Queen of fashion, Caroline Weber

Well having finished reading Caroline Weber's book 'Queen of fashion-What Marie Antoinette wore to the revolution' this week, and feeling in quite a creative mood at the moment (spending the weekend at the OHs mums house for a few days holiday and I'm feeling quite calm and relaxed, hence creative and not so stressed about having uni work to do in time for going back on Monday) so I thought I'd write a quick review, to pass some time before bed.
Being quite passionate about historical costume, particularly 17th and 18th century, I love a good study of it. However, there are very few decent books on the subject, most are patterns and pictures (not that I don't love a good picture book!) recent films have been relatively good, for example Marie Antoinette and Dutchess. Caroline Weber's contribution though is an incredible contribution to the feild, written somewhere between being a novel and a textbook, so it's an interesting read, you get all of the info from a textbook, with the easiness of reading the novel.
Queen of Fashion talks about the life of Marie Antoinette, from her arrival in France at age 14, her marriage to the daupin Louis VXI, and their initially difficult marriage, through to her rise to being queen of fashion, France's most admired woman, through to her steady decline from power during the revolution to her eventual execution at the guillotine. The book concentrates on the queens control over her fashion choices, an approach which isn't taken by any other biographer of Marie Antoinette. Queen of Fashion acknowledges that the queens influence over her peoples aesthetic values was so great that even during the revolution when she was hated by them, her stylistic choices were still imitated.
The book takes a slightly biased approach, written from a sympathetic perspective to the queens plight, but overall it is a highly recommended read, for anyone, especially students, interested in historical costume.

http://www.amazon.com/Queen-Fashion-Marie-Antoinette-Revolution/dp/0312427344

(Link to amazon.com for Caroline Weber's Queen of fashion- what Marie Antoinette wore to the revolution)

new project, knitting!!

quick post, as i havn't posted in a while. I bought some amazing wool a while back but hadn't managed to do anything with it, so started a (almost) seamless baby onesie a few weeks ago. The wool is dye threee different colours, dark pink, light pink and white- in kinda patches, so it looks beautiful knitted!! Also, i've discovered my gran didn't teach me to knit, she taught me purl! so my knitte things are actually purl stitch but at least she taught me something usefull!
Pics to follow, i'll post pics of teh amazing wool too! I might even manage to post a pattern if i can manage to write one.

little dungerees

ok so maybe there was a slight distraction from my 'project posted every week' idea, but i've done a few things recently. Heres my little dungerees, for a girl about 12-18 months. Made of pink corduroy, pink satin lined, with pink plastic buttons to fasten.

Slight distraction

Ok so maybe i got a little bit distracted from the patchwork quilt. Im as far as pinned it all together, and had intended to sit down and start quilting today but saw the pretty pink wool sat there all lonely on the desk and thought sod it i'll get back to the quilt in a little while, i'll just knit a teeny tiny bit. Well......that was about 11 this morning and i'm still knitting, i don't think i'm very self motivated really. But i do have a pretty good idea, i'm going to try knitting a seamless baby onesie, i've looked at a few patterns online and i'm going to give it a go just kind of making it up as i go along, if it doesn't work i can always jsut unravel it and start again! wish me luck xx

Project One - Scrap Patchwork Quilt (Part One)

First weekly project, thought i'd start with a patchwork quilt, to try and use up some of the masses of scrap fabric i have, since i did promise my partener i'd do something usefull with it (he thinks its silly that i keep all of the scraps that are too small to even sew childrens clothes from, i've tried using the excuse i'm being eco-friendly but really i keep them because there such pretty fabric that i cant bare to part with them!)
So i dug out all of these especially pretty pink scraps, i took a few pictures as i went so i could post making the quilt from start to end.



I started off by marking and cutting out hundreds of rectangles from my scrap fabric, i found a cheap biro was actually a lot better for marking my fabric than tailors chalk, dressmakers chalk etc.



Starting to sew all of the rectangles together, chain stitching to save on thread.



A few of my rectangles sewn together, i pieced together 20 rectangles for each row of my quilt.



sewing together the rows.



All of the rectanlges sewn together, making up the quilt top.



The quilt top folded up, i sewed around some of the hearts on some of the patterned fabric, just for a pretty touch on the quilt top



This last picture is my quilt top pinned to a layer of batting, and the pink velour i'm using as my backing on the bottom. I found trying to pin them together on my desk was impossible, everything just moved about, so i layed them on the carpet in the hall, and i found the velour fabric sort of stuck to the carpet, so the batting and quilt top layed perfectly flat on top, and nothing moved about as i pinned them!

Well thats as far as i've got, but hopefully i'll finish this and post a part two for this project soon.....well, i might get bored and move on to something else, but i'll get back to finishing it eventually!

summer resolution

I havn't posted anything in a few weeks, so since i'm now finished uni for the summer i thought i'd begin a bit of a summer resolution - i'm going to post a project every week! I started my blog with the intention of it being a bit more personal than it has been so far, so hopefully a project every week will make it a bit more personal too.
My weekly projects will all be sewing, or maybe knitting because i've been experimenting with that recently and i'm starting to enjoy it (maybe a bit too much, my HUGE stash of bits of pretty fabric i've promised my other half i'll do something with eventually, is starting to be taken over my a slightly bigger pile of pretty wool i've promised him i'll do something with eventually!)

april babywear creations

a few new creations for april, all babywear/children's wear, around age 1 or 2.

firstly, a pink winchette waistcoat type jacket


second, a semi-formal pink stain and floral cotton patterned dress


third, a beige, floral pattern cotton dress,


fourth, blue floral winchette dungerees, fully lined with striped blue cotton, with blue sattin ribbon straps,


and finally my favourite peice, a onesie made from cath kidston floral patterned raised/brushed cotton, with elasticated cuffs,