To smock

As you may have noticed, I'm a pretty accomplished seamstress. Of course, that doesn't mean I can do everything, clothes-making wise. And I've just begun to learn something new: smocking.

Some months ago, I brought wool and this pattern (from Margriet magazine from 1950) to my grandmother who had kindly volunteered to knit me another sweater (the first one was from a modern Phildar pattern). 
She found the pattern easy to follow and didn't mind the small gauge but she was worried about one thing: the page with the schematic drawing for those smocked bits was missing. She first gave the completed sweater front to my mother, who passed it on to me. 

I had never smocked in my life. Fortunately, she'd given me a little booklet (in German) on this technique a couple of years ago (in a bag of her old sewing supplies). With the help of this page, I managed to make this:

I know it doesn't look quite the same as in the picture but, believe me, the amount of stitches and their spacing are right. To get this, I basted at every two stitches. I also tried basting at every three which made the smocking look more like the picture but took up a lot more space on the shoulder than it should. The way it is now, the width (both in resulting width and in amount of stitches used) and placement are about right. 
Once I got the hang of it, this basic smocking wasn't difficult at all.

The booklet also contains a lot of information about decorative stitches and how and where you can use them.

Although I don't care for the heirloom baby girl look mostly associated with smockwork, I am tempted to try and use it in some way...

Blast from the past

I saw this picture in my book of 1951 Beatrijs magazines and I thought this would be a great one to share with you. I should add that it's not typical for images in this publication.

Beatrijs used its back cover for pictures (they did this in 1941, 1951 and 1954, so I guess it was a long-standing habit). These could be seasonal (little girls picking flowers), religious (a nun at a window, Beatrijs was a catholic magazine after all) or cute (small child with toy) but mostly, they were full page fashion pictures. 
In the 1950's 'edgy' posing hadn't been invented yet. Models tended to be narrow waisted but healty women in their mid twenties who positioned their bodies in natural or elegant ways, depending on the type of garment they were wearing. They were always perfectly groomed and their poses seem designed to display the garment clearly and accurately. 
That is where this image is different. Bearing the simple title of "striped in black and white" is does show an elegant lady, wearing a diagonally striped swagger to perfection. However, between the loose style of the coat and the stripes all you really see of the lady is a little bit of face and a pair of ankles in cuban heel stockings. This, in itself, gives the image an unusual, graphic quality but there is another unusual element as well. At the right side of the page, you can see (Oh, please ignore the weird line above it, that's a tear in the paper) the nose of a car. It's a little out of focus and yet, instantly recognizable, even today: it's a Volkswagen Beetle.
The Beetle was (I learned from Wikipedia) first designed in the late 1930's but real production started after the Second World War, making it available in Europe in the late 1940's (although it wasn's sold in the UK until 1953). It owed its lasting popularity to its reliability and sturdiness but also to the iconic advertising campaigns made for it (mostly in the US) in the 1960's.
I was aware of that last fact. To be honest, I was so well aware of the popularity of the Beetle in the 1960's that I wasn't even sure it could have been around in the early 1950's. That's why I looked it up in the first place.
With that particular power of hindsight, that makes this fashion picture incredibly fashion-forward for 1951 and maybe even a touch futuristic...

Check mate

Thank you for all the nice comments on my coat!
The succesful completion of a big project like this has really helped with my sewing mojo. Nevertheless, I decided to take on a simple and fairly un-selfish project first: another shirt for E.* (my apologies for the focus issues in the close-ups. the light was terrible)

I always keep an eye out for fabrics which would work for fis clothes but menswear stuff is so much harder to find. And his taste isn't very adventurous. So, despite owning an overflowing stash, I immediately bought this cotton flannel when I found it at the market (could be a cotton polyesther blend, the burn test revealed a bit of synthetic in it). It's lovely and soft and has the right weight and hand for a winter shirt. They were selling several designs, so I may go back for more. The only, rather serious, drawback was the width of this fabric: 90 cm. I needed more than 3 m for this single shirt and I'm very good at cutting fabric economically. Luckily, I noticed this issue when buying and got 4 m. And the (lack of) width was reflected in the price.

As usual, I used the shirt sloper I made for E years ago, using the "tailored shirt block" from Winifred Aldrich's Metric Pattern Cutting for Menswear. Like most times, I added a convertible collar instead of a classic collar and stand because E prefers it in wearing. And I completed the look with pockets with flaps. I chose not to make a contrast button band this time (so I had to be extra careful about matching the horizontals at the front).

Of course, I played with the checks a bit. I took care with the placement of the back darts, matched the horizontal lines at side and underarm seams, at the sleeve plackets and, as mentioned before at the front.

The back yoke, cuffs and pockets and flaps were cut on the bias. I stabilized the yoke by giving it an on-grain facing. For the cuffs and flaps, I used fusible interfacing and on-grain facings. Only the pockets themselves at 'unsupported' bias cut bits but I took great care in pressing them in shape and sewing them on the (on-grain) shirt fronts. 

A little detail, because it may be helpful to some of you: I like the look of rounded shirt tail, but I don't like fiddling endlessly to hem them. And I don't like the badly twisting hems you often get on such shapes. I often use this very simple cheat's trick: take (store bought) bias tape and sew along the bottom of the shirt (right sides together) in one of the folds, press to the inside of the shirt and topstitch along the edge. Et voila: an effortlessly curved hem.


* Of course I know a man's shirt doesn't count as an easy project in everyone's book, but I've made so many by now...

The big coat reveal!

Here it is! We managed to make use a short sunny moment on an otherwise very rainy day to try and show off my new coat, my redingote.

For this, I decided to go all the way: styling and make-up!

You may remember how it all started with this image in a 1953 issue of sewing magazine Marion. 

I showed you the proces from trying out the original pattern, dismissing it and drafting and developing my own. I explained how to create ease at the armscye without limiting range of movement, and I showed the sewing work in progress. Now, the coat is finished and I've worn it out for the first time...

As discussed before, it has half raglan sleeves end on mid-shoulder where they meet the bodice princess seams. Those princess seams flare out from below the fitted wiastline to form a full skirt. On the side front pieces, there are stick-out pockets. The collar I finally decided upon creates the same high neckline as the shawl collar in the original design. This allowed me to stick with the original button placement: One at the waistline, one below it and one at the collar. With diagonal bound buttonholes. It's short of a convertible collar (if I add a little button and loop, it could be worn closed) with four little darts at the back.

The fabric is a blue-grey wool which has been in my stash for a while, underlined with grey wool, the bodice is interfaced with horsehair canvas and of course the whole thing is lined. 

Interestingly, according to the stern editrix of 1951's Libelle, blue-grey is an excellent colour for a coat because it can be worn with black and with brown... Although the redingote is always a dressy style which makes it less versitile...

And a dressy coat it is... I accesoirized with black for the photoshoot, mostly because it's the only colour in I have all pieces. 

The hat is vintage and was bought in London (at Portobello market, if I remember correctly), the gloves are vintage and from my local market and the purse comes from the same place but was very tired-looking and missing a strap so I did some DIY on it with bits of leather left over from one of my jacket projects. The shoes are the ones I often wear in pictures for the blog and were bought new.

A week summarized

I certainly didn't plan to be absent from this place all week... But circumstances conspired against me.

I finished the coat, of which I will only show you some close-up sneak peeks here. 

Front closure

Pocket

I plan on doing an actual outdoor photoshoot for it this weekend. At least, if E can be convinced to play along and take a couple of pictures for me.

After finishing work on the coat, I decided to tidy and clean my, by then thoroughly messy, sewing room. During that process, I found something disturbing: On an open shelf above the drawers which hold my fabrics, next to the dressmaker's dummy on which I display my lovely sharp shouldered jacket, I keep the things I bought second hand with the intention of refashioning them. Leather and suede in skirts and coats, a pile of silk shirts, some of E's old band t-shirts and a harris tweed men's jacket. I found out that a big patch on the back of the tweed jacket had been completely devastated by moths... 

Of course, I threw it out straight away. I also threw out the t-shirts which had been lying under it. The one on top (of the three) had a couple of moth-cocoons on it... 

I spend the next day moth-proofing my stash and my wardrobe. Cedar chips, moth balls, the works... And my beloved jacket is now in the freezer. According to a book on vintage clothing, three days in there will kill any moth eggs which might be hiding. My recently acquired vintage silk dress underwent the same treatment. And from now on, any 'new to me' vintage find will!

After all that unwanted excitement, I was quite happy to get away for a little bit and go with designer friend M to the fabric trade fair in Lille: Premier Tissu. We were looking for eco-fabrics for her brand but those were, unfortunately, not widely available. We did get a good insight into colour and fabric trends though. The 'it' thing for summer 2014? According to this fair, it's digitally printed fabric.

Now, I really have to focus on two little 'assignments' first: making a dressy long sleeved knit top for my grandmother and replacing the waistband on a pair of trousers for my mother. 

And then, I promised E a new coat (because he wears the one I made him last year ALL THE TIME) and a new shirt and I kind of decided to make another shirt for my brother who turned 25 this month...

The continuing story of the redingote: Sewing has occured!

This is just a quick post to proove that I've actually started sewing. 

I was good enough, this time, to actually cut all the materials I needed before starting to sew (I often don't cut lining or evening interfacing bits until I need them).
The fabric I have for this coat is an interesting colour but it's also a bit thin so I decided that underlining for warmth was in order. For that, I used this grey wool (I made my half-circle culottes from this stuff, but I still had more than 3 meters left over of a fabric which isn't ideal in many ways). I also thought it would be a good idea to interface the bodice with horsehair canvas (I cut it to extend to 10 cm below the waist). And then, I still had to cut the lining...

After all that cutting, I sandwiched the horsehair between the outer fabric and the underlining stuff and basted those sections, to keep it all in place. Fortunately, all the materials involved 'stick' to each other quite easily. 

Then, I could finally start sewing...
I allowed myself to start on the easy, gratifying long seams instead of wrestling with diagonal bound buttonholes straight away.  

This is the back, with the back of the sleeves already sewn in (this picture comes closest to the real colour blue).

This is the side front, with that stick-out pocket (of course I interfaced the pocket edge).

I even had a good excuse not to start with those buttonholes: I wasn't that happy with the buttons I had originally picked out. 

The interesting dark mother-of-pearl button on the right can from my grandmother's button jar. I think it's a lovely button and I had the right amount of these. But... In theory a colour like this could be an interesting match with the greyish blue of the fabric but it never looked quite right to me. The buttons were also a bit small. At close to 3 cm in diameter, they aren't exactly small but I wanted to stick with the look of the buttons in the Marion design, which calls for three 4 cm buttons.
So, this afternoon, I went to the fabric store (I already looked for buttons at the market and didn't find anything) and bought the blue ones on the left. Now, these are buttons for this coat!
I'll just wait and see if I have the courage to start on those diagonal bound buttonholes tonight...

About sleeve alterations

When writing about my second coat muslin, I mentioned I wanted to alter the sleeves. More specifically, to set them lower into the bodice and adding ease to the arm to allow for a good range of movement.

Kimbersew asked for an explanation about that. 

It's actually a trick which is included in the better pattern making books (best known of which is probably Winifred Adrich's Metric Pattern Cutting). As usual, I won't be copying the instructions from the book. Largely because I don't want to infringe their copyright but also because every pattern making book I know of, applies this method (or one very much like it) to a few specific sleeves, while I think I could explain it a lot better in the context of altering sleeves in general. 

I going to illustrate this with pictures showing a normal set-in sleeve but it works just as well with (half)raglan sleeves or sleeves with a square bottom of the armscye.

Imagine your basic, fitted sleeve. It has a high armsye and a sleevehead shaped like this, which will include some ease (Note the markings on the sleeve pattern piece, the double mark in the back set-in marking).

In some garments, especially in coats, you may want a lower armscye to allow the garment to worn over other clothes.

If you alter the armscye just a little, a rather simple rule applies: Lower the edges of sleevehead by half the amount with which you lowered the armsye. Then, widen the sleevehead under the set-in marks for as far as needed to match this measurement on the bodice.

This method works well if you only need 1 or 2 cm of extra room under the arm. Any more and the sleeve will, at even the slightest movement, show strain in the area marked in grey. Nevertheless, it is always the first step when re-drafting a sleeve for a lowered armscye.

There are two ways to deal with this. The first, shown here on the right, is used a lot in sport(y) clothes. This method involves re-drafting the sleevehead making it wider and shallower (when doing this you can eliminate the ease in the sleevehead). This will put the sleeve in a different angle to the bodice (in the previous examples, the sleeve's natural position is hanging straight down, after this alteration, it's half-lifted. In sports, you usually use your arms in some way, hence the popularity of this sleeve in sportswear) and as a result, dramatically alter the over-all look.

For my coat, I didn't want the sporty look, so I used this method: Cut along one of the dotted lines at each side of the sleeve (so, either at the set-in marks or between it and the edge of the sleeve. Which is better depends on the original shape of the sleeve). Pivot the wedges upwards with the point on the sleevehead staying in place. Open the underarm seam up by about 4 to 6 cm. Re-draft the underarm seam and tweak the outside edges of the sleevehead if necessary (they shouldn't be pointing up).

I hope this makes sense to you. As ever, feel free to comment or email me with questions. Obviously any sleeve alteration you make should be tested out first in a muslin.