I always cry at weddings (research projects)

(Photo by lovedaylemon, used by permission)

Gail at the V&A emailed me to say that the museum is organi[s|z]ing a new exhibition on wedding fashion for 2011, and they need some help in creating a very large database of wedding fashions. They're looking for photographs of clothes worn for weddings from all cultures between 1840 and the present (and by "weddings," they include civil partnerships, yay).

You can upload up to three photographs from any wedding and the V&A would like the emphasis to be on the fashion (although they already have some lovely pictures of flowers and cakes).

Their only stipulation is that the couple should be named and the date of the wedding should be included. There are also some optional fields, such as location, religion of ceremony, and dressmaker/designer. The V&A would love to see some handmade dresses added!

I think this is a fantastic project (and I hope to be able to upload some photos myself)! Check it out here!

A quick Friday hodge-podge

First off, if you are planning to download yesterday's pattern from the V&A site, you might want to hold off until Monday -- Cassie, the web content manager for the V&A site, made the dress herself, and emailed me to say that she is going to upload slightly tweaked instructions sometime today. (Also, I forgot yesterday to link to link-sender Catherine's web page; it's here.)

Also, if you are not reading Rostitchery, why aren't you? Today (or maybe last night) she linked to a bunch of sewing machine accessory videos. I really don't like watching tutorial videos (I'm too impatient) but I was TRANSFIXED by seeing this binding foot in action! I want one. I need one. I must have one. Can you say "contrast bias hems for the rest of your natural life"? I can. (There's a slightly scarier-looking one here.)

And one last thing (maybe your Dress A Day Moment of Zen) -- Laura bought a copy of a 1958 McCalls Pattern magazine, and uploaded a few images from it. Here's an ad for a particularly wonderful dress:



I find looking at vintage dress ads almost exquisitely painful; the whole idea of advertising is to get you to covet the product, but the product, here, is almost fifty years gone. The chances of me ever finding this dress, in my size, in wearable condition ... well, they're vanishingly small. Which means I will just have to redouble my efforts on the time-machine-development front, right? And just enjoy looking at the picture.

Free Pattern from the V&A!

Click here to find a free pattern from the V&A for (I think) the dress above. It's in UK sizes 10,12, & 14 (I have no idea what those sizes are in Red-Blooded American, but I'm assuming that's something that's Google-able), and it prints on A4 paper (of which I used to have a stash but don't any longer). So all in all I'm not certain how easy this will be for those outside the Empire to manage, but hey, free pattern for cute dress!

Many thanks to Nora and Catherine, who sent me links to this, and to the associated V&A exhibit, The Golden Age of Couture 1947-1957. Which, delightfully, will still be around when I'm in London in October. Hurrah!

I'm thinking it might just be time for me to become a member of the V&A. Have to encourage this sort of thing!