What's Up Your Sleeve Workshops: Sleeve Ruffles

Join us this Saturday, January 17th, at the Golden Ball in Weston for a day of sleeves!  The second half of the day will be spent making a pair of simple muslin sleeve ruffles.

Ingenious in their construction and simple in their beauty -- This project will also give you a chance to perfect teeny-tiny hems and work on mastering your fine hand sewing skills, which will come in handy next time you make a cap or shift.

The fee for the course is $45 and includes all the materials you will need to create a lovely pair of sleeve ruffles.

To sign up, email us a hiveworkshops@gmail.com
for more info: http://www.thehiveonline.org/current-workshops.htm

Sleeve Treatment Workshop - January 17th Details

During our morning workshop on sleeves we are going to learn how to make three common sleeve treatments, a cuff, a double sleeve flounce, and a puckered cuff. All three are common to the 1770's and are patterned from originals.

We'll start the class by looking at these three sleeve treatments as pictured in artwork and on original gowns.  In addition, we'll explore how these various sleeve adornments relate to the cuff of your shift and/or other accessories like sleeve ruffles.

You'll make each type, then learn how to attach them to your sleeve.  If you have a gown that you'd like add a sleeve treatment to, bring along some extra fabric and your gown so you can add the new detail to your gown.  In any case, bring your sewing kit.

The cost of the class is $30 and will run from 9:30 am - 12:30 at the Golden Ball Tavern in Weston, MA. If you'd like to sign up, email us at hiveworkshops@gmail.com

Hive Book Club - January 18, 2015

The first Hive book club will be held the morning of the January 18th Hive.  Our first book will be, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by Laurence Sterne.  The discussion will be lead by today's guest blogger, Matthew Mees.  The book is available for free download at the Project Gutenberg website. 

Laurence Sterne wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman from 1759 to 1767 in nine volumes. The book is episodic, digressive and includes some experiments with page layout and typography. Several chapters are written in Latin (with translation). Some parts of the story are described by squiggles on the page.

Tristram Shandy describes his life along with those of family members, family friends, servants and passerbys. Some characters describe the lives and events of people we never meet and there are a number of people introduced simply to illustrate a literary point.

There are several jokes in the book. For some of these, the punch line is obvious from the horizon; the Reader just does not know how the joke will be finally delivered. Some jokes sneak up on the reader; some are nearly lost within a maze of digressions; others seem puzzling.

There is bawdy and heartfelt sentiment as well as loving descriptions of absorbing "Hobbyhorse" interests.

John Adams, Voltaire and Goethe loved the book; Dr. Johnson said it was a passing fad and would soon be forgotten.

I read and reread this book because of the voices and narrative power. Sterne wrote to the reader, directly. The whole work is conversational and when reading, we can clearly hear the voices of people from many different walks of life. Sterne offers us an open door to his world, his world of family and village politics; love and economy;childbirth theories and fortifications; all to the tune of Lillabullero.

On the 18th, I plan to give examples to illustrate all of the above points and hope to produce several tableaux vivants, dramatizing striking events of the novel.

Please read the book, enlarge your family and see if it is indeed not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line as a crooked one.

Sincerely,

Matthew Mees