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Nany’s The Snow Queen
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Outline the story …
The inspiration for my project is the fairy tale “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen, which was first published in 1844.
The fairy tale tells the story of a boy and a girl, who love to play together on the roof where their parents have planted some roses. The devil has created a mirror, that distorts everything good into something ugly, but this mirror is destroyed by god. Now the small pieces scatter around the world and anyone's heart hit will freeze to ice and in their eyes it will distort the reality. This happens to the boy. He now seeks for perfection and finds it in snowflakes and especially in the Snow Queen herself and he follows her in her castle, forgetting everything he loved. The girl goes on an adventure to look for him, always seeing the beauty and love in the things surrounding her.
I personally really love the female fashion silhouette of the late 1800 and early 1900, so I imagined the Snow Queen in garments of this time period. At the end of the tale she is described sitting in her castle on a throne in the middle of a frozen lake, which gave the color inspiration for the project. Before she is described as being dressed only in white, so I decided to use petrol green and white as main colors.
Outline the construction…
This is my first historically inspired project, so I tried to use the periods techniques and especially patterns. Since I have no undergarments and I know that those are mainly responsible for the desired silhouette I started with the first layer: the combinations and the corset. In order to get an idea how to create such garments I watched every YouTube video I could find on making combinations and corsets of this time and picked historical patterns out of books. I made some changes to these patterns, in the case of the combinations mainly in order to place the lace like I wished. The corset is only scaled up to my body size.
I have never before sewn by hand so I made this a challenge to sew the combinations only by hand. It took me a while to apply the correct technique for each use case. Another challenge was to make the crocheted lace ribbons, concerning the time it took to crochet them, and to make it the right sizes in order to fit the dedicated places. Furthermore I underestimated the amount of material needed, so I ran out of crochet yarn multiple times. Concerning the material I faced another problem, since I wanted the whole project to be made of natural fibers. I used cotton and silk yarn for the corset, but my modern machine is definitely not made to handle these, so many of the seams are not as even and neat as I wished.
This is stunning and the insertion lace is beautifully done!
Thank you so much!
You only have yourself to thank, making such a beautiful product!
Nevertheless, I am very grateful for your compliments!
They are gorgeous and I can’t believe you did all that fine crochet work by hand!! Which pattern did you use for your corset? It looks so well finished and like a perfect fit.
Thank you!
It definitely took weeks to make the lace, but, for me, it is a great task to destress.
The pattern for the corset is from the book “Corset and Crinolines” by Norah Waugh. I just enlarged it and fortunately, it fits so well just like that.
Lovely colors! And the details are exquisite♡
Thank you so much. 😀
Such a really lovely set! Your crocheted lace is impressive and the colour choices you’ve made certainly register as icy. Very nicely done!
Thank you very much!
I’m glad that the colour choice reflects my intention.
Oh my! You did such a spectacular job!
Thank you! I’m really grateful for your comments.
Beautiful <3 Lovely designs and color choices. And that lace is just scrumptious!!🥰 You inspire me to try out lace crocheting myself!
Thank you very much! I just learned a new word too. Scrumptious was not known to me before. 😀
I can really recommend lace crocheting, as it relaxes me immensely.