I'm pretty sure this is the whole set.
Forgotten feminist icons of the French military, the Vivandières, alternatively known as cantinières, was the French title for women attached to military units who sold wine to the troops and offered better cuisine on the battlefield than the army could offer. An often overlooked part of women's and
If you asked a reader of Regency Romance what character would wear a cap, they would say a married woman or a spinster. But what makes a spinster, and why would they wear a cap? The reader would re…
The best thing about wet yucky holidays is I get to make stuff. This week's project: a straw hat for a Regency picnic. This turned out lovely, and was so much easier than I thought it would be! Step 1: Find a straw hat with a wide flat brim. Something not so crispy will work better when you try to push a needle through it. Crispy breaks up & you might not be able to save it. Step 2: Cut off the brim into a more period shape. The back of the bonnet rests against your neck so you need to cut away enough to allow that. Cut back the sides to a shape you like. I looked in the mirror & took off a little at a time until I liked where the ties would land. Step 3: Get a piece of fabric cut on the bias that is long enough to go all the way around the brim and wide enough to be as deep as the brim plus ~5 inches. With right sides together stitch the bias around the top side of the hat. Turn the fabric to the inside & tuck it in. Step 4: Arrange the fabric so that it looks nice. Stitch down the tucks about 1" inside the hat. If the hat came with a band inside stitch to that. If it didn't you may need to put a piece of fabric tape inside to stitch to. Trim off excess fabric leaving enough to finish the edge, either by rolling under & stitching or by binding or by lining the hat. Mine's for summer so I didn't want a full lining. Step 5: Make a long tie out of fabric or get a long wide ribbon. Attach to the hat so that the ends cross in the center back and at the outer edges. Tack to the binding. Step 6: Add decoration at will. Step 7: Wear your beautiful new hat.
“Afbeeldingen van de Kleeding, Zeden en Gewoonten in de Bataafsche Republiek, met den Aanvang der Negentiende Eeuw”, translated as “Pictures of the Dress, Manners and Customs of the Batavian Republic, at the Beginning of the 19th Century”, released by publisher Evert Maaskamp in 1803 is a very compelling book detailing the looks and styles of […]
[The following has been pasted directly from the livejournal post] I thought I'd post some photos of the encampment I attended at the Halifax Citadel this weekend. We had lovely days for it. I'm so glad I made it to an encampment out here before heading back to Ontario. It was warm, everyone was friendly, the citadel itself was cool to spend a weekend at, and we didn't even freeze overnight. The first day I wore my silk petticoat (borrowed from my robe a la francaise) because some reenacting friends were getting married at the citadel and we wanted to dress up for them. The second day I was sick of babying the silk around camp, so I borrowed Laura's linen under petticoat and just wore my smoke-purple wool under petticoat as a top petticoat. I also borrowed the silk bonnet from Joy, as I didn't have a chance to make one beforehand. The fichu is a block-printed cotton batiste headscarf I bought, which I then modified by painting green dye into parts of the pattern and adding a wide border of nearly identical-weight cotton batiste (dyed green at the same time as I painted the pattern) so that I could tie it behind my back. The fichu wasn't the only part of this ensemble that I painted: I painted the fabric for the caraco as well. (Please ignore the pre-ironing and pre-re-hemming mess of a petticoat) Also, very glad I made pockets before going. The joys of pockets cannot be properly expressed. I had my phone, a fountain pen, a thimble, my chapstick, two sleeve linings, part of a bodice mockup, my pin cushion, and some bobby pins in my pockets all Saturday, and you couldn't tell at all. It's like having a purse on each hip! They're not the fanciest or matchiest - pink linen-cotton with a fine woven plaid, lined in white linen and bound in dark green cotton, on a lighter green cotton waistband - but they do the trick! Overall I had a great time, although I have discovered that I need to re-bone my stays, since 180 pieces of flat steel makes for very heavy and non-bendy stays. They're fine for a couple of hours, but when it gets really warm and they don't move at all against my skin and they start to bruise my hips because the steel doesn't let the tabs curve properly it's no longer pretty. I'm not kidding about the bruises. They're little lines of dots down each hip, from where the end of the bones would press in as I shifted my torso. Lovely. The weight of them also resulted in a headache by Sunday afternoon, so I definitely need to do something about it. Always nice to find these things out before you try to spend a week in the costume piece, though, so this weekend was a great test run.
