Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow? Especially if you are not quite sure what you should be doing anyway?
That's sort of where I am right now. I had some time off this week and hoped for a chance to catch up on housework (not nice but needed) and do some serious sewing. And then I wasn't feeling well for about three days. Not really ill, just a very low on energy and a bit feverish. If I had had a sewing project underway, I would probably still have enjoyed working on it but I wasn't really motivated to start on drafting something new in that state.
And then, of course, I started to overthink things. What do I really want or need for my wardrobe? New work, slight figure changes (from the climbing, which I have mentioned before). Everything in life which changes may have an impact on the wardrobe you want or need. And even apart from that, preferences can still change...
As I said, overthinking.
Of course, the fact is that not everything I sew has to be perfectly useful. I have things to wear, both at work and at home so, even though I could come up with useful wardrobe additions, I can afford to just sew something I like. However, once you start overthinking your sewing plans, it's hard to shake that off again. It is to me, at least. At this point, I started second-guessing what I wanted too.
(I don't usually get like this at all when I'm doing a lot of sewing. When I'm on a roll, I just keep going. It is especially when I know my sewing time is limited and I want to make it count that this sometimes happens)
Now, one of the things I am considering right now is to make another nice, cozy, flannel dress. I bought these two pieces of cotton flannel earlier this year. I love the one on the left and I bought 4 or 5 meters of it. I'm not as fond of the other one. I think that fabric would only look good on me if I cut it on the bias. Which I may do at some point in the future.
For now, I am focussing on the fabric on the left. Good colours for me and plenty of fabric. An early idea (once I was past the obligatory "full skirted 1950's dress") was to make a shirtdress with a long skirt, sort of 1970's style. Probably with a center front and back seam to use those checks in an interesting way.
Then, I started looking at my vintage patterns and came across this design. A Dutch unprinted pattern by the company Harmien's. Undated but I would guess it came from the late 1940's. It has a gored skirt which would not work for this fabric but the top part looks really nice.
I made a muslin of the whole dress which was less than encouraging (I'll show it in a later post).
Then, I had another look at the fabric and tried on the dress for which I drafted my favorite shirtdress bodice.
This dress, which I still love:
The flounce dress has been a firm favorite since the moment I finished it. It is quite comfortable but also special and stylish enough for all kinds of occasions. I've worn it to all those events where I felt I had to "look the part" without really knowing what to expect. And it always made me feel good. The dress is still in great condition so I am definitely not looking to replace it. Having more like it is a different matter though...
Trying it on again taught me a two things: 1. This bodice still fits well, especially in a fairly soft fabric like flannel. I also still love it. 2. I love a flounce skirt. Full skirts and pencil skirts are all well and good but nothing beats a skirt which combines the two and puts an unexpected twist on both.
So, now I am doubting again. How about a shirtdress with a flounce skirt. I could make a different kind of flounce this time.
It's a difficult thing to draw in Illustrator so I kind of gave up that but I think you get the idea. Maybe I'll pull the fabric together at the waistline this time, rather than lower down. Or I'll do something else...And I still have another piece of fabric in my stash which has been earmarked for a second flounce dress all along.
On the other hand, that Harmien's top also still looks like a good idea...
In fact, I might have enough fabric to make two dresses. I'm just not sure yet. And it is not like I don't have other ideas either... So. Procrastinating...
In my post about last week's Great British Sewing Bee episode, I mentioned the African wax fabric I still have in my stash. I also showed you the skirt I had made from it years ago.
Watching the show and writing that blog post made me think about doing something with the remaining fabric (a fact which I also mentioned in that post).
First of all, this is my fabric:
As you can see, there is a clear repeat across the length but not something you can really pattern-match. And in fact, the print looks even more 3D in the picture than it does in real life.
Now, before I dug this fabric out of the stash, I thought about using it for a fit-and-flare skirt. Something along the line of these "Morticia skirts" from Studio Faro (their tutorial gives the drafting instructions for all of these! I don't need a tutorial for a skirt like this, but this is a great resource if you do). I thought the different drafting options for a shape like this would allow me to pick the one that was most suited to the print.
It is a rather elegant kind of skirt that can work well in a great variety of fabrics. I haven't made or worn anything like it in years...
But then, I brought out the fabric. I held it up to my body in front of a mirror and then I laid it out to photograph it. Only then, it hit me. This print is so eye-catching. Cutting it into smallish pieces for the skirt I thought I wanted would be such a waste. Even in my old skirt, which uses a fairly large uncut panel and careful print placement on the yoke, you kind of miss the real impact of the print.
So, how about cutting and sewing it along those diagonal lines to make a wide skirt? Kind of like this:
I think I should alternate the left and right side points to get the best shape. However, that would mean placing all yellow pieces next to each other.
Not all the lines in the print are exactly straight but those dark areas are large enough to allow for a bit of cheating. I could just cut the panels, see which arrangement worked best, sew them up and then cut the waistline and hemline I need/want.
It's a very different approach to making a skirt but one which would really show off that print.
P.S. I'm trying to be strict with myself about adding to the stash but I have seen a wax print at the market which might suit me: Orange stalks and leaves, outlined in black on a cobalt blue background.
Just a quick question: Tomorrow, I hope I will have time to get started on this blouse.
That yoke looks ideal to use up an odd little off-cut I was given when buying fabric at one of my usual places last summer.
One of these, to be precise, on black. Both are too small to be used on their own but seem big enough for the yoke, collar and cuffs of this blouse.
So, the question is: Which one would you like to see?
The 1929 dress, that is. Do you even remember it? It was the very first thing I was sewing this year but I didn't get very far with it.
Yes of course the dress had a, probably perfectly period accurate, too loose shape but I think I can deal with that. The real problem is still fabric. I always struggle to find good (and affordable) fabrics for styles from the 1920's and 30's. It just seems like all those dresses were designed for the finest of silks and wools. Even if I could still find those fabrics, they would be out of my budget. Even rayon/viscose is often hard to find.
In this case, I was very surprised by how much I liked the colour I used for the toile. I didn't think about it when I cut into that stuff but that pale grass green really looked good on me. Just a pity that the fabric is a bit too transparent and I've used almost all of it.
I've been on the look-out for a fabric for this dress for the past month and my choices seem to be limited. One thing which appeals to me is a very drapey viscose velvet but there are only a few colours on offer right now (there will be more choice again in autumn...): Bright purple, deep dark aubergine, dark green, dark blue, very bright blue and yellow.
I can't wear yellow, the bright blue really is too electrically bright, the bright purple just seems wrong for the period, the dark green is too christmas-y and the dark blue would be too severe. I kind of like the aubergine but doubt how flattering this colour would be on me. And whether or not any of these offerings would be anywhere near period accurate. I am not looking for a perfect match here, just for something which would not have been completely out of place back in the day.
So, I didn't buy any fabric but I did do a quick search on Pinterest for colour pictures of 1920's dresses. Of course, such a search mostly yields gorgeous examples which were made by the era's great designers and now live in museum collections. It does give some idea of possible colours though.
My vague idea that pale colours were popular at the time proved kind of true. Especially part wear often came in pale hues but it was not all white.
There were really three kinds of colours I really liked. Three which I saw a couple of times: Pale greens (like that green I used before), mid blues/turquoise and burnt orange.
Fabrics, it seems were often velvets and light silks (often not in shiny varieties).
These are shades which could look good with my colouration and I can imagine this dress design in them. So, I guess I will have to look for some nice, drapey fabric in a colour like this. That velvet in the right colour would be really good... I can find stretch velvet in at least that blue but I really worry about how that would behave.
And I think I should consider some trim after all...
A couple of months ago, one of my usual fabric stalls at the local market had some odd bits of extra fabric. On top of the bolt in their "1 euro a meter" sale corner, they had dumped some off-cuts which had nothing to do with the other fabric they were selling. From time to time, they added more from a big bag.
On closer inspection, it looked like they were selling the remnants of some frugal persons stash. There were all kinds of fabrics but most of them looked a bit dated: No stretch, old-fashioned curtain-like lace, quirky prints and either cotton or particularly nasty and easy to recognize synthetics. And all of them small pieces, 1.5 m at most.
I picked up a piece of sturdy mid-blue denim, thinking I could always use that. It cost 1 m and when he packed it, the seller stuffed the bag with other small bits of fabric I had shown a bit of interest in (they are fun, actually, but so small it is hard to come up with a project for them).
When I bought that fabric, it was summer and I didn't want to think about sewing jeans. Now, it time to think about it.
Since I bought it, I thought I had exactly 1 meter of this fabric. Which would be just a bit too short to myself a pair of trousers (I know I've made a lot of tapered ankle length ones but that really requires a slightly sloughy fabric). This particular denim is really a bit old-school: Mid-blue with a white weft, a dense twill weave and quite thick and sturdy.
For a while, I've been telling myself I would use it to make culottes. The kind that has been in fashion this past year: Well past the knee and a bit more trouser-like than the vintage variety. Or plus-fours.
Then, yesterday, I got the fabric out and held it in front of me while looking in the mirror:
And suddenly I was thinking 1970's bell bottoms...
There is a little more fabric than I had thought. 1.10 meter. Just enough for full-length trousers if I pick a design without extra details and lay it out carefully. Which also means that big flares won't be possible. I will probably be more of a boot-cut.
And then, I googled "culottes" for this blog post. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of mainstream fashion but modern culottes are nice. They fit to the natural waist or just below it and most are more properly culotte-like than I had thought. They may or may not have the center pleats I used in my very skirt-like culottes years ago and the shape at the outer leg is usually straight or A-line. Many have added pleats at the front and only the most trouser-like offerings have front fly. I want to make a pair. However, all that lovely fullness means you will definitely need more fabric than "one time the length of the garment" to cut out the pieces for a style like this. So, I won't be able to make culottes like that from this fabric.
I know I feel a bit frumpy in 'normal' jeans in this mid-blue. So it has to become something a bit more unusual. As skirts go, I think this would only fun for a full skirt which would be better with more fabric. It's too thick to think about dresses although a 1960's shift would look good.
What do you think?
I didn't plan to take a break from blogging but because of it, I can now proceed straight away with telling you about that museum tour.
In fact, it wasn't at the museum at all. It was at the museum depot. The Rotterdam Museum doesn't have room in basement or attic to store items which are not on display, like many museums do. It shares a depot at the edge city with other museums from Rotterdam. It's not a place visitors usually get to see, which actually makes it more fun to have an opportunity like this.
The museum's collection slumbers, carefully packed, on endless shelves in large rooms which are kept at a temperature of 17 degrees Celsius at all time.
We came to look at items made from chintz and the sample books from the Rotterdam Cotton Company.
The first item was this magnificent, but impossible to photograph, 18th century dress. We were looking at it with the dress lying flat on a table, great for studying all the details, not so great for pictures.
It is made from genuine chintz, imported from India, hand-painted in a glorious, large, intricate floral design on this deep red ground. There is a repeat in the pattern but only in about a meter and even then, it isn't exact. Because it is hand work, obviously.
The dress is in a great shape, the fabric even still has its shine.
This skirt is also made from hand-painted chintz but this design seems more European in style. And the design was specifically made to be made into a skirt like this.
On this lovely children's dress, the design is large but ordered almost like a jacquard (which is, of course, a woven fabric from Europe, usually France).
And this woman's jacket has a very small print. Still hand-painted in the same technique, but very different in look.
Chintz became very popular in European fashion from the late 17th century onwards so it was perhaps unsurprising that factories across the continent tried to produce something similar.
That is where the Rotterdam Cotton Company came in. Under various names, this company has existed from the early 18th century up to 1930. They did produce immitation chintz but unfortunately, those sample books are not in the collection of the Rotterdam Museum (some are at a textile museum in Twente). There were some pictures from it. Not just chintz-like floral but also abstract prints which wouldn't have looked out of place in the 1930's or even in the 1950's.
The sample books in this collection date from 1870 to 1930 and show a variety of designs. Some were for local use but many were made for export. Those are particularly interesting: Many designs mimic Indonesian batik fabrics and were made to be sold there to consumers who couldn't afford the real thing. Indonesia was a Dutch colony at the time, which made careful research and marketing possible.
The same fabrics were occasionally also sold elsewhere, particularly in Africa. Over time, new designs were developed to appeal specifically to that market (other printing companies did the same and one which really specialized on Africa still remains today, Vlisco).
The Rotterdam Cotton Company created its designs by block printing. Blocks were cut from wood and the fine line details were made by adding small pieces of copper. Separate blocks had to be made for each colour in the design and all blocks had to be perfectly lined up. Block printing may have been less labour intensive than hand painting or batik, it was certainly not a simple process.
Then, there was a bit of time left to look at some more garments.
The length of this jacket betrays its age: It has to be from the early 19th century. What looks like yet another floral print isn't a print at all though... It's embroidery, very very fine chainstitch embroidery.
This longer jacket (which was under the short one in the earlier pictures) is made from printed cotton. This one is interesting because its insides show how the bodice length has been changed in such a way that it could be changed back.
The final piece was this short cape, made from chintz with a very dark brown background. It is lined in wool of the same colour decorated with tufts of beige wool. The design looks like an imitation of ermine but in a different colour.
The full circle cape was pieced to use the least amount of the expensive outer fabric. This was hand-painted chintz as well so it must have been expensive. Even today, the fabric has so much shine that it almost looks coated in plastic...
I hope you've enjoyed this little look in the depot. I certainly did. I suppose this is why you should pay attention to vaguely announced events held by you local museums ;)
Usually, I try to keep a balance between practical and fun sewing. But I'm still looking for a new job, so I don't know what kind of clothes might be appropriate in time to come. For life at home, there's no reason why I can't wear vintage inspired dresses every day (as long as I keep some trousers around for cycling, obviously). And dresses are what I keep thinking about...
At the moment, I have the notion that I've had black thread in my machines for a while. It's not even true, I just made one black dress and that cardigan for E. Said black dress, by the way, is finished but I only managed to do that yesterday which was such a rainy, grey and dark day that I couldn't take pictures... I guess I'll have to postpone a 'reveal' until next weekend.
But now, I'm looking at some colour. There are three options which have been on my mind for while. I have the fabrics and the pattern for one. The other two patterns would be quick and easy to draft because I already have most of there bodices complete (from earlier projects).
I photographed the fabrics together hoping that would force the camera to display the colours accurately and it sort of worked. The raspberry pink is just not quite a dark in real life, the other two are about right.
From left to right:
The fine wale corduroy in burnt orange was bought with this image in mind. This picture comes from Beatrijs magazine from 1951 (it may have been the illustration of a mailorder pattern but I'm not sure). According to the description, the dress was made from corduroy. It's a shirtwaist with a straight skirt which gets plenty of room for movement thanks to deep pleats at either side of the button closure at center front. Oh, and it has great pockets.
The middle fabric is a cotton flannel with a small blue and grey houndstooth check. This wasn't bought with a specific project in mind but I thought of it when I came across this image, from Libelle magazine from 1949. This picture came from an article about the new fashion and I believe the original design is French.
In this picture, you can see back sleeves which are cut in one piece with the back yoke, pockets which seem to hang free from the waistline, a slightly blouse-y back and a skirt which is clearly fuller at the front than at the back.
I made most of that bodice already when I was exploring options for the black wool crepe
... and there is this Bella pattern which also has a lot of those features (although the back is pleated rather than gathered). It has a rather boring straight, buttoned-up front though.
And then I found this image, in Beatrijs from 1951... Could it be the front of the same dress? Even though the first picture was from the end of the year and this one from the beginning, I think the gap is just too big and the details aren't quite right. But certainly looks like a very similar design.
Then, last but not least, the fabric on the right is wool crepe. Deliciously coloured wool crepe. Unlike the other two, there's not a lot of it. I think it's 2 meters, with one bit of damage at center front.
Not too long ago, I realized that this fabric would be great for one of the lovely 1920's designs I picked out as part of last year's Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge. It's about the dress on the left, a daydress for winter, from about 1927.
I am working on something else at the moment but soon I'll have to choose between these three beauties... What do you think?
Yesterday, I cut the fabric for my dress. For the outside, that is. Such beautiful, soft luscious wool...
Early this morning, I cut the bodice lining: A thin smooth black cotton which I also used as an inner layer on the bodice of my plaid dress. I think I will prefer this to using lining fabric. That is usually fine for skirts and coat and jackets but I really don't like its worn directly on my skin. Cotton may not slide as easily over other fabrics as lining material or silk but it won't have to in the bodice. And in the other dress, I never have issues with this cotton sticking to my bra.
So, one question remains: What about the skirt?
I first thought about using some blue/black silk-like fabric from my stash but that is actually really nice and when I held it in my hands I started dreaming about making a nice, flowing late 1920's or early 1930's dress from it... I might have just enough for that but certainly not after I've cut a lining for this skirt.
Then, I looked in the lining drawer. There is not enough regular black lining (acetate) left but I could buy some tomorrow. There is this stuff though:
Thin silk satin in a very bright blue/turquoise colour (the colour in the picture is surprisingly accurate this time). It's so bright and so shiny that I'm not sure I would feel comfortable wearing, say, a top made from this stuff. And bright contrast linings were sometimes used for black dresses.
In which case I would just have to decide how to use it: In a wide skirt like this, I would normally let the lining hang loose so it wouldn't hinder the drape of the skirt. But this fabric doesn't look particularly nice on the wrong side, so how should I put it in? Just for the record: I'm not going to leave it so long that it will stick out from under skirt. Oh, and I'm not sure how well the wrong side will perform at keeping the skirt away from my stockings.
Of course, I could buy new black lining tomorrow. It's just always difficult to get something which is not too nasty and not too expensive (I know there are great lining fabrics out there. I would love to Bremsilk for coats and Venezia for everything else but those cost as much as any nice fashion fabric and are simply not in my budget at the moment).
And the vintage option would be not to line the skirt and to wear a slip or a petticoat. Which might be made from that blue stuff. Or from something black.
Any advice or opinions?
This will be the last post based on my holiday, I promise. There is just this one more thing I wanted to show you and I think you can relate to this: I bought fabric. I know a lot of sewing bloggers make a habit of buying fabric as a souvenir but I have done that before. Most of my holidays just don't take me to places with good fabric shopping.
This time, I knew I was going to in Edinburgh on the last two days of my trip, so I googled for fabric stores there beforehand. That way, I found Edinburgh Fabric, which promised a great selection of, among other things, Scottish wool. The store also happened to be conveniently located along the main road between our bed&breakfast and the town center.
So, I went fabric shopping when on holiday... Poor E was content to just stand about while I pondered the huge rage of fabrics on offer. I was immediately drawn to the wools, both because the weather was starting to turn autumn-y and because there were some many British and even Scottish varieties. There were really tempting crepes and gorgeous handwoven tweeds but in the end, there was only one kind of fabric I could really pick as my souvenir from Scotland:
Tartan. Proper, 100% wool Scottish made tartan. I just had to pick from a large selection of different designs. Having no family links with Scotland myself, there was no obvious choice.
I picked this sett purely based on its look and colours (the background is actually a rich blue, not grey like it looks in the picture. It's nearly impossible to photograph fabric properly and the colours of my fabrics are much richer in real life than they look in this picture). It was labeled "Holyrood", which I thought was appropriate because I used to take a lot of long walks in Holyrood Park when I was living in Edinburgh as an exchange student (only for a single semester) years ago.
The sett doesn't appear in the book of Scottish Clans & Tartans which I also bought (there are 150 in it) but that would make sense because Holyrood is, as far as I know, not the name of a family or clan. Historically, the Palace and Park belonged to the royal family so it's unlikely that another dynasty took its name from it. That makes it likely to be a fairly modern design made either to celebrate something about Holyrood or just to sell to people like me.
The other fabric is a thin wool in a rich bluish purple. I love that colour and because it was in the remnant basket it wasn't expensive.
I have 1.5 meter of each, so now I only have to decide what to make with them.
I suppose you are all familiar with Spoonflower. What's not to love about a company which allows you to upload your own designs and have them printed on fabric? With a minimum amount of ehh... a swatch? And allows designers to sell their prints so you can also take your pick of original creations from talented individuals (often not professional print designers) from all over the world?
Ever since I first heard about it(which was not very long after the launch of the site), I have been kind of following Spoonflower. Since then, the range of fabric you can choose from has increased massively, now also including things like sportswear fabrics (Melissa has really gone to town with that, creating coordinating prints in one yard of fabric for her work-out patterns) and organic cotton. And early complaints about the quality of the printed fabric seem to have vanished.
I've voted regularly in the weekly contests, always enjoying the mass of creativity exhibited there. However, I have never actually participated, or even ordered fabric myself.
Some other European sewers don't seem to mind, but I've always found the shipping costs from the US a bit too steep. Which I don't think is Spoonflower's fault at all. It's just a long way to ship things. Now, if they could only open up a European branch.... A girl can dream, right?
Another reason is that I'm not really a print person. I mostly sew with solids, stripes and other woven designs and often feel a bit odd if I wear something with a really clear print. But still, when I've found a proper job, I'd love to try and order something nice and custom-printed...
But creativity isn't limited by constraints of distance or money... And I thought it would be good to practice my self-taught Illustrator skills a bit more. So, I've decided to enter those Spoonflower weekly contests of which I like the theme.
Last week, I entered my first design. The theme was "neighbourhood" and designs had to be in black and white and in a hand-drawn style. Which kind of messed with my Illustrator goals. I took pictures of the view from the back balcony of my apartment, printed them, taped them together to form a panorama, put tracing paper over it and traced the outlines of the buildings and the trees, cut that up, scanned the images and then puzzled them together in Photoshop to form a single image of the size needed. And to be honest, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I could create a proper repeat in such a haphazardly constructed thing, so it doesn't have any. Which is really bad for a print.
And yet, I'm weirdly proud of it. It's called "the world from my window" and has received 'favorites' and even a very nice comment (I didn't even know you could do either of that on Spoonflower).
My second design, which I submitted today, is for a contest with the theme "library", which doesn't have restrictions about colours or technique. This one was made in Illustrator, using a photograph I took at my local library. And the repeat works.
It may be a more conventional design, but I like it. A real, unmanipulated picture which has become a rather abstract print which almost has the look of a woven design. This is print I could imagine sewing with myself.
And it should be in the contest on Thurday.
P.S. I think this speaks for itself, but I'm mentioning it anyway: This is just my opinion, I'm not in any way 'motivated' to write posts like this by Spoonflower or anything else and obviously, I'm not asking you to vote for me.
Ok, last week kind of broke my posting streak... I didn't mean for it to happen but it did anyway.
And although I'm back today, it's not even with a proper post.
I finished the dress I told you about (in fact, I'm wearing it right now) but I just missed my photo opportunity yesterday. Oh well, I will show it to you later.
Maybe it's good because initially, I wasn't that pleased with the way the pleats behaved. And now, I think I've learned to live with them. As you'll see soon.
Today, I thought I'd show you the fabric I bought at the market this morning.
I've never made it a habit to show all my fabric purchases on my blog but this one is interesting because it's a bit out of character for me:
Mystery fibre (but without static cling!) crepe in a muted orange (1,5 meter) and cotton with a nice hand and a kind of 'swirling dots' print which could look 1930's or 1970's depending on its use(3 meters). Normally, prints like this are done on polyester. I'm not really a print kind of girl but finding this stuff in a nice material convinced me to try. As for the crepe, my attention was first caught by a smaller piece in ocher yellow. Which happens to be one of my all-time favorite colours which I shouldn't wear. It makes me look ill. This time I was wise and went for the odd colour I can wear.
You may have noticed I was talking about pieces of fabric... That's right these were cut pieces.
Because they're back. Once a year, for a few weeks, on two of the four weekly market days, these sellers come and sell big piles of fabric pieces which have been used as sample fabrics for sewing workshops. The good, the bad and the ugly all thrown together. You have to buy the lengths as they are but they're only 1 euro a meter. I've bought some great stuff there in the past (like the boiled wool for my green cape).
Today's offerings were a bit lackluster compared to the previous times but I know they will bring new stock each day they're there.
So if you happen to be in the area, it's worth checking out. I'm sure they'll be there again next Monday (and probably some other day later this week, I just don't know which one).
P.S. Over the past months, I've realized I have more Dutch readers than I had guessed before. And I know someone visited the market in The Hague on my advice last year.
At the moment, the The Hague market is a bit of a mess. It's in the process of being completely renovated. All the fabric and haberdashery stalls are still there but they're spread all over the half of the market where there are no building works yet. As a result, many can't bring or display all their usual stock.
So, I've been thinking. In a few months, when the renovation is over and all the sewing-related vendors have settled into their new stalls, would you be interested in me doing a bit of show-and-tell about them? Show what those places look like and what you can best buy where?
Just let me know ;)
It's not a problem really… It's more like an embarrassment of riches…
But, let's explain first. I'm really good at find decent fabric at modest prices and I make the vast majority of my clothes from such fabrics. Whenever a local fabric store has it's annual sale though, I'll try and buy something special. Something I wouldn't normally be able to find. When, over a year ago, the largest local fabric store, Toetenel, was closing down, they held a sale to get rid of all their old stock. Yes, all of it. I didn't even buy much but what I bought was great stuff. Three pieces of wool crepe and three pieces of silk. And ever since, I've been afraid to cut into these. They're just so beautiful and so different from my usual fabrics and if I messed them up, I could never replace them unless I was willing to pay a lot more….
These are the two colored pieces of wool crepe, green and raspberry, two meters each, at 140 cm wide (the third piece is a heavier black crepe).
They've become 'Holy Grail fabrics'…..
And last week, when I pulled them out of the drawer (which has moth-repellent stuff throughout) to gaze at them lovingly, I noticed a small moth-hole in the green crepe. Of course, I put all these lovely fabrics straight in the freezer to get rid of any remaining creepy crawlies. I did get the message though: if I don't sew with them, I may lose these wonderful fabrics in some other way, which is much, much worse than taking the risk of a garment turning out less-than-fabulous.
So, now I'm trying to decide what to make from the green wool crepe. A dress comes to mind, of course. Lately, vaguely 50's dresses always seem to be the first to come to my mind.
I thought about copying this dress, from Margriet magazine from 1950. It is described as a 'visiting dress' and it's meant to be made from wool crepe! The pattern diagram is pretty much useless to me because it's for their size 42, which has a 98 cm bust (just over 10 cm more than mine…).
I tried to get close to it by drafting from my trusty sloper. Because I had my doubts, I made a muslin of the bodice.
Bleh. The gathers are there, they just won't behave like I want them to. Even without the weight of a sleeve, the gathers just get pulled open into stupid random 'roominess' far before reaching chest level.
I have drawn up the bodice pieces from the diagram as well and plan to muslin those too, just to see if they're any better. I fear the worst though. Free patterns in magazines are often sloppily made, in the 1950's as much as today.
If I can't make the upper bodice look like it does in the picture, I don't think I'll risk my beautiful crepe on this pattern.
So, I started sketching. A fabric like this would do well in draped or gathered shapes…
Like this cowl neck with added pleat. I thought about back yoke and a collar and doodled a bit to find an appropriate skirt shape. I sort of settled on the narrow skirt with the gathered section.
I kind of liked that sketch, but not enough, so I tried some variations on the theme. I quickly came up with the idea to change to sleeves from normal to raglan. I think I like that. And I tried out variations on the skirt: pleats instead of gathers, an inserted flared bit etc…
And I considered a pocket. I'd like one, but for wool, this fabric is thin and delicate.
Again, I kind of liked the ideas, but not enough. So, sketched one of my old 'how to use Pattern Magic' ideas. A dress with a 'tying a bow' feature at the side front which does all the shaping. Either, sticking with my usual silhouette, at the waistline, or, in a 1920's inspired way, a bit lower.
I will definitely make a dress like this, but I'm not so sure I should use this fabric…
So, this is where I'm at now. I'm going to study my 1930's and 1940's magazines for inspiration because I think this fabric suits the styles from that era. Hopefully that will help a bit.
And please, weigh in with your insight and recommendations...
