Simple jersey dress

Sewing beautiful, complicated things can be very rewarding. In fact, I sometimes wonder if it would be better to slow down and pay more attention to each project (good in theory, but I have so many ideas...). But it's not always the right thing to do. 

There are times when a quick project is just the right thing to do. Going from yardage to wearing it out in just a couple of hours has its own charm. Especially if you pick an eye-catching colour so your simple thing can't go unnoticed. 

And of course, it's even better if the simple thing fills a kind of gap in your wardrobe. 

And, as an added bonus, these quick makes often develop into hardworking wardrobe staples, because they were not made from particularly precious fabric nor took much time and effort to make, you're not afraid to wear them anywhere...

So, I made a very simple new jersey dress. I often tend to overlook jersey dresses a bit as not being 'proper garments' compared to the more labour-intensive woven ones, but they are really comfortable. And they can look quite nice. An the old ones were getting quite old...

I bought this nice, fairly beefy, turquoise cotton double knit earlier this year and decided to turn it into a dress and a top. I had only just enough to cut out the top (I guess I should have tried it out before cutting out the dress but because this was round knit fabric, that was getting a bit difficult). And in this post, I only have pictures of the dress, which E took with his phone when we were walking into the town center today (all the pictures were taken in the enclosed yard behind our apartment)

It's a plain fitted dress with cut-on cap sleeves and a deep V at the back. I bound the neckline with a band, the other edges were just serged and hemmed by hand (which took more time than constructing the dress itself, but I can be weird like that...) 

I cut the skirt a little bit wider than I've done in the past in the hope that it would reduce the dress's tendency to creep up and that seems to work. 

It's by no means an impressive display of sewing skill, but I think I will enjoy this dress for some time to come.

Sewing-related and out there

This week, I came across some sewing-related stuff which I thought was just too good not to share.

First of all, there's a magazine. I had been sent a gift-card for a specific chain of  magazine (and some books) stores. On Wednesday, I passed by a store and decided to see if there was anything interesting.

I quickly realized just how critical I've become about magazines... I found all the fashion glossies too shallow, the sewing magazines too frumpy and the art magazines too presumptuous.

And then this caught my eye, awkwardly positioned between the aforementioned categories: Cut magazine, with the subtitle "Leute machen Kleider" (which is German for "People make clothes"). Unfortunately, it's only in German, but it was just to interesting not to take home with me.

It has some kinds of article you could also find in a normal glossy, like an interview with a designer, glossy photoshoots and information about the places to go in a city (in this case Vienna).

But there's more. The contest is for a sewing machine. 

And there are three patterns included, with extensive instructions.

Illustrated like that, the sewing projects should be within the grasp of a beginner sewer. And these might get into the hands of people who wouldn't want to be seen with a regular sewing mag...

Don't get me wrong there, I've always sewn from magazines until I learned to draft my own patterns and I think they are a great resource. But let's be honest, they don't necessarily look very cool...

Apart from the sewing, Cut also contains other craft and DIY projects like how to create the marbled paint effect and things for the home which you can make from copper tubing and a nice spoof ad on the back cover. 

It is a 'maker culture glossy'. On their website, they claim to be the first such magazine in the German language and I believe them. In fact, it's also the first magazine of its kind I have seen for sale here in the Netherlands...

And then, of course, there's the world wide web (is anyone still calling the internet that?). 

I wasn't really looking for anything, but this week, I came across a blog I should have known about long ago: well-suited. It's all about patterns and drafting. Showing a strangely-shaped pattern every week and how to it can be made based on a normal sloper. What's not to love? 

A lot of designs are not really what I would make but I don't even care, it's just intriguing to look at. 

Can you believe I found both these things on the same day? My known sewing world just got a bit bigger and quite like it.

Dating these

Can any of you vintage pattern lovers out there help me?
These unprinted patterns were in the same box as the Gracieuses. They come with limited instructions and nice drawings of the designs but without dates or even sizes. 
The logo says "Elite Pereboom's patronen". A Google search for this brought up a modern-day lay with the last name Pereboom who designs embroidery and crochet patterns and, probably more relevant, the pattern making book "American Coupe" by T. Pereboom. The book was first printed in 1907 and I think I've seen it before on an auction site but it's fairly rare and, as a result, expensive. In one of the entries (unfortunately the one that is no longer active), T. Pereboom is mentioned as the tailor-in-chief at the city's tailoring workshops of... (that's where the Google blurp cuts off). It's not unlikely that after publishing his book, mr. Pereboom went on to start a pattern company. Or maybe a son, who had followed in his footsteps did (along that line, the needlecraft lady may be a descendant for all I know).

Anyway, I'd like to ask your help in dating these patterns. They look to me like they might be from the 1930's.

I have five and I'm sure three of them are from a different year as the other two. 

 I suspect these two might be the oldest (the shoulders on the dress are smaller). The designs kind of look like what was in Gracieuse in the spring of 1935. 
Considering the fact that the original owner of the magazines stopped her subscription to Gracieuse when they stopped including pattern sheets in January 1935, I suspect any separately bought publications will be from after that.

On these, the logo looks like this.

On the other patterns, it looks like this.

And these are the other patterns, which, by my logic should be from later in the decade. What do you think?

There are serial numbers on all the patterns and those on the group of three are lower. However, those are four digit numbers, those on the other patterns are five digit ones. I know pattern companies can be pretty productive, but I don't think they'd churn out tens of thousands of designs in just a few years. Which makes it likely there's a system to the numbering and it changed between the two groups of patterns. 

Oh, and I know I said there are no sizes and that's true but the first two patterns are stamped with "88 60" and "88 65" respectively. Those could be bust and waist sizes. In which case they must have been ordered for quite a slender lady. I'm not too worried about the 60 cm waist on the dress because the pattern pieces don't look like the garment is that closely tailored in the mid section. 
Of course, before trying anything, I should measure the pattern pieces to try and get some idea of the size and then make a muslin.
I'm kind of eyeing up that first dress with the tucked yoke as my 1930's pattern for the Vintage Pattern Pledge. That is, if there's an agreement that it is a 1930's design...

the bias cut - a real dress

As I told you before, I also finished the bias cut dress last week and we took pictures of it last weekend.
To be honest, it took much longer to get good-enough pictures of this dress than of the 1929 dress. This dress may also be really comfortable, the bright colour tends to make me feel conspicuous and I keep getting worried about looking like a rectangle. And I had some issues (largely solved before hemming) with tension in the serger thread which made the seams ripple.

Anyway, here is my bias cut dress. I made the bodice like I did for the test version, just with all the modifications (mostly tiny adjustments of the height of the underbust seam, the neckline and the darts) I had decided on, based on that. This bodice is self-lined and I applied very lightweight fusible interfacing (the slightly stretchy kind) to that lining and extra edge stabilizer to the neckline. It makes for a much more stable construction, so stable indeed that it will stay on my shoulders rather well.

This new skirt is a bias cut, fairly narrow A-line. In the test version, I kept taking in seams to get that figure hugging effect we are told to expect from bias cut material, only to have it stretch out again. Here, I cut wider and let the drape do the work. Which worked a lot better. Even though, as I mentioned above, I need to get used to this look (I like how it looks from the back though). But the length and the colour may have something to do with that as well. Or the fact that I haven't seen bias cut dresses in the street since the late 1990's... Although that doesn't normally stop me from wearing something...

Whatever my eventual style verdict might be, the dress is very comfortable and because it is made from that same crepe fabric, very nice in warm weather. I should definitely try more with bias cut elements but I don't quite know where to go from here. A slip would be very obvious and wouldn't mean moving along design-wise. There's also a single bias cut evening dress in my size in the Gracieuses from the 1930's but I kind of promised, in my Vintage Pattern Pledge to try and spread my projects across different media as well...
At least I got a big picture-book about the work of Madeleine Vionnet from the library. That should provide some inspiration (and of course, there are so many other projects I could turn my attention to as well...)

1929!

 My 1920's dress is finished and I'm really happy with it. As it turns out, this is not just a look I 'had to do' for my Vintage Pattern Pledge. I love this dress. It absolutely feels like something you'd wear to dance the night away in some glamorous place...

As you may remember, I used this design from Gracieuse magazine from 1929. I used the pattern as provided because, as far as I could tell from their rather limited sizing table, my measurements should be about spot-on for size 45 (the sizes are by half bust measurement and the only vertical measurement provided is 'front length' without any explanation. I figured that with a loose fitting garment like this, it might not cause trouble). 

The fabric I used is black viscose crepe, the same stuff I used for my little jumpsuit and for my bias cut experiments, just a different colour.

Contrary to the instructions, I cut the neck band as separate piece and lined it with the same fabric, the neck edge stabilized with a light fusible interfacing. I decided against interfacing the band as a whole because I didn't want to compromise the flow-y nature of the garment. In the front bodice, there's a fairly shallow bust dart between the neck band and the main bodice piece which you were supposed to hide in the narrow pin-tuck which should simulate a neck band. In my construction, the dart had simply been converted to differently shaped edges at the front seam. 

For the skirt, the instructions were useful. From the picture, you can't tell whether the back 'tail' is applied over the skirt or forms a part of it. On this, the instructions were clear: Narrowly hem the flounces, apply them to the skirt as indicated and them sew the 'tail' between the skirt pieces. So, I did.

Then, the top and skirt fit together easily.

And then it looked like this...

Which looks like a period silhouette but is just a bit... blah. And if this is the intended fit, then why does the drawing show a skirt which is snug at the high hip and has the bodice blousing over it? Like this, the dress is an ever-so-slight A-line with a lot of extra room at the hips so I don't think it's all down to my measurements. 

I played around with it in front of the mirror and found a solution:

When folding a pleat at the back, to the width of the 'tail', the dress got that fit at the hip I was looking for. And started looking really good.

So, I sewed that pleat. I don't know if this is just me cheating immensely or if this might be something you were supposed to do. The silhouette looks like the drawing now... 

Two of my great-grandmothers, from whose time this pattern comes, were professional seamstresses, I wonder what they would have made of this. Of course, they might have had a better idea of what a dress like this should really look like.

I finished the dress with that pleat in place. All the narrow hemming was done on the serger. Not period accurate but much easier and nicer in a fabric like this. Of course, I didn't go for the kind of close stitching and high tension that gives a lettuce hem... That would have been so wrong for this dress.

I had to do a bit of a search to find the right ornaments to decorate the dress. The instructions mention 'agarves', a word I can't translate because I don't even know what it means in Dutch. They are decorations for center front and back. Finally, I bought a cheap, black-and-bling necklace at the market and cut pieces to fit the dress. I will have to take these bits off for laundry but I think they work for the look.

And, as I said before, this dress is way out of my comfort zone but I love it. Loose and flowing, it makes me feel free, feminine and happy.

I should really try and make more 1920's dresses (even if only to find out what the silhouette really should be).

Miscellaneous

No cohesive post today, just a collection of random remarks, news and observations.

1. I made a bias cut dress I'm happy with. I guess my original problem was that I tried to shape the garment like I would an on-grain one (woven or knit) instead of letting the bias drape do its own thing. I don't think I've cracked the secret yet, but it's definitely worth trying more with bias cut elements.

2. I've finished my 1920's dress. 

Both dresses will, of course, get their own blog post but I'm waiting for E to help me take some nice pictures of them this weekend.

3. Today, I got to use the most unlikely of my sewing implements again. Literally translated, these are sheet sheers, a tool intended for cutting through sheets of metal. I bought them when I made my first steel-boned corset and use them occasionally to cut steel boning or decorative chain, like in this case. The tool might be overkill for the use I make of it but that allows me to work rather precisely, despite its blunt head.

4. At my usual notions-stall at the market I found these little bags with nice buttons. 3 for 1 euro. I don't really need buttons, but how could I walk past that? I mostly bought buttons (6 bags) which will certainly come in handy at some point and some which were just nice. These domed buttons covered with red fabric were just so nice... 

5. The small bright blue fabric covered buttons were less of a shot in the dark. I thought they might match a sweater knit from my stash. And guess what? ... Perfect. Now I just have to think up a garment with these.

6. I've done some repairs. I don't like doing repairs or alterations, but sometimes you really have to. I replaced the zipper on my striped summer dress  (the old one had split) and I finally did something about the boning in my shelf bust dress. That dress has plastic boning and at the time that I made it, I read somewhere that you should cut the boning at an angle to keep the strands of plastic from unraveling. Don't ever do that. All that does is provide you with razor sharp bits of plastic which will get through the lining to poke into your skin. Now, I unpicked the ends of the bones, cut off the points, slightly melted the new ends and sewed them back on covered with pieces of velvet ribbon. 
Now, I can wear that dress again.

7. Last but certainly not least: I've signed up for a hat making course. I found a flyer at my local haberdashery store and took a look at the website. I've been interested in hat making for a while but there are too many courses which are just about cut-and-sew hats, or only really let you decorate things. And I don't need a course for that. This lady however, offers lessons in blocking felt hats and making hats from bands of straw. It's the real deal. 
The course will get started in September and I'm looking forward to it. She offers lessons during the day and in the evening and also teaches sewing. Obviously, I don't know yet how good or not good any of these lessons are, but it all sounds really promising and I'm pretty sure there are places felt in case you are interested and near enough. Here's the website.

heat wave survival...

Ok, I know many of you may come from places where high temperatures are much more normal than over here. And you will probably laugh out loud whenever people like me complain about heat. It's true, we don't get real heat here in the Netherlands but between the humidity and the fact that neither our houses nor the infrastructure nor the way in which we normally live our lives are adapted to dealing with hot weather, it can get pretty uncomfortable on those rare 30 degrees Celsius days. Like we had last week.

In hot weather, I tend to live in two cropped jumpsuits (this one and this one) I've made a while ago. The cotton dresses I normally love are just too fitted and too covered-up under those circumstances. 
So, last week I decided to make another little thing to wear when the weather gets hot.

This new one is even more for wearing at home than the old ones. It's not meant to be pretty or flattering, just to be comfortable during a heat wave.
In fact, it kind of looks like some classic piece of lingerie, a teddy or combination. In reality, it is a strange hybrid between a lacy camisole and a playsuit/cropped jumpsuit.

It is made from the same crepe fabric I've been talking a lot about lately, the blue/grey colour I made first. The brown lace insert is mostly backed with the same fabric. 
Pattern-wise, there are short, wide little trousers with slanted pockets and a very simple camisole-like top. Because fitted things are warm to wear, this thing isn't fitted. And because, with an item like this, it kind of makes sense to make it without closures, it has been made just like that. So, everything above the hips had to be wide so I can step into the garment. It has elastic at the waistline to gather it up a bit and to give a bit of shape and there is elastic in the top edge at the back, to keep the top from gaping. 
I was pretty sure what effect the elastic at the waist would have (because I had used that many times before, though mostly at M's) but I'm pretty glad that top edge worked out.
Because this fabric likes to stretch out during wear, I pulled pieces of ribbon into the tubes of fabric for the shoulder straps. That keeps them nice and stable.

I've worn this thing already and it really does the job. And as I said, I don't really mean to wear this out in the street but considering what people there are wearing when it's warm, I don't think I would attract any attention if I did decide to go to the supermarket dressed like this on some hot summer's day.