A Fly Fringe

No, not the sort of fly fringes for horses, which makes researching C18th fly fringes very hard! I thought I would have a go at making my own fly fringe in preparation for some frilly cuffs, which may or may not have fly fringes on them. (As seen in the V&A book: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Fashion in Detail by A. Hart and S. North pp 134-5.)

I didn't have a shuttle as recommended for making such and nor did I understand how to use one so I just used my good old fingers and embroidary threads I had lying around. I also added in a couple of ribbon flowers. You have to excuse the colours, but this was only a trial run.

Stays (part 2)

After having spent 3 weeks doing the main event at Kentwell Hall (hence why there haven't been any updates), I've noticed that my 'Pictures' folder on my laptop is so disorganised with photos waiting to be uploaded to my blogs before I file them away and forget about them! So here is a short blog on the second stage of my stays.

Once I had sewn on all the side panels, it was time to sort out the back panels as these were slightly different. These pieces were cut on the fold so I ended up sewing through 2 layers of canvas and 2 layers of silk twice. After tacking the silk to the canvas the channels were sewn as normal, but through all 4 of the layers:

It got a little sore on the fingers, but I got there in the end! The next part of hemming was done the same as the rest of the pieces except this time 2 layers of canvas and 1 layer of silk were trimmed to about half so that the other bit of silk would fold over the top and be sewn down. Then both of the panels were sewn to the rest of the stays the same way as the other pieces.

Now it's just a case of sewing the rest of the channels...