MORE ON Fabrics & Photos to Educate Your Eye

July 21, 2013

My last blog entry on Fabrics & Photos to Educate Your Eye  I talked about looking on the internet for photos of extant gowns and fabrics as a way to get used to recognizing if a fabric would work for a certain time period. I wanted to give a shout-out to one of my favorite bloggers who shares her knowledge doing exactly that. Isabella of All the Pretty Dresses has become one blog that I don’t miss reading, and have it coming to me by email so I don’t miss any on the Blog Reader where it lists blogs I follow.

Isabella must spend a lot of time trolling ebay, etsy, and auction sites for these treasures, and I know I do sometimes but it can pull you down the rabbit hole and suddenly dinner is late! and it’s time to go to bed and you never got out of your jammies from this morning! Really, it can do that!

Isabella shares all the photos the seller has posted including their descriptions but my favorite and most entertaining part is her commentary at the bottom. She will confirm or deny its claim to a time period. If it’s right, she tells you why, and if it’s wrong, she tells what gives it away. And this is what I like: she tells you what details identify them. She doesn’t usually pull ones that are multi-labeled Victorian-Civil War-Edwardian but really good ones worthy of our education. I’m still trying to learn the different time periods and it irks me to no end when something is labeled just plain Victorian or 1800s. Man, that doesn’t tell me much. I pretty much can get close to the decade but I’m at the point where I want to get closer, like late 1870s or early 80s, or late 1820s. Granted, sometimes they carried over styles into different years and I can deal with that. But it also gives me documentation that something was still worn in the early years of the next decade.

It was fun when I saw Isabella had posted about one bodice I’d bought on ebay recently. It was really hard to date it from the photos the seller provided and the colors didn’t do it justice. I wrote about it in my own blog where I visually dissected two extant bodices I bought for study. Learning From the Past From Extant Bodices   

I recently purchased another one that I’m anticipating its delivery any day, and so am waiting to see if she came across it too. It was labeled as Civil War but from those puffy sleeves, I’m thinking 1890s, and it has a lot of great interior photos of it. Once I get my next blog on studying extant bodices, I’ll have more of my own to include. Buying these extra small bodices inexpensively is a nice tactile way to learn about the real clothing I’m trying to make.