doubt they’ll still be here in like 27 years.

[omgthatdress]

It drives me crazy that "LOL steal from the British Museum/The Louvre!" is a meme because like.... you all realize that the stuff in there still deserves protecting, right?

These institutions are MUSEUMS that exist for public education and preservation, not monsters that live off of eating stolen artifacts.

The gems that were stolen were pieces of FRENCH history, made by FRENCH artisans, publicly owned by the FRENCH people and kept in a FRENCH museum.

And now they're being destroyed so some criminals can make a buck off selling the jewels.

I cannot emphasize this enough, THOSE GEMS WERE PUBLICLY OWNED AND ON PUBLIC DISPLAY.

Wherever the jewels came from, they're getting cut into smaller pieces and now NOBODY can go view them and enjoy them and the money being made off of that is going to a handful of criminals not the countries these gems originated from.

Believe it or not, not everything in these museums was stolen from colonized people. Most of the stuff was actually ethically acquired through trade. And most of the stuff in their collections are priceless pieces of BRITISH and FRENCH history that needs to be preserved and protected.

And for real. If you want to see cultural items repatriated to the countries they came from, you'd better put your money where your mouth is and start supporting museums in the global south. For real everyone wants the Benin Bronzes repatriated but can't name a single museum in Nigeria where they can be housed, cared for, and displayed. (it would be the National Museum Lagos or the National Museum Benin City).

Preserving those items and keeping them safely on display is EXPENSIVE and museums in poor countries are often severely under-funded. They need extensively-trained preservation staff, fire-proofing, and regular security.

[thimbleless]

If you look at a lot of these items on the Louvre website they were acquired by the museum in later centuries - they were purchased for the enjoyment of anyone in the world. And now someone’s stolen them.

[memories-of-ancients]

Scissors, China, 7th-9th century

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

[lanotteviene]

my best friend linen my brother in arms cotton my partner wool my beautiful sister silk

[lanotteviene]

our sick deranged enemy polyester....

[threeture]

the demon lord, prince of lies, "Vegan Leather"...

[marthajefferson]

gowns, in Antonio de La Gandara's paintings

[avalonishere]

1914 - Autore: Leonetto Cappiello

Edizioni Ricordi, Milano

[dduane]

Heads up if you're a sewing hobbyist...

Buy those patterns you've been thinking about while you still can.

Parent Company of the Big 4 Sewing Pattern Brands Sold to a Liquidator - Craft Industry Alliance

The legacy sewing pattern brands Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls, and Vogue, commonly referred to as the Big 4, have been sold to a liquidato

[schadenfreudessa]

[history-of-fashion]

1900-1909 Bodice, skirt and petticoat by unknown maker

taffeta, net, bead

(Goldstein Museum of Design)

[edwardianvictorianera]

Dressmaking in Paris, 1907.

[marzipanandminutiae]

I would like to point out what these women are wearing themselves. Because "what did WORKING women wear?!" is a refrain I hear a lot re: recreations of even the most basic historical clothing that has any visual interest at all

the lady on the far right has a brooch and a necklace! and some insertion lace on her blouse! the center-right lady in the plaid shirtwaist seems to be wearing a decorative necktie of some sort! all of them have sleeve puffs that are maybe a few years out of date, but not by much!

and these are working seamstresses! literally At Work!

working-class people have always loved beauty just as much as the rich. and found ways to incorporate it into their lives

[suzannahnatters]

Virginia Postrel in her book THE SUBSTANCE OF STYLE specifically points out that ornamentation is always possible no matter how limited your resources. You might not have quite enough food, but you can still put your hair in a braid more easily than you can buy a milk cow for your family. You might have to whittle your spoons yourself from a branch foraged in the wood, but you can still carve a knotwork pattern into the handle more easily than you can learn the craft of forging metal.

A thirst for beauty isn't something limited to the rich and knowledgeable. It's something that makes us human, and I worry that people who can't accept that working class or disadvantaged people from history might have appreciated and prioritised beauty and style in their lives are also failing to accept that these people were fully human. I mean think for just a moment where this trope of the filth encrusted medieval peasant came from - it wasn't from people who respected their dignity and personhood.

Cleanliness, style, and ornament are all ways that as humans we express our dignity, and attributing filth and squalor to people is a pretty common way to deny their dignity.

Yes. Of course their lives contained beauty.

[vintageeveryday]

Vintage photos show wallpaper styles of the late 19th century.