The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking: How to Hand Sew Georgian Gowns and Wear Them With Style

“In this must-have volume, the American Duchess ladies solve your costuming worries,sharing solid yet accessible research, inspiring images and tips from the sewing trenches in a style that makes historically accurate 18th century sewing more achievable and fun than it's ever been.”–Cathy Hay, CEO, Foundations Revealed“Finally we have a book to span the gap between academic research and hands-on sewing instruction for the 18th century. It takes the mystery out of historically accurate technique and presents it in a beautiful and achievable way, grounded in the authors’ years of experience in hands-on research.”–Cynthia Settje, Owner, Redthreaded Costumes & Corsets Lauren Stowell started blogging in 2009 as a fun way to documentlearning historical costuming. While she loves a great many periods of dress,from the sixteenth century all the way through the early 1960s, Lauren's truelove has always been eighteenth-century clothing. In 2011, together with herhusband, Chris, Lauren began designing and offering reproduction eighteenth-centuryshoes for historical costumers and reenactors, which quickly grew into afull-time business manufacturing shoes, boots, silk stockings, shoe buckles andother accessories for all periods from the Renaissance to the Edwardian era.Throughout this time, Lauren continued to sew and blog about historic costume,experimenting, failing, succeeding and always learning more about old clothingand how it was worn and lived in.Abby's passion for dress history and sewing started in college whilestudying art history, theatre, and history (B.A. Indiana University-Bloomington2008). From there she pursued her passion, studying Decorative Arts and DesignHistory at the University of Glasgow (MLitt 2009), and was able to beginputting her passion into her work while employed at the Colonial WilliamsburgFoundation. Her final three years working for the Foundation were spent at theMargaret Hunter Millinery Shop, serving as an apprentice milliner/mantua maker.There she learned and studied eighteenth-century dressmaking techniques. Abbynow serves as Vice-President of American Duchess and Royal Vintage Shoes inReno, NV.xa0xa0American Duchess Inc., has been providing historically accurate lady's shoes since 2011. Their shoes and accessories have been used in productions all over the world, including ABC's Once Upon a Time , Starz's Outlander and American Gods , Broadway's Hamilton: An American Musical , Dangerous Liaisons and Cinderella . Their shoes have also been used by the New York Metropolitan Opera, Ford's Theater and have walked the red carpet at the Academy Awards. They live in Reno, Nevada.