Seeing the Peacock Dress on the wall at 4:16 automatically made me think of Cathy Hay. Goodness, there’s so many exciting projects happening in the sewing community! And all at once, too!
I know im asking the wrong place but does anybody know of a tool to log back into an Instagram account..? I was stupid lost my login password. I appreciate any tricks you can offer me.
@Sean Peter Thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site thru google and I'm in the hacking process atm. Seems to take quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
It probably survived because this one was expensive, due to the dye used on it. I don't really know anyone easily cutting away expensive fabrics or dresses. If the original wearer liked it a lot, perhaps she wanted it preserved for future generations.
@@sapphirecamui6447 But that is exactly why most pieces were recycled. Because the fabric was so expensive and rich, that the owner would typically have it recycled into something else (women didn't save their special occasion dresses like we do, an 18th century wedding grown would certainly not sit in a wardrobe as memento it would be recycled or refitted to wear again or for a relative).
@Sapphire Camui expensive fabric price is all the more reason why it's so remarkable that it was NOT✂️ cut up. Either by alterations for the original wearer, passing it down to a daughter & being fitted for her, or by turning it into different articles of clothing entirely. No fabric was wasted-it was re-purposed.
I have worked with tartan made on antique looms and once ONCE one made " old school" When working with wool one of the first things I learned was to get it wet in cold water. Stretch it on a frame whilst wet, work with the fabric making sure your lines are straight, pin down and allow to dry over night . Come back the next day make sure things are still straight. If not , dampen the areas that need some pushing around and stretching and do it again. I know that there is no way you could have done that with this project. But, that's how I was taught to work with wool tartan . That stuff is strong and can take a beating.
I've been a fan of dress history for a bit, mostly with Bernadette's videos but the name of this video in particular struck a cord after watching Outlander, too.
I just imagine the poor dressmaker rolling in her grave when she realizes that someone found her mistake and then recreated it! But it also makes it so much more real. I get stressed when cutting into my fancy fabric, the first cut of that tartan would have made me nauseous. Also, I get this is about the tartan, but I love the burgundy dress you are wearing throughout the commentary- I’m hoping you made it as well and could share the pattern?
lol that poor mantua maker, and yes to the cutting of the tartan - I definitely felt a bit sick! lol As for the dress - it's an old one from the Banana Republic in collaboration with Issa. I've had it for years. Probably a similar option would be something from Sew Over It - they have a lot of lovely patterns & the blouse I'm wearing in this is the Anderson pattern from them. sewoverit.co.uk
My great Grandmother had the maiden name Fraiser, but I haven't been able to trace her lineage beyond our immigration to the US. But every time I see a Fraiser, Fraise, or Fraser surname, I get so excited. I'd love to be able to reconnect with that Culture, and the name gives me such a strange feeling of kinship. But who knows, maybe our line split before the Danes ever even invaded, so we were never Scottish to begin with! History is wild.
Thank you, to Abby and Loren; including everyone in this documentary who recreated The Isabella McTavish-Fraser wedding gown for enlightening me on historical garments worn in the highlands of Scotland. Looking forward, to more documentaries of this type.
Absolutely beautiful tartan and I adore the dress! I really love how this dress has continued to be worn at weddings in the same family! Incredible history and the recreation is EPIC!!!
Seeing the Isabella McTavish Fraser gown made me realise what I'm going to try to make and wear for Christmas 2020, economy willing. Thank you for recreating this beautiful dress.
I'm from Edinburgh but now live in London, did some of my costume construction study up there so this was a selfishly fun watch! I had a bit of a tartan aversion for a long time as I had to wear a kilt as part of my school uniform but I'm slowly coming round to loving and embracing it again. I feel some not so historical but still old clothes in tartan making coming on!
As you started to talk about the more modern fabric, even though the weaver was older I realized what was going to happen. Even today you can have a different dye that can change how a fabric will fit. What you all did is amazing and such great investigative skills. You Ladies did a wonderful job. I just love it.
When I came to see you guys make Isabella McTavish Fraser's Gown, I was enthralled. I wish I could have stayed for longer, because it was a utterly wonderful to watch.
This is incredible! Thank you so much for sharing the process! I love your 18th century dressmaking book and as a Scottish-By-Proxy person (I attended the Univ of St Andrews too!) who loves Scottish history, I am loving the women's highlander information.
Surprised you didn't mention that tartan was illegal after The '45 until 1782. If the dress seemed 40 years out of date it may be because that was the last time the family was able to make a wedding dress out of tartan. Once the tartan was made legal again it had moved from a cloth for everyday use, to more for ceremonial garments. As others have said , because you can see so many of the stiches it may have been more likely made by the family and they tried to add "modern" touches to the type of Tartan dresses they have made in the past.
Those laws are actually more nuanced than what general history has tried to portray, and the exhibition (Wild and Majestic - Romantic Visions of Scotland) that the original gown was featured in addressed these nuances. It wasn't that tartan was illegal for everyone, all the time, it was very specific instances. Additionally, it didn't apply to women - which we found fascinating as well! We're obviously not scholars on the subject, we did learn a lot from Dr. Tuckett, Clare Campbell, and the curators at the National Museum of Scotland. :)
Hi @Katherine, sorry I've missed seeing your comment! While aspects of the gown were old-fashioned in style, the construction techniques were fairly typical for a mantua maker working in the 1780s. So the situation was like our experiences today: say you're a skilled modern dressmaker trying to make a dress that looks vintage. As indeed many dressmakers are asked to do, for brides that want something "in the style of their grandmother". 😉 English Gowns were something you had to be trained (serve an apprenticeship) to learn how to make - although it's certainly true that just about everybody learned basic stitching as a child. The order of operation and the stitches used meant the threads were visible - I know, odd to our eyes today! And it was very common not to colour match your thread to your fabric -- unbleached linen thread as you see here in both the original gown and in our re-created gown was a versatile go-to thread for a wide range of garments, unless your fabric was silk.
Oh, what a stunning dress! I especially like the gorgeous pleated back. Thank you for sharing the pattern for free, although I would have payed good money for that amount of work. I wanted to make an "Outlander" dress and now I have a pattern for it! I'm thinking some lushious green is in my future. :)
Gorgeous dress! I wish I had known about this project as I would have loved to be there. I am just down the road and I have a degree in costume so something like this would have been perfect! I will definitely be downloading the pattern too! Thanks!
I love how doing this kind of thing allows insight into the life and minds of the people of the time. Of course, it's speculation, but the more you know about the context, the more accurate those speculations are. This was such a fascinating project.
I my self plan on sewing my wedding dress and I am Clan Buchanan and proud and want to use the tarten in it as well. I cant wait but need to find a site where I can order.
Tartan would, particularly early in history have been worn by EVERY one. This is because tartan is a result of the weaving, not specifically a “pattern” that weavers were going for, especially at first. Most weaving cultures produce a plaid or tartan pattern because it is a natural outcome of crossing warp and weft of different colours. It was only later that the colours of tartans became codified in the highlands, to particular colours and patterns for particular clans.
Thanks for the video and the download. Not sure I'll ever do anything with it, I haven't made any clothes yet. I quilt, have a few to get finished before trying any clothes, probably something fairly simple to start and give myself confidence. Awesome job on the dress.
What a WONDERFUL project ladies! As I was watching this I was thinking of the people who made this gown in a first place... They wouldn't have guessed that some centuries later, some seamstress would have studied this dress millimeter by millimeter :'D They would certainly feel proud but freak out and think something like they should have paid more attention to this or that hahaha :'D
Haha, indeed! I wonder if the dressmaker who made the funky sleeve mistake and fix would be embarrassed or just like "hey, what, we had 3 days to make this in the dark, get over it," lol
my name is Arabella Isabel rose MacTavish. Im going to make this dress, it will be an amazing project and is going to be made out MacTavish Tartan. and well, it has my name on it, so..
I have some questions, would it have been possible that this gown was worn by someone else before Isabella? Or Maybe the dress makers didn’t know the latest fashions? I only ask because of a few things you said like how out of date the style was and how it was adjusted for sizing and shape? Or maybe the older style supported the tartan better, being so heavy? Thanks for sharing I really enjoyed seeing this 🥰
That's what we would like to believe, and if the dye testing hadn't been done - something that we would argue till we're blue in the face. However, because of the dye test dating the gown to post 1775, it doesn't seem likely that it was a remake from an older gown. (However, we are secretly hoping the dye dating was wrong and that what maybe it was a remake...)
American Duchess I was actually curious myself; when you pointed out that the ‘80s fashion for stays conflicted with the cut of the bodice, I wondered if ‘40s stays might have been a bit less “thrusty.” I’m not versed well enough to identify stays from decade to decade, though.
Timesmith Dressmaking Well then perhaps the undergarments would have matched the fashion of the outer! (Regardless of the reason why the dress seemed so out of date.)
Wow, the preservation of the cloth and history is amazing. I would love to know the history and storage of the cloth , as well as recommendations for storing garments in contemporary time. Thank you.
Is it weird that I have a very similar fireplace (if not the same) than what is behind Rebecca Olds? I was meant to watch this video, silly as it may sound :D I love historical gowns and how they are made. This video is very interesting. :)
Absolutely a gorgeous recreation! ❤❤ Thank you for sharing.😊😊 I wonder if the original dress was a gift from the bridegroom to the bride? Is the original fabric the tartan of the MacTavish family or the Fraser family?
shame how "we want to honor our model" also turns into "this body is "wrong" ". i think it would have been more satisfying to find someone as close to isabella as possible, to make the focus the dress rather than changing it to fit a different body. the final result is GREAT tho
well, all bodies are different, and we often don't discover the small, subtle differences until the dress is in progress or nearly done. Just goes to show that even when the bust-waist-hip measurements are the same, a garment made for one individual can and will fit very differently on another.
@@AmericanDuchess1 me too. I like the history presented through clothing. I am so curious, and would love to see a photo of the granddaughter who wore the dress in 78.
The pattern is not sold out - you just have to scroll down to the download link in the description under the pictures. I know, super annoying, but there's a bug in our new website that doesn't let us put the button where it ought to be.
I was wondering, are you assuming that any assymetri in the dress were made by mistake, or could it not be the result of it being made to fit Isabella's body? (Like the bodice pleats being un-centered)
Sarah Algelius some things are absolutely because of how mantua makers worked - shaping fabric to the body, and some things just seem to be mistakes. The cb seam would have been done on a work table, so is a result of some not so careful folding and stitching and not necessarily because of Isabella’s body. 😊
Americans please take note; it's Scottish, not Hungarian. It's Fraser with an 's' as in Scotland. It's not pronounced 'Frayzshure' as in Hungarian actress ZsaZsa Gabor's first name.
Women in Scotland didn’t generally adopt their husband’s surnames until about the 1850s. You can see the change happening between the 1841 and 1861 census, by which time most younger women and some older women were recorded with a husband surname (whether they liked it or not!). If she sued someone at that time, it would be recorded as “Isabella MacTavish and So-and-so Fraser, her spouse, for his interest.” But he may not have generally been called by Fraser either; he may have been known by the name of his land. And titles complicate things again.
Just found your channel I’m a new subscriber! Thank You for what you do. So interesting. I’m a weirdo and can’t help but notice how much you move your hands and arms when you speak lol. Do you teach classes of some sort? You look like you’re talking to a large group of people, always. I love it. 😋
A wealthy woman like this may have had her dress made in Inverness, Aberdeen, Perth or Edinburgh. (I wondered if it was one of her descendants whose arm was fatter…?).
Hello! If you wouldn’t mind, could you fix the link to the pattern? The link in the description seems to be broken, and a lot of people are also confused since it’s listed as “sold out” (to anyone who encounters that issue: just scroll down to the download button). Thank you!
No, there doesn't seem to be any evidence for remaking - that was one of the things Abby requested be looked for when the gown was examined. (though we really wish there was - it would explain a lot!)
Amazing project! Have you found any discolouration of the pigments in the original dress, or alterations of the shape/size done after its making? and how did you account for that if you did find any?
Thank you! Most fabrics will fade over time, that's pretty standard for antique textiles, so it's safe to assume that the original dress has faded a little bit from it's original glory. The weaver took samples of the yarns and was able to do a pretty close color match for the reproduced textile, so that was what we did/how we handled it. :)
The colour match was extraordinary! As for any alterations or changes made to the original gown over the past 235 years (and counting), no, we could find no evidence of that. The same unbleached linen thread is used throughout and there are no marks in the lining of the bodice indicating any seams have been shifted (and that's where alterations are usually made, when they happen). It's a remarkably "unmolested" original!
It's an old-y from the Banana Republic -- a collaboration they did with Issa to recreate the same dress (in a cheaper textile) as Kate Middleton's engagement dress. Probably a close option would be the 1940s wrap dress from Sew Over It sewoverit.co.uk/product/1940s-wrap-dress-sewing-pattern/ 😊
I know that is about the tartan gown but why am I getting the feeling of Outlander based solely on the facts it's in the 18th century, in Scotland, and the guy's last name is Fraser. Was Isabella the real Claire?! Did she time travel back to the 18th century?!
@@AmericanDuchess1 gasp!! I smell conspiracy theories but Im not sure its even feasible. Im just garbage for 18th century fashion that this is the one reference video I know of that is about Scottish 18th century tartan gown that was actually a wedding dress.
Hi! Not sure I understand what you're asking? The gown is an original in the Inverness museum, and we did a recreation of it in June 2019. We released a pattern w/ instruction in November 2019
Okay. 7 months later, and after binge watching Outlander, I have this idea that Isabella MacTavish Fraser couldve been the inspiration behind the character of Claire Beauchamp Fraser. So she, Isabella, was a bit far from Inverness (just like Claire) and she married Malcom Fraser when she was in her 20s, almost exactly like Claire. Also Jamie’s full name is James Alexander Malcom Mackenzie Fraser, Malcom Fraser being two names from Jamie’s full name. Although Jamie married Claire in the 1740s if Im not mistaken which is the deviation from reality. Now thats my full idea and conspiracy that Isabella is the real life Claire Fraser. She went through some rocks!
You said you were in Nevada. I looked you up and realized you guys are from Reno! I am from Reno. I was just wondering if you guys work with any of the young chautauquans? I know I would have loved a business like this being around when I did it as a child
Not used to Abby this way! She's devoid of all her quirky, fun personality-I hate it. You can be professional without being beige. I'm sure someone must have said something to her for this result. Shame. At least she's living her best life now!!!
I would have liked to see less of your lovely faces and much more footage of the dress and the process of making it. I hope next time you do something similar, you'll give us much more of the project itself.
Our sewing footage was limited by what was taken of us by our Videographer, however, all the in-depth construction details & how to can be found in the free pdf pattern of the gown: www.american-duchess.com/book/isabella-mactavish-fraser-pattern-pdf :)
@@AmericanDuchess1 you guys need to stop lying about history. Till 18th century people killed all scientists meaning witches when they stop killing them in 18th people turn away from God. Since then people dress now like bom. Back then people were Christians you need to mention that on your videos instead of lying with bunch of witches. Wake up
