Brand New Course Created!

We know many have studied and are teaching the later part of the 18th century – but our study of mantuas – and our love for the first half of the 18th c has led us to create this course on how to cut and construct a 1730s mantua.

And there’ll be more – we aim to create a course looking at the mantua as a whole and how it developed throughout the 18th century. We’re also at the design stage of creating a similar course on the 1700s mantua and maybe even a 1750s-70s mantua….but this will need a hoop so hmmm…. this may need to then create a course on hoop making lol.

Ahhh the joys….

Here’s the link to the course: https://the-georgian-costume-study-centre.teachable.com/ so please pop over and check out the trailer for the course AND you can also sample each lesson and see what you think. 🙂

We know we’ve not posted loads about this – to be honest we’ve been busy creating the content for the first course!

But The Georgian Costume Study Centre is now up and running – with NO courses as of yet – but with ONE coming very soon! (Lol so genuinely excited!)

Click on the link here and take a look at our new Home Page = https://the-georgian-costume-study-centre.teachable.com

We’ll be letting you know when the first course is up and running!!!

This book studys and concentrates on a gown remade at some point during the 1750s and 1760s.

The book provides a photo heavy study of the gown, a look at the stitches and threads used on the gown. It also provides a scaled down pattern of the original gown plus a Step-by-Step guide teaching how to make the gown using the EXACT methods that the original seamstress used.

It also talks a bit about the history of the night-gown and how it developed, plus there’s a chapter taking a deeper look at the alterations made on the gown.

All in all – it’s a useful and informative book on this c.1760s yellow night-gown!

Here’s our welcome vid – just done while in the midst of clearing and preparing the shop for re-opening 12th April!

Having spent the last few years solely working on replicas, this year (coz it’s a strange year) we decided to try and push ourselves, put what we’ve been learning into practise and see if we could make a gown in a week.

We want to try and turn it into a Youtube video – it’s on the ‘To Do List’ but for now here’s a finished piccy of the gown.

(and we did indeed manage it in a week – try 5 days infact!)

Having taken a sabatical now for over 3 years, and having spent much of that time in and out of museums and recreating original garments to understand their construction, we are nearly ready to come back to the world of costume making.

However, we are still very knee deep in a research project at the moment, but have had many requests for classes and lessons, sooo, we have been thinking about putting the following courses together and would love to know your thoughts:

The idea is teaching you how to trim up your gown, so the courses would look at the ruffles, the stomacher, the petticoat and a general lesson in the making of the furbelows.

Possible Upcoming Courses:

• A days Course on Creating 4 Types of Furbelow Trim and looking at the various ways it was used.
• A days course on Decorating a Petticoat
• A days course on Ruffles, on how to trim them and how to attach them

The briefing was to create an Ancient Mariner’s Costume from an amazing selection of images that the client had dug out. To be honest, it made us want to research deeper into this type of working mariners costume as our research hasn’t yet taken us up this far into the century.

In research for this project we visited the National Maritime Museum and were able to get a study session looking at some of the uniforms they have in their stores. Really fascinating!

Anyway, the remit was a very basic outfit, and one that can get scuffed up and made to look older.

The items included:
– 1 x shirt (based on one from the Manchester Costume Galleries)
– 1 x pair of slops
– 1 x Basic mariners coat with split cuffs
– 1 x neck cloth

Here’s a link to our facebook page on this: The Facebook Link!

Here are some of the images 🙂

1770s Sack Back

These clients gowns do end up sitting in our lives for a while and therefore we grow quite fond of them. However, this is a goodbye to a beautiful (totally chosen by the client!) sack back gown, or Robe a la Francais, that went out in the post this morning.

The image she wanted to replicate was a painting by George David Matthieu and dated c.1774. It’s of Sophia Freidericke of Mecklenburg and I think she’s holding a precious mobile phone case in her hand – or lol, that’s what it looks like!

Key details of the gown are:

• Gathered Tulle Cuffs and Furbelow Trim
• Teal silk
• Pink Striped Silk bows
• Sack Back

We also went beyond what we could see and created a furbelow swathed petticoat – all in all, really very pretty!

And here’s a couple of images of our version of this painting.

This is the gown prior to putting the ribbon detail on.

One of the bows being made…

Now with the bows attached

And the final view

Our New Premises!

I can’t quite believe it, but we’re finally here, a new beautiful workspace, a rather exciting shop (oooooh and some exciting books on historical costumes!!!) and a brand new space.

This is a photo of the empty shop when we very first got the keys! It has to be one of the most exciting days of my life!

It’s changed a little since this photo…soooo….we’d love to invite all to our very first Opening Day on the 11th April 2017. We’re open from 10:30 am and pretty much right into the evening as we’re having drinks and such in the evening.

We’ll pop up some newer photos soon…

8th – 9th April 2017

Ok, so what’s this event about?
It is a 2 day, weekend event of pure history. Reenactment groups from all over the country will be making their way to Cressing Temple for this gathering – bringing their costumes, their battles, their stories all for the public to watch and prod. There is something fascinating about seeing history re-lived – I think it’s called ‘experimental archaeology’ and it can be touched, probed and asked question over. Visitors will be able to walk around the site and see dwellings from early dark ages time, to the quirky and characterful ‘Dad’s Army’ troupe that march around the site.

Last year was superb and the site where this event is held so incredible that it’s worth a day out just to see it in itself. We have a stall in one of the barns and they are massive! Like one visitor pointed out, that the if the beams were originals their size and height are so big that they must’ve been growing for centuries – possibly being a sprouting acorn near the time of the Norman Conquest. That is just incredible!

Our Stall:

We will be coming heavy laden with our mannequins dressed in garments from the 1740s, 1760s, 1770s and 1800s. We will have our timeline of Stays displayed out for all to see, our Georgian accessories to be manhandled and our shifts and shirts too.

We will also be coming with our Fabric and Haberdashery travelling department, which includes – our growing linen range, bolts of various Cottons, wools, silks, our ever-flourishing trim collection, replica buttons and remnant baskets.

Tickets:

It is a ticketed event – but up until the 12th of Feb you can get a discount with an adults ticket only being £5! Please click on the link here: Pike and Shot Tickets!

You can also go to their website: Living History Festival Website

and their facebook page : Facebook Link!