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The Power of the Needle: Hariette Jacobs

I received the book Black Designers in American Fashion edited by Elizabeth Way, https://amzn.to/3viLKrh I love finding out how the powerful the needle has been through out history for African Americans. Harriet Jacobs was new to me. She was an escaped slave, seamstress, author, and abolitionist. Her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861, gives her account of being enslaved and the escape through freedom. Here is a portion of the ad for capture : Being a good seamstress, she has been accustomed to dress well, has a variety of very fine clothes, made in the prevailing fashion, and will probably appear, if abroad, tricked out in gay and fashionable finery. As this girl absconded...

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The Wedding Dress of Anna Murray Douglass

This is the last in the series, Making of the Anna Murray Douglass dress. The dress was created from a plum silk taffeta. I machine quilted the center front and then beaded with garnet beads. Although I sewed the majority of the dress on the sewing machine, my thoughts is that the dress in it's time period, would have been made by hand. I didn't have that kind of time. Link in bio for other videos in this series Anna Murray Douglass    It was such a beautiful event. Ms. Lana Turner planned this event in a short period, but the real miracle was how she met Michelle V. Agins from the New York Times. At a party they met...

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