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Just a Working Girl from Bruegel's World

  Hello Beautiful Humans! In the 16th Century not everyone wore giant ruffs or rigid farthingales? Extreme fashions that capture the public imagination are not practical for most people in many professions. I made this short to remind everyone that we did not just stop farming and working once the 16th century got underway. While clothing may adapt to current fashions, there will always be people working 9 to 5, or longer hours, to make sure our world is functioning. If you are not into extreme fashions look at the middling and lower classes to find clothing that is functional and beautiful. When I made this dress I specifically wanted to choose colors that were typical of the time period I was working from. Red wool kirtles have been popular for many years by the time this style of dress was in fashion. Combining this with a blue linen apron was inspired by a painting detail from Peter Bruegel the Elder depicting peasants at a fair day. I later realized the specific figure with this
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I Promised my Friends a Tutorial for Reinforced Eyelets

  Hello Beautiful Humans! This week is a electronic gift to one of my friend's who recently had a birthday and asked me for a video tutorial a year ago on how I incorporate rings into my eyelets to reinforce my 16th century gowns. To give you some historical context, in the second half of the 15th century having elaborate lacing rings for your gown was very popular in Florence. By the 16th century the fashion had disappeared, but the fitted bodices of gowns continued. When Elenora di Toledo was burred, her funeral dress had small brass rings sewn into her eyelets. Exact sizing and details on this dress can be found in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 3 . It makes since that over a 100 year period the rings would have transformed from a practical focal point into a discrete reinforcement method. I usually get my rings for lacing, awls, and other tools from Renaissance Fabrics You can also find awls, thread, chalk, etc at your local sewing store. This video will walk y
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I made a Roman Widow's Veil with Onion Skins

  This week we are trying out an experiment with natural dyeing. I haven't really died fabric in years, and I've never been hands on in dyeing with natural fibers. I chatted with some friends who have worked with natural dyes and started saving onion skins from my cooking for a year. While cleaning up my sewing room after the holidays I cam across another stash of yellow onion skins and decided I had enough skins to try making a dye pot. I started this project my soaking my silk veil I wanted to dye in a mordant bath of alum while I started cooking onion skins. Mordants are a dye fixative to keep your fabric from loosing color after the dye process. My research said to use a mineral mordant, such as pickling alum, when trying to dye vegetable and protein based fibers. I didn't time this process and went more based on description and experimentation. The onions skins cooked in a crock pot I found at the thrift store last year while I was stating to passively research this
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Spring Time Mitts: A "Modern" Monday Project

  Last weekend I finally sewed my first project since cutting my finger at work last month and having to get stitches. My finger healed beautifully and I needed a small project to build up my confidence to start sewing again. Inspired by a spring time snow storm, I settled on making a pair of 18th century mitts. Today we would think of them as fingerless gloves. Thank you for joining me in the little tutorial I created while stitching along. My materials for this project include: Pattern from Penny River Costumes: https://www.etsy.com/listing/648530850/pattern-and-instructions-only-diy-make?ref=shop_home_active_8&crt=1 Wool pashmina scarf from a thrift store Silk Cabbage from another project Silk Embroidery Floss Embroidery Pattern Book Chalk & Scissors Thread & Needles Thimble I guess you could call this a thrift flip or stash buster project too since I did not purchase a single one of these items for the project, except the pattern. The fabric came from a thrifted woo
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Modern Monday: Visit Paris to Hollywood at the Denver Art Museum

Today I wanted to share my recent trip to the Denver Art Museum to look at all the beautiful vintage fashion in their From Paris to Hollywood exhibit which will be up until July, 18th, 2020. As a small aside, the museum did give me permission to record while I was in the exhibit, but asks me to remind everyone that I am not associated with the Denver Art Museum in any way. I'm just a lover of historical fashions and all of my views expressed here are my own. This is not sponsored content. I have also done my best not to include anyone else in my footage to respect their privacy. This exhibit is framed to narrate the love story between Veronique and Gregory Peck using fashion, family photos, letters, etc. The exhibit starts in the 1950s when they met in Paris while Gregory was traveling for the film Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn. As a fun aside, Roman Holiday is one of my favorite films. The exhibit continues on showing items from the 1950's through the late 1980s and r
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Medieval Dry Shampoo

  Welcome back to my follow up project about keeping your hair clean in the middle ages. My research for this project was based in trying to dig deeper into medieval hair care. I was pointed to a book called The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine , translated by Monica H Green through a Society for Creative Anachronism web conference and set off to reading. This is a popular medieval treatise on for women's health, and includes a range of medical advice from cosmetics to assistance with child birth. Obviously I can't promise that all of this information dating back the the 11th or 12th century is still thought to be sound, but it is fascinating. While reading through the section on women's cosmetics I found some hair care recipes and had to pause. Were they asking me to put powder in my hair to make it smell good? This sounded suspiciously like a home made dry shampoo I had used on and off at camping events and during the pand
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I tried Ruth Goodman's "How to Be a Tudor" Haircare routine

Today I have a vlog for you that I filmed in August and September of 2020. Pandemic Chic for the last year and change has included sweatpants, fewer showers, and the messy up-do. This had me passively wondering about how 16th century people handled hygiene more. One one likes being stinky after all, but they did not believe it was necessarily healthy to shower as often as we do in the United States in 2020. Please note I am not going to perpetuate the myth about medieval people being dirty and unclean, it was just a different time period with different methods. Around this time I started reading How to be a Tudo r by Ruth Goodman. When the book was published in 2015 I added it to my to be read pile immediately because I respect her work as a historian and in living history. Like many, the pandemic has helped me put a dent in my "to be read" pile. She has a section where she discusses the clothing and the hygiene of the Tudor period and I became inspired. One of the major wa
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