Hourglass Attire

05/04/2021

I really had fun both examining and researching this dress!

Helen Fedchak discusses a new M&A Shogren dress on display in the Oregon Historical Society’s “Experience Oregon” exhibit.

01/08/2021

I haven't seen Bridgerton, but this is a really excellent article about corset wearing!

Women's rights were severely restricted in 19th-century England, but their undergarments weren't to blame

11/24/2020

In our Dear Oregon blog series, “Treasures from the Oregon Vault,” OHS Curator of Collections Helen Fedchak highlights a pinafore made by Rachel Goodrich Owens as she traveled along the Oregon Trail. The handmade pinafore was likely made for one of Owens’ husband’s children and reused for many years based on later alterations. OHS has a large collection of clothing and accessories, totaling more than 9,500 individual objects, and about five hundred of those are from the Oregon Trail period. Of these, however, only about twenty are specifically documented as being brought across the Trail. As far as we know, this pinafore is the only clothing item in the OHS Museum collection that was actually made on the Trail.

https://www.ohs.org/blog/oregon-trail-pinafore.cfm

11/22/2020

I´m celebrating cyper week, black friday and my new sewing pattern with a 20% dicount on all digital sewing patterns! Take the chance to sew a warm winter jacket from the 1890´s. The pattern will work for historybounding projects perfectly as well.

02/02/2020

Perhaps fittingly for Groundhog Day, I'm starting to make my third version of the Pretty Housemaid corset! This one will be made entirely of coutil for extra strength.

See my website for previous versions

10/29/2019

In my other life, I'm a museum curator. Sometimes my two worlds overlap and I get to handle some fantastic costume pieces at work. As a dressmaker, I simply cannot imagine how long this one would have taken to make!

One of the most sparkly items in OHS’s permanent exhibit, Experience Oregon, is a ca. 1900–1910 evening gown designed by sisters May and Ann Shogren of Portland, Oregon. The Shogren sisters dressmaking business, M & A Shogren, was Portland’s haute couture house during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In today's new post on Dear Oregon, Curator of Collections, Helen Fedchak, gives readers a behind the scenes glance at the challenges of working with fragile costumes (think melting sequins!), and provides a bit of history about the sisters who, for over twenty years, operated Oregon’s most significant fashion house.

https://ohs.org/blog/life-is-short-wear-sequins.cfm

09/20/2019

Oh wow, I LOVE this dress!

12/31/2018

Head over to my website for a new blog post about the two corsets I made this year.
https://www.hourglassattire.com/blog

01/22/2018

A blog post about the corset I spent quite a while making last year.

Last year, I was contacted with a rather special request to make a corset.  A gentleman named Gabriel Chrisman emailed me to ask if I would be interested in mak...

08/13/2017

I've reworked my website to better reflect my goals these days. I'm working on more personal projects and only taking very limited commissions. I'm also planning to start a blog about the projects I am working on. Take a look at the new design! Www.hourglassattire.com