Tag Archives: styled

Basic in black

sewing and handcrafting, , , , ,

One of my most worn wardrobe basics is my black half-circle-skirt. I made it in july 2012, inspired by a post on Casey’s Elegant musings.
From its beginning it had a few flaws, the worst one a lack of fusible interfacing in the waistband (simply because I didn’t find it and was too eager to sew to search it).
As for so many projects, I used the black fabric I originally had bought for my prom dress, with the wrong side out, because of that terribly shiny surface on the right side; you have seen it in my victorian sewing supplies box I showed you in january.
Now, having worn the skirt everytime as soon as it re-entered my wardrobe after washing, it began to show signs of use, the fabric turned grey and to make things worse I managed to iron it too hot, leaving a shiny mark next to the back seam.
I desperately had to sew to a successor!

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After consulting my patterns and sewing books and having considered what would be suitable for every day wear, I went for a 1955/56 Lutterloh-Pattern.

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I used the same fabric (but it was the rest, there nothing left of it, finally!) as for the old skirt, again with the wrong side out. For the back of the pocket and the waistband I used the right side, I don’t know if it is really visible in the photos (I have to excuse myself for the photos anyway, the camera settings were complete rubbish and I only noticed shortly before publishing this post, but I didn’t want to wait until I would be able to take new ones).

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the bright dot is the zipper’s slider.

When looking closely at the shadow the pockets casts in the drawing, you could see that the two parts of the skirt should both form the pocket, creating a really large pocket.

DSC_1820(no, he didn’t tell me that my sleeve was crumpled)

I decided against this, because I know me. Though I love pockets, I would have my hands in them all the time and I would carry around half my handbag in them. Instead I sewed the pocket’s rear piece, cut in one piece with the back of the skirt, directly onto the back of the pocket. The edge on the front part was finished with a wide facing and this facing I connected to the back of the pocket. This left me with a different pocket opening, the rear part lying flat and it left me with a very shallow pocket of maybe 5cm, enough to store some coins for the coffee-break, but not enough to hide my whole purse.

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The pattern didn’t include a waistband. So after I had sewn the rest of the skirt, all I had to do was to cut a strip of fabric as long as I wished (it could have been longer, though), enforce it with fusible interfacing (yes, this time I knew where it was!) and a strip of stiff upholstery fabric (because it is really wide and really tight-fitting, I shouldn’t eat too much wearing it).

DSC_1822(nor that my petticoat was peeking out)

Because old Lutterloh-Patterns are not really made for cut-and-go-sewing I started this skirt working very fast and without any serging at all. After I saw that this skirt was really going to be a success, I finished all seams by hand with a red satin binding.

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The zipper is hand-inserted, too. The waistband closes with a skirt clasp and two small press fasteners.

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blouse: collectif, skirt: Lutterloh/by me, petticoat: Blutsgeschwister, shoes: Ochsner

 

So much for today, see you soon, love,

ette

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Long term project No 2 – My 40ies winter coat

antiques, sewing and handcrafting, style/outfits/clothing, , , , , ,

Now, let’s see what I got for you today…

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A long time ago, back in 2011, I bought some sewing patterns while being on a study trip to Dresden.

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One of the was this 40ies pattern with different projects in “traditional dress”-style.

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Popular belief thinks that these traditional dresses once were the festive costumes of peasants, but the traditional dress as we know today is majorly a 19th century invention, based on traditional and simple peasant costume, but entirely constructed. The ‘why’ can be discussed rather controversely. You can call it a longing for tradition and history, an attempt to picture the past and the “good old times”, you can see the construction of a national identity, maybe of something called patriotism.
Well, nobody needs to have studied politics to guess that all these reasons made traditional dress a very popular style in Nazi-Germany. These costumes helped to form an image of the german nation, the rural life and peasants as the fundament of the nation’s unity and strength. To make this clear: I still have issues using this pattern, because apart from “normal” fashion, that could be political, but didn’t have to, this “traditional”-style was without a doubt used in a propagandistic and therefore very political way.

Being born German, having Grand-Parents who had to live under this regime, who suffered from and survived the war, the last thing I want is to romanticize this time and you will never hear me utter a word like “I love the 40ies” or me speaking of WWII-reenactment. I like 30ies and 40ies fashion, internationally seen, because aside from regional differences you can observe the same cuts and styles in pretty much the whole western world. I work with german patterns because I lived in (and still close to) Germany, so these are the patterns most easily accessible for me.

And one last note before we come to the project itself: I don’t like the other patterns of this set very much, so I don’t think I will be tempted to sew myself a 40ies-dirndl-style-dress in the nearer or farer future. And I try to convince myself that the woman who owned this pattern in the 1940ies didn’t like much of them, either: The marks on the pattern sheet show, the only garment that had ever been made from this sheet (or let’s say that left marks of its creation, surely I can’t say if other patterns were traced without a small ridged wheel) was the spencer, the jacket in the far right. And that isn’t very dirndl-like at all, in my opinion.

The reason why I bought this pattern (apart from its very low price) is the pattern second from the left, the coat. I already planned to sew it right after having bought the pattern and when I went to my hometown later in 2011 I went to the fabric store I used to work at and bought fabric for this project. An anthracite coat fabric, not made from wool, but from cotton, burgundy bias binding and matching lining.

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Because it was already late autumn I didn’t manage to finish the coat to wear this 2011-winter season. In 2012 I spent the autumn months in France and came back home only in mid-december, to late to be motivated to finish this project.  In autumn 2013 we moved and there wasn’t much time for sewing at all. But it brought the project back to my mind and because I really didn’t want to have it lying unfinished in my fabric-cupboard another summer, I forced myself to finally end this in early 2014.

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The coat was one of my first attemps to use historical patterns and I made all the mistakes I could make. Even with modern pattern, sizing often tends to be too large. Today I know that this gets even worse with vintage patterns, but I didn’t know back then, so I cut the fabric according to the 88cm-bust-circumference without any alterations. I closed the seams in the front and attached the bias binding by hand. Only after having closed all the other seams to form the corpus I saw, the coat was far too large.

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I managed to make it a little bit smaller shifting the side- and shoulder-seams as well as the seams in the centre back. Still it was far too wide, I had to add the diagonal darts in the back you can see in the photo above. What is really missing is an adjustment in the front. Only thing I was able to do there, was to cut back the front edges a tiny little bit, but because of the applied bias binding I had to leave the pricess seams as they were. Of course all those adjustments made the seam allowances very bulky and they were a pain even beforehand. The fabric floats very nicely, but at the same time it is kind of stiff, so I had to hand bast all the seam allowances to make them lie flat.

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The armholes were a little too large after all the adjustments, but the sleeves themselves were just massive and very wide. The puff sleeves looked ridiculous and I had to remove a lot of fabric from the width of the sleeve itself as well as from the sleeve cap.
This fabric fringes horribly and I had to undo the sleeves three times and still the left one looks terrible.

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Now, if these were all the problems I had faced, it would have been ok. I still longed to finally wear the coat and loved the colours as well as the pattern.
But the hem looks terribly crumpled, I re-did it a couple of times, the stitches still show and ironing just made it worse. The collar isn’t very flat either, normally I wear the coat with a large scarf so that the collar is hidden.

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The worst flaw I only saw in this photos. The waist flounce isn’t on the same height left and right. When I looked at the pictures I was like “no, it only looks like this, can’t be”, but in fact, it is even worse when looking at myself in the mirror wearing it.

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Surprisingly enough, the lining made no problems at all. You can see a button sewn onto the facing, it’s my spare one.
The buttons were another disappointment. During the two years it took me sewing it, I bought two different sets of buttons, both burgundy coloured, they both looked terrible when pinned on. So I used this ones I still had in my stash. They do not function at all, but hide the press fasteners beneath, I really didn’t want to sew buttonholes into this fabric.

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I am still a little unsure what to do. The coat is somehow wearable, but I know I can do better and I know that this proof of my sewing skills is not what I want to be judged by. Additionally, it does nothing for me. It makes me look way larger than I actually am, the waist is not as accented as I would have liked it to be. So it really doesn’t improve my  figure at all. This winter I will wear it, but it is nearly over, I can’t say if this coat will live another season. I planned to sew a matching hat, having a little leftover from the fabric as well as from the bias binding, but what for if I will never wear it because I don’t like the coat?

DSC_1811b(cap: Globus, brooch: H&M, scarf: heirloom/my grandaunts, gloves: flea market, shoes: pointer)

Now, I would love to hear your opinions, I’m off, love,

ette

 

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Wearable fail, a 60ies pattern

sewing and handcrafting, , , ,

Some years ago I found a hardly used 60ies pattern in a charity shop for the steal of 50 cents. It was opened, but not cut, so if it has been used somebody has carefully traced the cut parts.

The pattern is for a classical mod dress to be made in a multitude of variants. It was part of a pattern line of a german TV seamstress, Marlene Esser. She had her own sewing show in German television in the 60ies and 70ies.

I chose a fabric I had bought in Lyon last fall, a dark blue piqué with small twigs and birds on it. It is a rather stiff fabric and a very cute pattern, so I wanted a very neutral cut and nothing too girly. Additionally the fabric pattern calls for a garment with only a few seams.

The pattern is already a multisize one, but because too many lines would have been too unclear and difficult to tell apart (as said in the pattern desciption), they only traced every second size (they should see our modern ones). The instructions say, if you need the size in between, you should trace your own line half a centimetre beside the printed one.
Now, the smallest size on the envelope was 38, the smallest size printed was 40. Even considered that sizing used to be different back then, 40 is still a little large. So I did as I was told and made my traced pattern a little smaller. I knew it was too large, but because the front was only made from one part with very large darts I decided to give it a try, before manipulating the pattern. And of course, afte having sewn together all the pieces it was way too large. To turn it into something wearable I pinned it onto my mannequin and removed a lot of fabric from each seam.

And unfortunately it was so much that I had to add a seam in the centre front. In fact, this is one of the variants given (see first picture, the dress on the very left), but it completely destroys the pattern.


*shy look at my shoes*


*bad model-me doesn’t know how to pose*

The result looks more like on of those fitted chinese-style dresses than a 60ies-A-line-dress, so the fitting changed the style of this dress significantly. And though there are some minor flaws (like the neckline, which sticks out on one side, fortunately not visible in the pictures), I think it is wearable and even if it won’t become my favourite dress, it will move into my wardrobe and is most likely to be worn every now and then.

I used light pink bias binding for the arm and neck openings and a pink zipper I still had in my stash.

The traced pattern is already in the waste-paper collection. If I am really to make a second version someday in the future, I will try to make a fitting pattern based on the original one. The one I made was too far away from anything I could wear, so the best would be to completely restart.

Improvised beehive only for you, I am sure I could do better. 😉

(headband: i am, belt: 2nd hand/h&m, tights: ?, shoes: deichmann, fragrance: j.p. gaultier – madame)

 

I hope you have a nice sunday, see you soon,
love

ette

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Bow Neck Blouse Sewalong contribution

sewing and handcrafting, , , ,

Due to my years I worked as a shop assistant in a fabric and haberdashery shop, I own a large number of patterns, most of them I never turned into garments.

Bow Neck Blouse Sewalong

Now, when Seamstress Erin promoted her Bow Neck Blouse Sewalong on Wesewretro.com a few weeks ago, I decided to join almost immediately. I only owned one Bow Neck blouse, a store bought black one, but every time I wear it, I get many compliments and I love how the bow adds the final bit to the otherwise standard blouse outfit (you can see me wearing it in this old post).

So, why not sew a second one for my wardrobe? I was lazy that day and though I discovered some beautiful patterns in my 1940ies Lutterloh-Book I went for one of the neclected patterns that only needed to be cut out. Once known as Burda 7777 but gone out of print years ago, it is now available again as a download pattern.
I already feared the result before having started. I mean, pussy bow, puffed sleeves, very blousy cut? This is too cute to look reasonable, especially when being a too short, too young looking women like me anyway.
But better to try the pattern to throw it away afterwards than to store it for another five years without ever daring to throw it away (“but maybe it would be pretty in the end?”).
Well, maybe there was a chance to make it look good, I like the two plain coloured variants in the links above, they look as if I could wear them.
Now, I moved very recently and was shocked by the amounts of fabric I keep in my cupboard, some I haven’t seen in years. So I decided to actively reduce this masses. Choosing one of the few plain coloured fabrics in this collection would have been wiser consindering the cut, but instead I went for a striped viscose farbric I have had for years, I don’t even know anymore where I bought it.

Well…yes…all I can think of is a walking candy cane…

Maybe I should talk about the blouse first, before lamenting what problems I have with it.

Sewing went without any problems, a straight forward size 36 with no alterations.

Because it would have been too busy using the stripey fabric for the bows (and because I didn’t have enough fabric), I made the bows on the collar and the sleeves from white batiste.

The pattern asks for two open darts on each front side. As you can see I didn’t turn the fabric around to mirror the pattern on the two front parts. I have to admit that I completely forgot it while cutting, but the fabric wouldn’t have been enough anyway. So I can blame it on having too little fabric.

The sleeves are cut in one part with the bodice parts, so there is no seam at the shoulders. The sleeves are pleated double before the ends of these pleats are hidden in another pleat, sitting orthogonally to the others. This gives the effect of a sewn on sleeve, but it is in fact only a few centimetres long.

And no, I didn’t manage to match the pattern on the other shoulder seam 😉

The back, unspectacular and blousy as foretold.

The little bows on the sleeves. Those puffed sleeves are enormous. The remind me of the sleeves worn in the 2nd quarter of the 19th century.

Because the width of the fabric wouldn’t have been enough to place all three cut parts side by side, I had to omit the facings (which were included in the front pattern part as well) and make them seperately, using again the white batiste.
Because the pattern is already that busy I decided to take advantage of the three layers of the facing and went for an invisible closure using press fasteners.

Oh yes, much too much. I can easily imagine myself selling popcorn in an early 20th century circus, strolling around the streets of Bioshock Infinite’s Columbia or acting as a female stand-in for Bert singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” next to Mary Poppins.

And it is not even fit for every-day-use! I already managed to tear the fabric during an attemp to catch my cat (only a tiny bit, I can fix it).
(if you wonder why my feet look a little bizarre in the photos: in the old flat, we had a laminate floor, now we have real parquet floor and I have to be careful not to leave marks with my heels, so I am standing on tiptoe)

Ok, seriuosly: Maybe I will wear it with jeans or a very simple jeans skirt, but still it won’t become a wardrobe favourite of mine, it is way to cute, girly, bizarre, whatever.
But the bottom line is: I tried the pattern, I reduced my fabric storage by one, I participated in a lovely SewAlong and I have a new blouse, so what?

See you soon, love

ette

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No Sans-Culotte anymore

antiques, sewing and handcrafting, style/outfits/clothing, , , ,

It must have been three years ago, my father and I went to an Antique shop in the neighbouring village.

While my father digged his way through old electric stuff and ended up finding a sowjet metal construction kit, I asked the owner if he had anything related to handcrafting. He showed me some Chinese cross-stitch-booklets from the early 20th century and three brown book-like things.

I remember that two of them contained fashion and sewing stuff, the third one predominantly recipes. I wasn’t really convinced about them, but loved the Chinese-Embroidery-booklets. It was all in a whole stack of paper, magazines and stuff the owner had purchased only some days ago. Now, my father found some other things, I did as well and in the end my father asked the owner to offer us a good price for all of it, even though I had no idea what “all” really meant. The owner did, my father accepted and he gave me the complete batch of things to carry, Chinese Patterns, weird brown books, lots of water colour paper and some 1960ies issues of different magazines. Well, he wanted to get rid of them, I thought I can still throw it away later so I took it with me. At home I took a closer look at the brown books, the two with fashion and sewing instructions I stored with my patterns, the one with the recipes went onto my cook book shelf.
I can remember that I wasn’t really impressed by the patterns I had seen, back then I was wearing lots of modern clothing and was only interested in the 1950ies, my Rockabilly- phase. The brown recipe-Book was in fact a collection of magazine-clippings from the 60ies and 70ies with a knitting pattern or fashion drawings every now and then (but only because it was on the back of a recipe). I love to flip through the pages and surprise myself and my boyfriend with some weird 70ies dinner every few months (as I did after making these photos, Vol-au-Vents with mushroom filling and poached eggs, and no, I didn’t manage to make proper poached eggs 🙂 ).

Funny side fact: I found four languages in this collection: German, French, English and one recipe is in Italian.

I always imagined the other two brown books must contain the same sort of things, only with a stress on fashion, so I paid hardly any interest on them.

Only a few months ago I remembered them on a quiet and rainy evening and went through them again. Struth had I been wrong! Those were complete volumes of crafting magazines from 1942 and 1944. I was stunned, shocked by how much my taste and judgement had changed in that short time, I mean, I was close to leave them in that shop, unbelieveable.

The majority of the patterns are instructions for knitting and crocheting. There are many pictures of sewn dresses, but the patterns had to be ordered and didn’t come with the issues. But nontheless, they are so beautiful and such a great source of inspiration.

But! They do contain a small number of sewing projects. Most of them are things like bags, toys or simple children’s patterns, but some very few ‘real’ patterns are in them, too.

Of course there aren’t printed in their original size, but need to be enlarged. Already shortly after I re-discovered the magazines I copied the pattern for this pair of culottes (Frau und Mode. Beilage zum “Blatt für Alle”, 14. Februar 1942). I am not a big fan of working with paper in general (so I am always glad when the work with the actual pattern is done and I can start with the fabric), but I prefer drawing patterns much more to tracing them.

As a fabric I chose this rather coarse linen I bought at Ikea (I bought it already some years ago when it was still available in this light green I used and a light shade of pink). The pattern seems to be made for an autumn outfit and suggests a waterproof cloth lined with a woolen plaid for the cape and one of the fabrics for the culottes. That’s why I didn’t want to use a thin fabric and I am quite happy with the linen. And additionally it is so neutral, you might call it a cake-project, at least I would. In my opinion it doesn’t look that “vintage-y” at first glance, my boyfriend said he wouldn’t call it vintage or 40ies, but old-fashioned and square. Thank you, darling 😉

The pattern is quite spartan, as I assume most patterns of this type are. There is no piece for the belt given, I simply measured the waist size I ended up with after sewing everything together and made my own, as told in the instructions. It’s a little weird: This pattern is intended for 100cm hip size and I had to cut away approximately 4cm off each seam to fit it to my hips (that is 16cm less circumference!), but the waist  size was nearly perfect, I only reduced it by 2cm, so 0,5cm off each seam. Strange proportions.

(feel free to use it, the measurements are given in Centimetres)

Edit: Because I was told the pattern can’t be copied because of some missing measurements on the left side, here are all the measurements that I was able to read. Not readable is the final length of the back piece, I used the length from the front piece and it worked. The length of the inner leg seam can be fitted to the one you end up with after copying the front piece or can be more or less calculated (69,5 (length of the front piece) – 31 (I’m sorry, it is not clear in the drawing, but compared to the measurements of the front pieces, the 10cm have to be part of the 31cm, so it should read 21 + 10 in the drawing) –  ~2 (I can’t read it, but it is visible, that there is a slight curve upwards, like there is on the front piece, I didn’t manage to draw it) = 36,5cm).
Neither visible is, if the edge of the inner leg runs down vertically or in a slight angle like the front seam does. I think I made it vertically and it worked.

I love the style of the pockets, that seam going from the belt to the hem. When sewing the two cut pieces together, they overlap approximately 7cm (you can see the dashed line in the pattern). I am not quite sure if that was the intended size of the pockets, that would mean it would have been scarcely enough to store a handkerchief in them. I added pocket pouches, using an old fabric I had once used to line a waistcoat with it. I am not quite sure what material it is.

Because I was a little frightened the pockets would be the weak spot and at risk of ripping someday at the belt, I decided to add belt loops with a pointed end and placed them directly above the pocket opening. The idea came to my mind because Tasha made similar belt hoops on a skirt in April. In the back I placed them above the darts (you can’t really tell from the photos, I’m sorry)

The pleats are sewn close up to a certain point, I think it is visible in the photos. It is quite weird, because they form kind of a triangle with the crotch seam. Below the seam they are only ironed, maybe I will try to secure them with an additional seam, but I ran out of thread while hemming the legs, so this would mean I would have to buy new thread, I don’t know if it is worth it.

It is closed with a zipper in the side seam, the belt closes with a hook and a crocheted loop.

As always I had to shorten the legs. And for the first time in my life I used a skirt marker for it.  A few weeks ago I found a skirt marker to attach to a doorframe on a fleamarket, it works pretty well.

I have been wanting to photograph it for weeks, but somehow never managed. So I finally did it today, after having been on the move the whole day in a boiling city (after some beautiful rain on Monday the heat is back!). So my styling is improvised and I am looking really tired on some of the photos. Because my boyfriend hates this and thinks it is old-fashioned, I decided to wear the full package, with cravat and laced shoes. I was kind of shocked, because, somehow, it doesn’t look as bad as I imagined it to be, does it?

(blouse: Tommy Hilfiger, cravat and belt: family heirloom, from my grandaunt, shoes: Dosenbach/Deichmann)

I already wore it on our tour to Kandersteg a few weeks ago, styled very simple with a T-Shirt and canvas shoes.

crumpled after a long day of walking.

(shirt: I am by Manor, belt: family heirloom, from my grandaunt, socks: Six, shoes: Pointer)

Yes, I am very pleased with the result. It is not something to wear every day, but it is practical. Made from a more elegant fabric I can really imagine it to wear as a skirt substitute in every day life.  I hope you like it as well.

See you soon, love

ette

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What I wore…Strawberry Picking

everything else, sewing and handcrafting, style/outfits/clothing, , , , ,

I’m sorry for the lack of posts these days.

It is so darn hot at the moment, I do not feel any urge to go outside. I am a spring and autumn lover, I hate hot weather, burning sun or getting a tan,  I don’t even like to swim. But I am not in the mood of working at the sewing machine or the computer, either. Don’t ask me what I do the whole day, it is more existing than living.

I am especially sorry, because I do have some finished projects to show you, I just have to manage to take some photos of them to present them here.

In the meantime I will leave you with some photos my boyfriend made a few weeks ago, while we were picking strawberries. I wore my table-cloth-skirt and some new acquisitions I made at the Blutsgeschwister-Outlet in Weil am Rhein.

(shirt and petticoat: Blutsgeschwister, skirt: ette, shoes: Dosenbach (Deichmann), handbag: flea market, silk scarf and belt: second hand shop, fragrance: Nina Ricci – L’air du temps)

And because my boyfriend loved the first photo so much, he toyed around with it a little:

See you soon, love

ette

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