Monday 12 July 2010

Victorian Day

My daughter's school held a Victorian Day last week.

Ha ha! I thought - a great opportunity to make something lovely for her to wear. But what with the Handm@de Winchester fair, I did not actually start making it until a few days before.

I sort of knew what I wanted to make but trawled the web and asked my lovely friends from the etsy UK thread for advice. I found some great sites which I will share with you another time.

In the end I looked up the Tenniel illustrations of Alice in Wonderland. I made some sketches and based my design on this. I did not actually have enough money to buy fabric for a dress but we found that Mary had a dress that was perfect. I just had to cut off a couple of horrible embellishments.

So I used an old nightie which gave me enough white cotton for the pinafore, but I could have used a white sheet (if I could have found one) or a length of cotton from the shop. I luckily had a nice length of broderie anglaise.

This is the result.




and the back


And I am showing you this one as it shows Mary dancing and skipping off to school. She loved wearing the long skirts and was so excited to go to school.


Her teacher a teaching assistant were dressed too, and the classroom had all the pretty displays and the interactive whiteboard blacked up. The children played Victorian games at play time and had to write on slates with chalk.

What a great way to learn.

And I learnt lots too and will be posting my tutorial on how to make a simple pinafore for Victorian girls.

4 comments:

Helen Smith said...

She looks lovely - you did a great job!

Izabela said...

wow, this is so lovely! she looks gorgeous! well done!
xxx

Anonymous said...

she looks lovely :)

Unknown said...

Fantastic! She looks lovely and happy in it
Gemxxx