More Old Photos

I’ve been liking my growing collection of old photographs. They take up less space than clothing, haha.

Here’s half of my finds from yesterday – I went to flea markets and antique stores and came back with a nice collection! Only one was dated or inscribed, so the rest are kind of speculation.

  

Here’s the oldest of the bunch – while I have a lot of photos that might be from the 1870s, she’s definitely that old. Her hair is awesome, her dress is pretty cool – and look at her smile. I feel like she’s genuinely happy.

I like the spontaneity of this pose. I’m thinking this is between 1910-1914.

Another 1900ish picture. This photo is so striking. She looks proud and confident and she’s such a beautiful Gibson Girl model. She’s also not super skinny, which is always nice to see because it helps dispel the people-were-smaller-back-then myth. I’m a little confused with the front waistline of her dress. it looks like a raw edge tucked into a waistband, and coming loose. The cloth looks pilled and ravely too.

This is my only inscribed/dated photo from this batch: “To Anna with love, 1918”. This woman is now known to me as Lady Spock. But check out her hair.

Lady Spock’s putzy matted hair. When you really want that new short look, but you just can’t bring yourself to cut anything … here are 1,309 hair pins.

I think this is a really interesting photo. I’m half wondering if this is the woman from two pictures up. She’s beautiful and very Gibson-Girl-esque. I bought this photo because of her kind of risqué-looking dress – or is it a dress? It looks a lot like lingerie – and this on her shoulder …

It’s a jeweled gecko. I’m assuming it’s a pin, like a brooch, but there’s not clothing for it to attach to here. She just balanced it there.

Super Productivity! Kinda.

So first off, an apology. I’ve been searching WordPress and my own brain for ways to do this, but I can’t figure out how to put a .pdf on a blog post. You know, for patterns. I’m stuck. So for now, I must apologize. I want to share some of the patterns I’ve taken but until I can figure out a way to get them here, un-warped and un-wonky, I can’t. 😦

Other than that disappointment, I’ve been sewing like mad. Mad, I tell you! I just haven’t had the time to blog about it. Or take any nice photos.

Since early January, I’ve made:

1 1910s-1920s velvet hat (HSF Challenge #2: Blue)

1 1918 wool skirt

1 1900s cotton & lace corset cover (HSF Challenge #1: Foundations)

1 1910s linen blouse

1 1910s cotton & lace slip

1 1915-1918 wool jacket

1 silk and (oops) polyester “Votes for Women” yellow rose brooch

1 early/mid 1920s velvet evening gown (HSF Challenge #3: Stashbusting)

1 pair 1930s wool & leather spats

1 late 1920s tennis (style) dress

… and I’ve begun an 1880s-ish corset.

And as always:

1 huge mess

3 small trash bags of scraps

1 medium sized dent in my vintage button & cloth hoard

1 $15 dent in my wallet (you read that right, BOOYAH)

All the 1917-1920 clothes I meant to make for the April HSF challenge, War & Peace, but I was so excited about them I started and finished them way too early. That worked out all right in the end, though, because I wore them for a women’s suffrage play I was in, with the last-minute addition of the Votes for Women brooch.

I made all these with my 1902 Singer, which felt nice, because I was using antique/accurate tools. Yep, I know, nerdy.

And because I’ve been awful at taking photos of my work, here are just the ones I’ve photographed. I’ll get pictures of everything later.

I am in LOVE with this hat. I usually can’t find something big enough to fit my hair under, so I made it extra big. It’s got that big/loose hat thing that was going on in the teens and twenties, and I can actually put my hair up under it! Yay!

I made the blouse in the photo above from one of my dad’s worn-out 18th century shirts. It was old and threadbare, so I don’t expect the blouse to hold up well. I’ve already popped a few seams – the fibers just fell apart. That being said, I’m surprised at how nicely the shape came out – the pattern was roughly based on one of my modern Gap button shirts. I’m excited to make another, hopefully in a nice batiste, or something that holds up better to drawn-thread work.

The corset cover (left) was taken right from my original (right), which is just a tad too small for me – not that I’d wear it. I made it from a thrifted tablecloth, mimicking the design of triangular lace appliqués at the neckline. I love it – it’s comfy and even though the materials and my workmanship are awfully crude compared to the original, it’s the best I’ve ever done with a sewing machine, and I’m happy.

This is my ’20s evening gown. I wanted it to be kind of generic so I could wear it to events. The idea was to make a semi-fitted slip and to drape the velvet on that, but halfway through planning I realized I didn’t have any cloth for the slip. Being on a frenetic sewing high I made it anyway, substituting ribbon for lining. Now it looks like the dress has interior suspenders. It works nicely considering the velvet’s heavy and hot (it was a curtain! Thanks, Laura Ashley), and a lining would just make it more uncomfortable to wear. It drapes fairly well, too, so I don’t consider it a failure. And it’s super comfy!

The beading came out okay; it looks better hanging than flat, as above. I made the mistake of putting the beads on too tightly, which messed with the straight Deco lines of the pattern I chose. Live and learn.

This is my late twenties tennis dress. I made it, again, from a thrifted curtain and a few pieces of red bias tape. I like it; it’s very comfy. When I wore it to work with my re-worked cloche and a blazer it became very early-1930s-sportswear-ish. The dress itself is very basic; sleeveless with a V-neck and the skirt has two huge box pleats at the sides.

Now I’m working on a new era: the mid-late Victorian. I’m starting with a basic corset based on an 1880s example, and I’m hoping that, for now, I can get away with the 1860s with it, too. After that comes all the rest of the underpinnings and gowns and hats and shoes and stuff, which will be … challenging. I have one long-term project, a 1900-1920s beaded purse which will take me a year, conservatively, to bead fully. It’s about 40% done right now, and I’m slowly working away at it. Good stuff!

Plus Feathers!

I wanted my next post to be patterns, but I’m so excited about my new 1910s – early 20s hat, I had to share it. I added feathers, because frufru is awesome. I found the feathers already attached together in some sort of flower arrangement feather-duster-like pouf at a craft store – the closest I’m going to come to one of those awful Victorian let’s-just-stick-half-a-dead-bird-here decorations.

The feathers are brown, dark with peacock iridescence, and there are a few very skinny tan ones at the back. I love how they look against the navy velvet.

This hat is my entry for the Historic Sew Fortnightly’s Challenge #2, Blue.

The original I based mine on, from LACMA.

See my original blog post about sewing this hat here.

Patterns, anybody?

I have handfuls of patterns that I’ve taken from originals, or adapted from originals. I’m thinking of posting a handful of them.
Very soonish, I’m posting an adapted mid-18th century small cap pattern, a ca. 1900 corset cover pattern (about a dress size 4), and 1930/40s high or low spats pattern.
Here’s why I’m writing this particular post. I also have a ca. 19-teens silk jacket in a loose-fitting dress size 0-2, and my own 1920s feed sack dress pattern from this original dress, which is about a dress size 6-8. I also have a size 2-4 way-too-many-gores skirt pattern from the 1900s. These patterns will take a little more work to get online, especially the skirt. Would anybody like to try them? They’ll be formatted as images to download – measured drawings on graph paper, with instructions and a link to a page of detailed images of the originals (except for the cap) Let me know as a comment!

A new hat

I’ve been holding back my sewing appetite because I’ve had other things to do, but yesterday, I lost the fight and it resulted in a 1910s hat.

Me doing my not-smiling thing, and my brand-new super suffragette velvet hat. I made it from a few bits of used cotton velvet, a couple pieces of canvas for stiffening/lining, and a length of narrow metal boning for the brims’ shape. I winged it; I didn’t have a pattern, and I had super luck making it, so I probably won’t be able to pull it off again. You know how those things work.

The brim: just a loop of boning with a loop of velvet folded over.

 

 

The sides; a wide strip of canvas folded in half lengthwise, and a somewhat wider strip of velvet pleated and sewn down to the canvas.

 

Sides and brim, ready to be sewn together

 

Pinning/sewing the sides to the brim.

Inside out, sewing the top to the sides. This was later covered with a bit of that stripy material. I did completely hand-sew it, I could have used the machine on about half of it, but the rest was really better finished by hand. The visible basting stitches were an oversight that I might re-do later.

And hat! Needs some feathers/flowers/stuff. It’s very comfy.

It’s kind of like this purple number from The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Click here for the item description.

And finally, yeah, I made it on a whim and I have nowhere to wear it. I’d love to make a whole suit/outfit to go with it. I have some more velvet and a lot more of the cool stripy lining material. Maybe.

 

 

 

For Continued Awesome …

Front view, with the fronts crossed more than they would be if it was worn.

 

This is my gorgeous silk coat, ca. 1905-1910 (edit: actually 1914-17, after a little more research!). It’s 30% air, 70% held together by luck, and 100% Art Nouveau awesome. So, to keep the awesome going, I’m taking as good care of it as I can, and finishing up a pattern to it.

A pattern! The next generation! Because it’s far too delicate to be displayed, and far too awesome to sit in a acid-free box forever. It has to live on!

With the fronts folded back. The front buttons are backed with three small 4-hole shirt buttons, to keep the main buttons attachments from pulling the cloth.

 

Cuff detail – There are three of these silk macrame buttons down the front, with silk loops instead of button holes.

 

The back of the collar and upper back detail

 

Front and shoulder detail, with a silk cord appliqué at each shoulder. The appliqués have three silk tassels with silk-covered wooden beads at the ends. And, by the way, the true color. Damn digital photography in low light.

The coolest thing about this coat is that the person I bought it from said it came from a trunk with a tea gown and a bonnet (both of which I have as well, and both of which are fantastic). The bonnet is decidedly older, ca. 1875-1885, but the tea gown is the same date range as this jacket. I would love to assume they were worn together, and since the jacket is so light (it’s unlined) perhaps they were. They look great together (I put them on my mannequin for a moment last week, before I began to clean and pack them).

So here’s the gown, kind of. Beware, these are very poor photos; I took them with my phone. They’re from while the tea gown was drying after I washed it. I’ll get the gown on my mannequin for some real photos later.

The gown’s completely made of cotton netting and lace. It’s got a net under-bodice and a net under-skirt, but it’s still super transparent. It would have looked so frothy and lacy on somebody, with all the proper under-clothes. The gown itself is in super condition, just a little yellowy. It was musty and yellow-er before I washed it. These photos don’t do it justice.

The bodice of the gown, all net and three different types of lace. It has a bloused, wrap front.

The two-tiered skirt, all net and lace.

So I’ll get a few pictures of the stuff later, and I’ll work on the pattern. It’ll be “a la Patterns of Fashion”, just a measured drawing on graph paper, but I’ll post it for anybody who wants to spread the awesome 😀

To (let it) be or not to (let it) be?

That’s always the question.

I have had a second tea gown hanging in storage for a few months now. It’s a little older than my first, and a little larger, too. It’s also been remade more times than my first one. I think it was made around 1900, remade in the early teens, and then re-remade sometime in the last few decades.

 

I am hoping to get some better pictures this weekend, so stay tuned, I guess.

The first incarnation had a longer, flared skirt (I can tell because the seams inside have been re-sewn, and the selvages show the original taper was much wider), and puffier sleeves (the insides of the arms have three ingenious horizontal tucks that persuade the puff to be larger and fuller to the back of the arm). The second incarnation had a narrower skirt, then, and the sleeves were a little longer and less poofy. The third incarnation just added snaps down the back and an ugly black ribbon through the lace at the neckline, creating a drawstring. 

I really do like that this dress has so much to tell. It’s been worn by two or three people in the last 100+ years, each leaving a mark. I would love to retain all that information, but then again, I’d love to repair the dress as well.

So to what point do I restore it? Do I even try? I’ve already removed the drawstring and I’m considering taking the snaps out. I can’t re-flare and lengthen the skirt, so it’s not going back to 1900. I could put the tucks back in the sleeves, but it won’t be complete without the longer skirt. 

Without a provenance, all this dress has is the story of alteration after alteration, owner after owner, for a hundred years. I may just wash it, repair the damage at the front (there’s a large tear, but it doesn’t show because it’s inside a pleat) and see how I feel about it.