My fashion history fix

There's another fashion exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum here in The Hague!
This time, it's about 19th century fashion. The title is "Romantic fashions", subtitled "Mr. Darcy meets Eline Vere" (Eline Vere is the title character of a novel by Dutch author Louis Couperus).
(I found this title a bit confusing because, in the environment of a museum, I tend to interpret 'romantic' in an art-historical kind of way. Which is not correct in this case. The exhibition is about normal 19th century fashion, which, to us today, looks 'romantic' in the usual 'street' sense of the word)

The exhibition looks at fashions from 1800 to 1914 and the huge amount of development during that time. The focus is on womenswear but there are some outfits for men and for children there as well. 

There are a lot of historical dresses but also some costumes from movies and tv series (Pride and Prejudice, Downton Abbey). And there is a room with clothes by modern designers, inspired by the 19th century (personally, I can take or leave that one. I would have preferred something else, like more corsets).

There are certain things which this museum does really well. 
I loved the way they set the scene in each room with the backdrops. Huge stretches of way decorated with enlarged period images which match the dresses on display both in occasion and in colour. 
And the slowly turning platforms on which the ball gown were displayed. And the clever use they made from the small side rooms to show off small numbers of dresses with a separate theme.

I'm less keen on the persistent habit to put the information about the actual dresses on one little plaque way to the side of each display. It's almost fortunate that this information is mostly very limited (often just year and material) because this way of displaying it forces you to keep walking up and down between the information and the dress you're looking at.
Fashion history purists may also be a bit shocked about the hair treatment: To make the whole display look more modern and approachable for a 21h century audience, they have chosen not to use period hairstyles but the let present-day hairdressers create wigs which are both inspired by the dresses and the period and yet are kind of 'now'. I thought it looked good though...

This exhibition will be there until the end of March 2015, so there's still plenty of time to see it. If you even remotely like fashion history, I heartily recommend it.
Of course, many of you don't live anywhere near The Hague, The Netherlands. You can read about it on the museum's website and I've made a Pinterest board with all the pictures from my visit.

(P)interesting

A short while ago, I mentioned joining Pinterest. As I announced, I 've been adding images and creating new boards gradually and I'm not even close to half-way through my magazine collection yet.

And yet, certain patterns start to emerge... Of course, some things, like the amount of images in each issue of a vintage magazine have nothing to do with my preferences but other things are pretty telling.

I knew I liked skirts with flounces. That's why I made one. And they were among my reasons for liking the years 1949 to 1951, and starting with adding those. But really, there is some seriously lovely stuff there. I know I already made a flounce dress, but I may need another. Or a suit...

And then pockets. Like many seamstresses, I like my clothes to have pockets. I also like pockets to be a design feature. And I'm not afraid of wearing a garment with eye-catching hip pockets. But there's such a selection, even just in those few years I've looked at now. And I love so many of them.

And after that, there are other things I didn't even particularly know I liked. The lovely fitted suits with blouse-y backs which Dior made in 1950 for example. And styles for which I haven't even come up with a category yet. 

I guess I'm just a sucker for the minor trends of the years after the introduction of the New Look. Which almost makes me accuse myself of fashion history snobbery but I swear it isn't. These are things I picked because I love them. Of course, when I get on to the later 1950's, there should be more full-skirted dresses (when fabric restrictions disappear) which I also love. However, as a pattern maker, I'll always be drawn to both clear lines and clever inventions and in the years around 1950, there were so many of those. Even if the 'general public' might not recognize any of these as "typical" for their time, I know they are that and more and I can enjoy them (this was a reason for me to be disappointed with the "Fabulous Fifties" exhibit at the The Hague Gemeentemuseum two years ago. Too much of a broad sweep of an era which has so many fascinating smaller and shorter-lived trends).

I know many people complain about Pinterest being a terrible time-suck (and of course, I'm not a very active user) but for now, I'm happy I put it the effort. It has helped me to go from vaguely knowing what I like to a clearer picture. A picture which may get more complete as I upload more images, from more years. Or it may get diffused, of course. Either way, I think I'll like playing the game for a bit longer.

Oh, and obviously, you can follow me on Pinterest to explore all those vintage trends yourself.

a new Market Bag

I've just made myself a new "Market Bag".

I go to the market at least once a week (more often twice) to buy fruit, vegetables, sometimes meat or fish and, of course, fabric and notions. That means I have a lot to carry when I'm there and I have to be able to take it all with me on the short bicycle ride home. It won't surprise you that I'm doing all the carrying in a me-made bag... Although I like my market bag to look nice, it is mainly utilitarian and I don't replace it until I have to.

The first one, which pre-dates this blog by quite a bit, was a clone of the store-bought bag which was performing the same service before it. I made it in cotton canvas which I dyed olive green and decorated with self-made band patches (the big one is of my boyfriend's band at the time) Unfortunately, I lost it well before its time when it was ripped off the back of my bicycle in a little drive-by moped robbery. 

To replace it, I made another one using some Ikea fabric. This was in the early days of this blog and it has served me well ever since. 
However, it looks a bit tired now and recently, the zipper which I inserted it one side has started to tear at the corner. The zipper closes a pocket which I use to store my wallet, phone and keys. As a result, it is opened and closed quite a lot when the bag is in use. And when I'm filling the bag, the weight puts strain on the corners when the zipper is open. 
Not that I should be complaining, it has held up well for years.

And so, I made a new one. I used the same basic fabric as I did for the very first bag, just in its original un-dyed form. To decorate it, and to make it a bit more practical, I used textile black paint.

I printed some of the pictures of castle ruins from my holiday in Scotland and cut out the outlines to use as templates. 

Not an entirely original idea, of course.

The paint has made the lower parts of the bag a bit thicker and stiffer than before, which I think is just fine.
Instead of an inside pocket which opens to the outside, like before, I've made an expanding patch pocket. 

If you're interested, this is what the pattern looks like. The measurements include seam allowances and a facing of 3 cm at the top. My bag is lined and I used the same pattern piece for the lining, just cut 3 cm shorter at the top ( I know that means it's slightly too long but that's done on purpose. The outside fabric is strong, the lining isn't so I want to outside to carry the weight of the bag's contents). Obviously, you cut the bag piece twice and the pocket piece once. 

I used bought strap material, 70 cm per strap, including seams and overlap with the facing. I couldn't get black straps so I decided to go with a contrast colour and buy red instead. All the straps on offer were also narrower than I wanted so I overlapped them a little and stitched it down with a stitched zigzag.

The bag got its first outings today: a trip to the market and some regular grocery shopping. I have to get used to it a little bit but I think it will work just fine.

An alteration

I've been doing useful stuff...
This weekend, my relatives who live in London will be visiting my parents and we will meet them there. Which means I felt kind of obliged to work on and finish the alterations on the coat belonging to my aunt H.
To be fair, she left it with me on their last visit, in January and mentioned that it was fine if it took me over a year to alter it. She must have heard how long I took to take in my grandmother's skirts.... (which also, was no disaster. Although my grandmother had lost a lot of weight and was happy for me to take in six skirts, she has a lot of other ones so she didn't miss them too much).

Anyway, H is the only relative, apart from my grandmothers, who occasionally asks me to alter things for her. Like most seamstresses, I hate doing alterations but I can be swayed to do them for my loved ones. And I know that H really can't sew, unlike my mother and other aunts. And she accepts my expertise in the matter, which is nice.

In this case, she had brought me a coat which was way too large for her. H caught the running bug a few years ago, and as those things go, has lost a lot of weight since. This coat was bought just before she started running and was now... about... eh, 4 to 6 cm in circumference is the difference for one dress size, so... 3 to 4 sizes too big...
It's a fairly straight , classic design but with the usual nice, tailored details. Which, unfortunately also means that the pocket welts go through the front darts, eliminating any opportunity to take out some excess width there. The front side seams were very close to those pocket welts as well, so no luck there either. As a result of the coat's anatomy, most of the difference had to be taken out at the side back seams. I would have like to distribute it more evenly but there really was no other option.
And it was so large that even the shoulders were too wide. The combination of that with the fact that I had to take in seams which ran up to the armhole ment that I had to alter and re-set the sleeves... 
I wish I could have raised the armscye a bit but of course, I can't add material where there was none.
All in all, it's quite a job.

On the up side, it's a nice coat. Beautiful thick stable wool coating, nice not-too-thin satin lining. The tailoring is nothing special, all fusibles, but it has been neatly done. And I like seeing how exactly they've treated the shoulder and sleeve head. Not that it's news to me but, that's how you get that nice rounded edge at the top of the sleeve. 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a 'before' picture but I'll try to add one of the finished product tomorrow morning (it's too dark now). 

I'll be curious to see how the coat will fit her now. I don't think I gave any guarantees for this one and indeed, that's how it should be. This was a lot of alteration for a complex garment that doesn't really allow for much change.

For him

Although a lot of my sewing is rather selfish, I have been making shirts, thinner trousers (for jeans, he's a Levi's 501 kind of guy) and coats for E for years.

And I've just finished a new one.

This coat, which I made back in the autumn of 2010, has served as his every-day wintercoat for all that time. And by the end of last winter, it was decidedly worse for wear. I have changed the lining at least once, maybe twice. And I've made some repairs to those nice but not always practical button tabs. But now, the fabric itself had started to pill in some places and shine in others. And the lining needed replacing again. 

To put it quite simply: It was time for a new coat.

The were two fabrics in my stash which I though would qualify for this project: This one and a densely woven beige coating. Either would make a nice change from the plain black we have used for his coats so far. 

E picked this one. It is a peculiar kind of fabric: It's a thick, off-white wool knit with the checks printed on. The printing is not equally dark over the whole fabric. There is only a tiny bit of stretch and only really in the width of the fabric, so I thought it might serve fine for a coat. 

I decided to use the selvedge of the fabric, with the white side facing out, as a piping.

For the pattern, I kept all the functional details which had made the previous coat such a winner: A fairly roomy fit which allows for a range of movement yet is fitted enough to eh... show off his good looks ;), the length which is practical both when driving and cycling, the collar which folds down a bit lower than the standard because that is more comfortable for him, the simple zipper closure.

The design details are new and I adapted them a bit to the nature of this fabric. The slanted welt pockets from the old coat didn't seem like such a good idea now. This fabric, although hardly stretchy, doesn't have the stability of that dense wool coating. And fusible interfacings (used to stabilize the yoke and the zipper edge) didn't really like sticking to it. 

And of course, I wanted to use those selvedges as a design detail. So, where the old coat had raglan sleeves, I went with normal ones this time but made a sort-of cuff to add the piping. I made a shoulder yoke with a point at the back. The collar is edged in the selvedges and so are the openings of the kangaroo pockets.

I tried to match the checks. I even cut out everything in a single layer to do so and it was not easy. It's a knit and the check is printed on... The lines were going everywhere! I think I mostly managed it though.

The zipper is a thick black plastic one. I usually prefer metal zippers but in this case, I didn't want to add another colour in the mix. 

I quite like the way the coat looks on him (even though he didn't really feel like posing when we took these pictures, too many people we passing by... But that's what we get for deciding to take pictures near the climbing hall again) and he got compliments on it from to colleagues. Both other men, who know his girlfriend sews (also for him) and think that's really cool. :D

Burdastyle

You are all familiar with Burdastyle, aren't you?
I've been a member for ages although I'm not as active there as I used to be. And I'm proud to have been a contributor to the first Burdastyle book.

Now, I've actually sewn something using a recent pattern from the site. A first for me!
But there's something else I want to mention first: I'd like to thank everyone who nominated my blog or voted for it... 

My blog is part of Burdastyle's "Best of blogging top 50"! It will be announced on the site later (after some upcoming change) but we are allowed to tell it on our blogs already. 
I'm very happy with this. When you are blogging away, like I do, you have no idea how many people really see and/or like what you do. Not if they don't comment, that is. Blog statistics are all well and good but they don't register appreciation. This does. So thank you very much and I will try to keep up the good work!

Now, on to the garment...

After all the excitement over the top 50, I went and had a good look around all those parts of the Burdastyle website which I don't visit that often (mostly, I just go to the "Projects" pages). And I quite liked this cardigan in the pattern store. And it was really cheap...

Judging from the technical drawing, I guessed this was a really simple shape. Probably one I could draft myself... But on the other hand, I love "object cardigans" and this one has that bulky shape and proper sleeves. At that moment, I didn't really feel like figuring this one out from scratch. Not when I could just go and get the recipe...

So I did. This a 'draft your own' pattern, so you don't have to deal with printing lots of pieces and taping them together. And unlike most tutorials you find online, it comes in two sizes (sort of S/M and M/L). 
There are a few things about this pattern I didn't like: 
- The dimensions for the pieces are without seam allowance. This is the standard in the Burdastyle magazine (at least in European versions, I don't know about the American one) but it doesn't really make sense for such simple pieces which you might draw straight onto the fabric (which I did, adding seam allowance as I went along).
- The drawings for the cutting lay-out and even the listed amount of fabric you need are for fabrics of 110 cm wide. Which, to me, seems like a really unusual width for knits. The vast majority of those are 140 to 150 cm wide, in which case you only need the length of the body piece plus the length of the sleeve (or even just the length of the body. If your fabric is 150 wide and you are cutting the cardigan in the smaller size, you should be able to cut out the sleeve next to the body piece).

- If you make the cardigan as described, the wrong side of the fabric will show at the 'collar' (which is really just the folded-back front edge). The instructions don't really warn about that. I noticed straight away, but a less experienced sewer might not. My fabric doesn't look good on the wrong side so I cut the front edge with about 20 cm extra on it, which I used as a facing. Worked just fine.
Oh, and the sleeves are long. Longer than they have to be. I shortened them just a little because, with the 'object' shape, the length of the sleeve on your arm depends rather heavily on how you wear the cardigan.

The fabric has been in my stash for a while and I thought the stripes would work particularly well with this design.

I was right about that... I really like the look of the back!

To be honest, it's the back I'm happiest with. Apart from the stripes, the shape is really interesting too. I'm less sure about the front. I've never looked great in longer cardigans. This one doesn't look bad at all but I'll really have to think about how to make it work in my wardrobe. 

So, there you have it, my first garment from a Burdastyle pattern in a long time.

Spring fashion (1951)

Did you read any of the recent catwalk reports? Or did you study lady's magazines to find out what the editors thought the coming season will bring? (of course, every semi-insider knows that the most recent shows were actually those for spring/summer 2015. The magazines just concentrate on the previous ones, which are more relevant for the season we are in now)

To be honest, I'm not as interested in present-day fashion news as I used to be. It's just too much of 'anything is possible' and usually hardly connected to what we will see in the street. In fact, a couple of years ago when I followed this more closely, I found that the stuff I liked usually wasn't picked up by the mainstream....

Today, to show how much has changed and how much has stayed the same, I have a fashion report from spring 1951, based on the haute couture shows in Paris. Including some very cute drawings to make the different lines, championed by different designers, a bit more clear:

A brid's eye view of spring fashion

We rush through the labyrinth of Paris - from the Rue Royale to the Avenue Montaigne, from Faubourg Saint Honore to the Place Vendome. We rush from one fashion house to the other and our invitations, sorted by date and by hour are a maze of addresses spaced far apart.

A large gate, a small shop. A stately staircase, an elevator which gets stuck between one floor and the next. Luxury salons, everywhere different, everywhere the same. In all of them, a heated battle over a place on the front row, over the first cocktail, the first nibble. 

Everywhere the same reporters. One third, gilded chairs, always a bit too narrow. Heat like in a submerged submarine. Crystal chandeliers and business-like spotlights which shine a dazzling light over it all. Flowers, sales-girls, waiters. Waiting for three quarters of an hour, until the first model steps out and is gone again before the international murmuring subsides. But even if the first outfit misses out, there are so many more to follow (collections of 170 pieces are no exception) that we we will have trouble deciphering our hasty notes later on.
For one long week, we caught show fever. Three or four shows a day kept us up, half-asleep, until well after midnight and we wrote down the specifics from the most important collections. So, let us raise the curtain for you: We are not faced with a revolutionary new spring fashion! Except the adaptation of our wardrobe to the change in season, it will continue after today like it has been since the start of the first half of this century. Beautiful and diversified versions of everything which has been produced in the field of fashion over the past few months, are presented to us. We will be able to build our spring wardrobe in a pleasing style with the help of details from previous seasons. 

If nature allows us, we will continue to wear the rounded shoulders, a small waistline will still be our ideal and the hips will still be round, artificially so, if necessary. For the rest, we have a choice from such a wide range of possibilities that there will be something to everyone's taste.
In one collection, bodices are close-fitting, in the next the are a bit wider, sometimes they are strict and have a straight button closure, in other cases, they are less sober or even a bit wild with a shawl-decoration or some drapery. Sleeves show themselves in every length imaginable, either cut on or set in, or (like at Dior) a combination of both.

Cleavages, modest in day dresses, play a varied game in the dressier outfits. They are round or oval, V-shaped or variations on the U and W form; they are cut up high against the neck, reach just to the nape of the neck or leave part of the back, shoulders and chest uncovered. Small, often very narrow collars are a favorite but large collars are also shown. 

The skirts will please everybody because the simple, slim skirt, the wide skirt and the semi-wide skirt are all there. The first ones mostly feature in suits, while also plenty a wool spring frock owes its silhouette to them. In the festive, silk dress, however, wide skirts rule. It can be either a plissee skirt or simple wide one but this spring's darling is the "apron skirt". This apron skirt, which is often removable, can be worn either around the skirt or the side or back and, thanks to a contrasting lining, it can often be worn inside out. It is closely related to the separate skirt gores which, at whatever side, add visual width to 
a slim skirt and which are responsible for the surprising and elegant play of skirts which most designers have picked as their leading principle. Often, these gores, which are not used in walking clothes, are achieved by draping. This is especially in evidence at Fath's. This designer presents his collection in the sign of the "arrow" and the "bell". Maggy Rouff, who, like so many others, is a fan of the apron skirt, launches her creations under the motto of the "moving line". Paquin chose, among other things, the X as a motif in his collection, while Diro shapes the ideal female figure from nothing but ovals and Lanvin covers her in the contours of a spinning top. Piguet is inspired not only by the pencil but also by the dancer and Lafaurie opens, in a marvelous collection, countless possibilities by taking the waves and curves of the wake of a ship as her guideline.

Griffe, who, based on his recent creations, is the furthest removed from his colleagues, plays with grey and sober strictness, which he interprets with refined modesty in the governess dresses.

Less capricious than the dresses are the coat, which, in any form, are fairly simple. The most eye-catching characteristic of the new is the narrow stand or collar, which is often combined with a low neckline.
The classic lady's suit, much seen behind the scenes, had to yield its place in the shows to the novelty versions, which enjoy a lot of attention in the spring fashion. Of the most interesting details we note: the peplum which is only rounded at the front (Griffe) and the long shawl collar which gets wider on the way down.

The fashion, as it was just launched, has a lot going for it and yet - despite the ravishing fabrics, the fairytale colours and the original prints - little news. She who opens a fashion magazine from last season, will find in it much of what we could not discuss yet in this short article. 

Hannie Vanverre

So typical for the late 1940's and early 1950's: Even fashion reporters were happy to find little news in the show for the new season... 

By the way, this is the first time I've translated an article from Beatrijs magazine (previous ones were from Libelle. Often the work of their 1940's fashion editor Caty Verbeeke). 
I hope you like it. I think such pieces give some nice extra insight in an era of fashion which many of us love.