A bit more detail

Maybe it would it nice to have a closer look at some of those dresses from Vogue. 

At these in particular. Photographs of actual dresses worn by real women. Those ladies are probably models but it still gives a better idea of what these styles actually looks like than all those charming drawings... And these particular designs come with descriptions.

Confirming modes that are and hinting of modes that will be, come four gowns from Paris

A cluster of gay pink roses affords a charming foil to the dull blue of an organdy frock girdled dull blue ribbon, and a rose-toned taffeta hat brimmed with prim little roses carries out the pretty color scheme. To make this becoming frock more becoming a white lace vest is inset.

The vogue for sheer material for autumn is forecast in the costume here, from Boue. It is made of silk mousseline and taffeta in a dark shade of brown which promises to be smart. The long sleeves, high neck, taffeta hem and bow give the gown substance.

In these pictures may be seen the back and front views of a hand-embroidered white silk mousseline frock sponsored by Maurice Mayer and boasting distinctly novel features in the double collar, the odd sleeve ruffles and the corded skirt opening over a profusely ruffled underskirt. 

Possessed of the indefinable quality of effectiveness is a Rondeau model of black Chantilly lace over black taffeta, which is girdled with Nattier blue satin. High neck and long sleeves make the gown very smart and the gold strings dropping at the side provide a telling touch.

Lovely aren't they?

Seen in Vogue

Today, I have some images for you from an issue of American Vogue from a hundred years ago.

 The issue from 15 July 1915, to be precise (the magazine appeared two times per month back then). I just love that colourfully illustrated cover...

One thing which stood out was how much focus there was on French fashion, despite the war. 

This article makes that very clear: "Paris with one eye on fashion". With a photograph of hospital soldiers and Red Cross dogs sharing a page with the latest fashion in swimwear...

The rest of it is normal fashion news though. 

Then there was this announcement: 

as well as a short article about the atelier of Jeanne Lanvin,

some attention for high-quality French linen,

and dresses from various Parisian designers.

 

Another go

I'm having another go at making a 1930's dress... The previous two attempts didn't (really) work out (the first one was a huge shapeless sack with tiny holes for the neck and arms and the second one became more or less wearable after a lot of tinkering) and even the blouse I tried first was less than a complete success. On the one hand, I'm starting to think the styles of this decade are just not for me. On the other hand, I don't think I have a crazy kind of shape, my bust and hip measurement even belong to roughly the same size on the 1930's Gracieuse sizing chart, so there seems to be no reason why I could not make it work. Maybe I am just too used to the 1950's aesthetic.

Anyway, last weekend, I had another look at the options I put on my Pinterest board. I didn't just look at the pretty pictures on my computer, no, I looked them all up in their magazines and had a look at the pattern pieces. I have noticed before that some illustrations which look really complicated and interesting actually have very ordinary patterns. And sometimes, it's the other way round. 
Studying the patterns and considering the time of year limited the number of options considerably. 
In the end, I decided to go with this dress:

The one on the left, an evening dress from October 1933. This is one of only two designs on my board which is (partly) cut on the bias. 
Every time I've talked about 1930's dresses here, I get comments about how 1930's dresses should be cut on the bias. Now, I'm sure this was true for those sleek show-stopping dresses worn by Hollywood starlets but it certainly wasn't true for what normal women wore every day. It makes sense really, who would want to use the most fabric-hungry style of cutting in a time of serious economic crisis? 
Based on my original patterns, I would say bias cut was very rare (to non-existent) in designs for normal people until 1933. From that year, it shows up occasionally. Usually in skirts and most of the time for evening wear. 

In this design those skirt pieces, which start in points above the waist, are cut on the bias. the short bodice and flutter sleeves are supposed to be made from a double layer of tule. 
I rather like the shape of those pieces. The oddly shaped armscye and the circular sleeve...

To preserve the 82-year-old pattern sheet, I'm tracing the pattern this way. It is tricky but it works. 

The fabric I'm using is this very soft cotton with beige and black stripes. I have close to four meters of it but unfortunately, it has these wide beige stripes at every meter or so. If I had had four 'panels' of stripes, I would have used those and cut without those wide stripes but I don't. I have no other choice than to try and incorporate them into the look.
The fabric was really annoying to cut. Before I could even lay out the pieces, I had to cut off the selvedges because they were pulling the edges in. Without selvedges, the stuff is incredibly shifty and moves around all the time. It should make for a nice fluid drape to the final product but it's a nightmare to cut and I have no illusions about what it will be like to sew...
I'm trying to match the stripes at center front and back. I'll have to see about the sideseams. The bodice will be black tule.

I'll start sewing tomorrow. Hopefully, it will be third time lucky! 

practical swimwear

Warm weather and sewing with lycra... It would have been weird if I hadn't thought about swimwear last week. And sure I did. I've been thinking about making a new 1950's style bathing suit but I decided to make something more practical first: A sporty type of bikini top to go with my existing set. It's something I already blogged about a year ago.
I'm not much of a beach or pool person but if I go near one of those things, I like to be able to swim. I didn't miss a practical swimsuit in the past year but I know I would on my next holiday or if I decided to go to the beach after all...

This new top is a simple racerback style, drafted from a dartless bodysuit block. It's basically shaped like a sport bra although it doesn't compress the chest quite as much (I wanted that. It's not like I'll be doing heavy exercise in this thing and this way it doesn't completely flatten my breasts).
If I make a top like this again, I would make the racerback piece a bit narrower at center back. It works well like this, but it would look better if it were narrower. 

Now, I have a practical bikini. I may go on to make the pretty one as well but for now, I'm returning to my 1930's dress plan.

More lingerie!

Last week, we had a bit of a heat wave here in the Netherlands. I know, our heat wave may feel like a nice day in spring to some of you out there but in this country, 30 degrees Celsius or more really is very, very warm. I usually don't do well in very warm weather and my sewing usually suffers because my sewing room catches a lot of sunlight in the evening. In past years, I've made very light and airy little outfits to deal with this weather. This year, I decided I already had enough of those (heat waves normally don't last long here) but I still didn't feel like "proper" sewing, with large pieces of fabric. 
Instead, I decided to make more lingerie. I like the set I made recently, but it could do with another pair of panties. And it would be a shame not to try and use up that lace and lycra...

I quickly realized that the aubergine coloured (and still very difficult to photograph) lace and lycra didn't just go with the matching elastic I bought for it (which was only enough for a second pair of panties) but also with the dark cream/light beige coloured picot elastic from my stash. 

So, I made a pair of panties in my tried-and-tested lace back pattern to match the first bra.

And a modified version of Melissa's Lacy Thong using the light coloured elastic. I've made this pattern several times and I always thought the front could be a bit lower where the lycra meets the lace and I always had some excess fabric in the center back panel. So, this is my improved version but I think that has more to do with my specific shape than with the pattern. 

Then, I looked at the amount of material I had left... It looked like a lot but it's always hard to tell when sewing lingerie. I was hoping it would be enough for another bra and two pairs of panties but I had my doubts. So, I decided to cut out and make that second bra first and then see how many panties I could still make. 

The second bra was always going to be a racerback one. It's a shape I've loved for comfort and practicality in RTW and I'm still happy with my first self-made version. The great thing about this style is that you never have to worry about bra straps sliding from your shoulders. 
This also makes it difficult to get good pictures of these bras lying flat on the table. So, considering the fact that the foam cups make this bra not very revealing, I thought it would be better to model it.

Like most of my bras, this one has cups made from cut-and-sew foam, covered with lace and lycra. I used plunge underwires and a front closure cut from an old  RTW racerback bra. It's basically the same pattern I made before but I've changed the cup edge from a curve to a straight line and I've treated it covering differently. And I used fold-over elastic on the first one and normal lingerie elastic here. At the sides of the cups, I only cut seam allowance on the lycra, not on the foam. A its first pass, the elastic was only sewn to the lycra, then it was folded back over the foam and stitched down. It was fiddly but it worked and I quite like the finish. 

Just for comparison, this is what the strapless bra looks like when worn. You can see the slightly pointy shape it gets from that bit of boning in cup.

I had to wait for a few days until I could finish this bra because I had order the underwires from lingeriestoffen.nl (different stores and webshops sell different brands of underwires and those can vary a lot in shape. Those sold by this shop have a combination of length and width which works really well for me. It's also great that they list all the measurements of all the underwires on the site).

And then, I had to see how much I could still make from the remaining materials... It wasn't enough for two pairs of panties. It was about enough for one and a half, no more. 

So, I just made another version of my favorite design.

This set is now well and truly finished, however sewing lingerie is always a bit addictive... There's more to make. New shapes and designs to try out, both in lingerie and swimwear. And a lot of other bloggers seem to be making stuff like this as well now...

18th century printed cotton and more...

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 ;)

Museum fabric

Do you like fabric? Do you like cotton fabrics? Do you like vintage prints?

If you answered "no" to the first question, I suppose you are here because you got lost... Surely everyone who sews, loves fabric!
If you also answered "yes" to the other questions and happen to be in the Netherlands on 9 July, you may find this event interesting. 

Museum Rotterdam hosts a tour through its archive, focussing on the sample books of the Rotterdam Cotton Company. There are two tours, one at 10.30 and one at 14.00 and they are organized in collaboration with Modemuze (I think I mentioned that website before. They are an online platform about fashion and fashion history on which you can search the costume collections from seven Dutch museums. It is only in Dutch though)