We’ve been now to 2 warehouses, digging about in their depths to try and find some trims that might be useful to historical costume making.  This is the first lot of listings we’ve popped up, there should be some more coming so watch this space…

In this bundle you’ll find tassles, bobbles, lace and ribbons and in various colours. Some of our favourites are the wooly looking tassles perfect for weather worn cloaks. But whatever your project – we hope you find something that is useful to you and perfect for your job. They are all sold and priced up by the metre.

Welcome to these new editions…

100% Linens, both 54″ wide, both from our Basic Linen Range and two very different colours!

The Turquoise Option

Meet Turquoise and Beige!

And the Beige

We’ve just listed up this new fabric which is perfect, perfect, perfect for regency and Napoleonic costumes – it’s all pretty darn perfect for that soft Victorian Day dress.

Let’s face it: this cloth is perfect in so many ways!

It’s also ideal for modern cotton summer dresses, neck cloths for the 18thc, men’s neckerchiefs in fancy dress or for the Victorian rogue – and infact, whatever else you can turn your mind to. We’ve bought it in specifially for a Regency Day dress (watch this space!).

It’s 56″ Wide and made from 100% Pure Cotton in a nice, lightweight lawn. The pattern (as seen here) is lots of evenly spaced smaller dots in reed with a more infrequent Wheel-like embroidered motif. This motif is a bit like a Broderie Anglais Motif. The red is a basic red but is softened a little by the white background – coming across a little more like a dullish/Tomato red.

It’s £7.50 a Mtr and we have about 10 mts in stock.

It’s a strange ol’ loosely woven wool, accompanied with a fluffed up haze of soft wool! but its’ perfect for the under-breeches that we want to make copied from a pair in the Bankfield Museum in Halifax.

When we were first replicating and studying these under-breeches we never thought we’d actually find a fabric that replicated the original – lol we were mainly after the pattern and construction techniques! – but then we stumbled across this beaut. We’re tempted to call it our strange wool cloth but it’s going to be forever named ‘The Loosely Woven Wool’…what can we say; we’re not very original with our names!

It’s 54″ wide so nice and wide for most dressmaking and costume projects. It’d also be nice to an inner layer for something – possibly even a quilted petticoat…hmmmm…now that’s a thought 🙂

And here’s an image of the breeches we’re hoping to reproduce!

We know! Different colour but you can’t get everything in life! Also, we’d like to send the proper acknowledgement to the Bankfield Museum for allowing us to use this image 🙂

But here it is:

Maroon Embroidered Taffeta!

100% Polyester or Faux Silk

It’s the fabric we made our first sack back out of so we can happily tell you that it’s great to work with. We always wash our fabrics first before we sew with them and this one didn’t shrink nor fade in colour. There did seem to be some loose dye but no difference in the colour when we compared it to the pre-washed version.

These taffeta’s are great to sew with – and this design would be idea for anything from our themed historical costumes to dressmaking, soft furnishing or other craft work.

It’s not too badly priced either – going out at £6.50 a mtr. It’s also nice and wide – with the embroidered area of 50″ and the selvedge to selvedge width of 58″

The floral design changes from oval rings of flowers and leaves to the odd random trailing floral sprig – we’ve got some close ups of the designs so please take a look at our product page for it.

Here’s the link here: Embroidered Taffeta!

We’re trying to push the website’s fabric range – increase our online sales from the website and to do that we’re going to be doing a few posts based on showing what kind of fabrics we have in our range.

The Coutil cottons are fab and they are of a good quality. They are actually woven in the UK and are perfect for Victorian Corsetry – being used as the Lining layer for their stability and firmness.

Our range comes in two colours – White and Natural, and what makes them so powerfully rigid is the tight and densely packed herringbone weave. They have a really unmanipulable crispness to them which is perfect for relying on to not give at all when being pulled tight in corsetry.

The White One: Here’s a link here to it’s page: White Coutil Link and it’s width is 150cm or 59″. If you’re into doing  Victorian Corsetry then this is an ideal fabric for you. The Victorian Method of Corsetry is much easier than the Georgian and the Coutil layer gets made up as the complete back before it gets joined to the front sections. Here are some of it’s images.

You can see in the image to the Right here that tight and small Herringbone Weave. These lines of herringbone travel along parallel with the Selvedge.

The Natural One: This is the version that’s still in Loomstate state! Ie, it hasn’t been dyed or treated. This makes this good for dying but also gives a nice natural look or creamy colour, which can make for a much more classical look. They are the same cloth though – one being the bleached version and the other the natural state. This too is 150cm or 59″ wide and is also made in the UK. Here’s the link to our page on the Coutil: The Natural Coutil!

And some of our images from that page – we know it’s hard to really see the Herringbone weave in the image below but you can just about make it out.

Loomstate Coutil – 100% Cotton

Red Stripes!

We have listed a new fabric! This is a 100% Cotton fabric (click link here for product page!) that is like a slubby, lightweight canvas with slightly-darker-than-normal red stripes on a natural-looking, cream background. Its priced at £8 a mtr (hmmm…very reasonable we hear you say!) Well initially we just got it in for a new hoop of ours that is based on a fab hoop we studied at the Edinburgh Collections centre. It was a really gorgeous hoop…and I know we always say that but even the lady that got the garments out for us was surprised at what good quality the hoop was, and what design, and how on earth she hadn’t know it was in their collection before! We have no photos to show you I’m afraid as the Edinburgh Collection centre was one of the museums where you’re not allow to share your images – for personal use only!!!

However, when we sourced this fabric out we knew it would match perfectly to that hoop and so we got it in, but as 20 mts were the minimum we were allowed to buy we thought we’d offer it for sale also.

It’s a fab fabric and would do marvelously for soft furnishings, an anglais gown even, working aprons, general and non-historic dressmaking (gosh! Is there such a thing!) and cushions and such.

It is 45″ wide (112cm) and the stripes run parallel with the selvedge – as you can see in this image.

Thanks for looking!

We’ve had this one listed for a couple of weeks now, pending photos, and here they are! It’s a gorgeous blue, and the same fabric that we’ve used for our pocket hoops – click link here (although we’ll include a photo anyway on this page!)

It’s a lovely weight – dense weave but not thick, soft but not light and all in all, a really nice wibble to it of we’re honest. This is the same fabric that we’ve made our Sandby Gown out of (…and click link here).

It’s also the same linen as the Taupe and the Beige that we have in stock and like we say, it’s got to be one of our favourites to work with.

Check out some of the photos! and click on the link here for the actual product!

We also have a super short video showing it’s drape, silly but probably worth watching…

Our New Blue Baby!

We have realised that if you’re trying to make a decision about fabrics it makes it much easier if you can have a better understanding of the cloth you are trying to consider. This is just a quick post to link the two uses of our 100%, Good, Medium Weight Linen.

Our Gentle Eared Coif…

First off we have the Gentle Eared Coif (Click link for product) – and here we hope you can see how subtle and dense the weave is. It is a firmer cloth to be sure and though still soft it definitely has a rigidity to it. This however isn’t in the same way that cheaper linens can be rigid. It’s with a firm soft rigidity if that makes sense so though it’s springy it’s not harsh.

This coif has been made with 3 layers of the linen to allow a smooth top layered finish but the linen does match this tight weave look – one of it’s bonuses is that it’s not very see-through.

Ok, well the other item we’ve made out of our 100% Linen Medium weight is our Basic Shift (Click link for product).

This shift wasn’t based particularly on any study session but a result of needing a basic shift that met the needs of a ruffle at the sleeve and a ruffle at the neck. This designed ticked all the boxes and though we couldn’t find any existing 18th c shifts in the museums that matched it in look there was hints of it in paintings where we could piece it together from.

Our Basic Shift…

Here you can see it and get a good idea of how the fabric works. We didn’t think it was too heavy for a shift – doubtless there are many finer but the quality of your linen was a sign of your wealth – not necessarily for others to make a decision of you upon but more for the fact that if you could afford it then you would always go for a better quality of linen. We wanted our Basic Shift to be able to be used for working class girls to wealthy ladies of the manor and therefore use a linen that reflected the fine quality of weave but was also firmer for the harder look. We hope this linen achieves both!

We hope this helps your decision and thanks for looking.

xxx