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Sewing

One Step at a Time
*, 19th Century, Jane Austen Evening, Sewing

One Step at a Time

I’m in the middle of sewing a new Regency dress right now for our local Jane Austen Evening. (Yay, it’s back after the world’s multi-year hiatus!) I’m excited to have a new dress for one of my favorite events, it’s coming along ok, but I keep getting overwhelmed by it. It’s not the biggest project and I haven’t hit any major problems, but I do need to have it finished in the next 10 days and I hate sewing to deadlines. (When I wrote that sentence I almost jumped up from my computer to go work on it again because it stressed me out.)

It’s REALLY REALLY easy to get overwhelmed working on a big costume project. Not only is there lots of sewing to do, but you have to think of all the other styling elements – hair, shoes, jewelry, makeup, stockings, gloves, a fan, a reticule…my mind is spinning. And like I said, this isn’t even the biggest costume project. How to handle all that?

I like lists. A lot. In fact, I’m going to grab a 3×5 card in a second to write down that list of things I need to have. It’s easy to let those little things sit until the last second, but then it’s too late to, say, replace your worn out gloves or get a new fan. So I need to check on all those things while I still have time to do something about them and chuck them all in a box to keep them together until the event.

Then it’s back to sewing. It’s stressing me out, and I’ve put together loads of garments that are similar to this. The problem isn’t the project, it’s my brain. I’m trying to do the project on Easy Mode – I’m working with a great pattern (Laughing Moon #138) and not deviating from the pattern too much. I know which steps are likely to take much longer than one would expect (sleeves, I’m looking at you), and trying to budget enough time for those. But still, my mind keeps jumping ahead to all the zillion little steps that go into a project like this.

The thing is, though, you can only work on one thing at a time. It’s silly to worry about the sleeves while working on the bodice, or about the skirt while working on the sleeves. I can’t do anything about those sections yet and I’ll get to them in time. The thing that is helping me the most is to put those future parts out of my mind and to focus on what’s in front of me RIGHT NOW. Gather the sleeve caps. Sew the underarm. Attach the cuff. Finish the cuff. Attach sleeve to dress. Each of these steps will take as long as they take, and I can’t do the next thing until the last one is finished. So don’t worry about all that. Just do one step at a time.

Laughing Moon #138, under construction
AofD: A Dart with Fulness on One Side, pt. 1
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

AofD: A Dart with Fulness on One Side, pt. 1

Y’all, I made an INCREDIBLY nerdy discovery.

This sewing technique (“A Dart with Fulness on One Side”) is NOT actually used in the official, original, authored-by-Mary-Brooks-Picken version of The One Hour Dress.

Are you as shocked as I am? (probably not. I have no illusions that anyone else cares about this stuff.) But there are TONS of modern sketches and blog posts and even workshops out there teaching that the basic “One Hour Dress” gathers into a hip dart.

Which only really matters if you decide that you’re going to explore a sewing technique used in the infamous “One Hour Dress”, and then you hunt through multiple editions of the book, looking for where to use the technique, and it’s nowhere to be found.

Don’t get me wrong – the one-piece “One Hour Dress” does show a similar version with hip fullness, but that extra material is pleated into the sideseam. And there *is* a dart at the hip, but *the fabric is not slashed open to create that dart*. This means that you’re never required to the tricky bit of sewing of gathering or pleating a longer piece of fabric into a shorter piece (and having to clean finish and reinforce that slashed point at the tip of the dart).

Hip fullness is allowed in the original one-piece “One Hour Dress”,
but the main body of the fabric is not slashed into.
Source: http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/html/warm/H-SW007-04.htm

The good news is, that sewing technique *does* pop up in all sorts of other 1920s styles, including “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, which was ALSO published by the Women’s Institute, ALSO in 1924, and also likely written by Mary Brooks Picken. Just don’t be surprised when you go looking in the original “One Hour Dress” books and the construction is different from the sketches you see floating around on Pinterest.

So let’s look at places where this technique WAS used!

These examples all come from various Women’s Institute publications. This “Dart with Fulness on One Side” technique seems to have been most popular in the early and mid 1920’s, when straight, tubular fashion was at its height. By the late 1920s, it appears to fall out of favor as more shaped designs were considered chic.

From “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, 1924
From “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, 1924
From “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, 1924
From “Fashion Service Women’s Institute Magazine”, Spring/Summer 1921
From “Fashion Service Women’s Institute Magazine”, Spring/Summer 1924
From “Fashion Service Women’s Institute Magazine”, July 1927

I’ve already finished my sewing sample of this technique, and I like it pretty well! I will share the actual sewing in my next post. 🙂

Art of Dressmaking, February 2020
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

Art of Dressmaking, February 2020

AofDSeams-compressedDownload

Howdy! Here is this month’s Art of Dressmaking download, focused on Seams. Basically, the whole reason I picked this is because of page 97, “A Dart with Fulness on One Side”. It’s the style used in the hip gathers for the infamous “One Hour Dress”, but the construction method shown here, with the stay, is different enough from the construction as explained by Mary Brooks Picken that I want to try it out and see which version I like better. (Don’t worry, I’ll do a whole post on this. Or maybe do worry? Because it’s gonna be nerdy.)

I haven’t yet decided which other technique I want to try. I’m already familiar with a lot of the examples (French seams, felled seams, various seam finishes etc.). The Open Welt and Slot Seams are intriguing to me, because I can’t immediately visualize an application for them. I’ll have to dig in more magazines to see if I can find examples of them!

AofD: Corded Shirring
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

AofD: Corded Shirring

Here is my second installment of practicing the Art of Dressmaking! The manual showed this interesting version of shirring, where you use a cord almost like a drawstring to create the gathers. I hadn’t really seen this method in use before, so I tracked down a couple examples of it. These two examples from 1921 suggest using the method with taffeta, but I did see one more from the late ’20s with chiffon for the fabric suggestion. (again, my nerdery is showing…)

Women’s Institute Fashion Service, Spring & Summer 1921
Women’s Institute Fashion Service, Spring & Summer 1921

Since these two original examples suggested taffeta, I grabbed a scrap from my Regency spencer and gave it a try. I seriously love the effect! I definitely need to figure out a way to use this technique on a real garment. I almost used yarn as my cording, but I had some corset lacing handy so I used that instead. I think it worked great! It’s much stronger and denser than yarn, so it gave great structure to the rows of shirring.

Have you come across this technique in your sewing and/or vintage journey? I’d love to see more examples!

AofD: Shirred Drape
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

AofD: Shirred Drape

Oh dear. It’s February already. I’ve done a decent amount of sewing this month, and I’ve actually been getting better about taking photos regularly, but I haven’t found a blogging rhythm for it yet. I’ll keep trying. 🙂

I’ve been hunting to find examples of the sewing techniques from the Art of Dressmaking “in the wild”, and I was supposed to post these for the challenge for January. Oops? (The great thing about doing historical fashion is that it’s already all out of style, so being a little behind doesn’t make much difference. 😉 )

This first example comes from the January 1928 edition of the Women’s Institute Fashion Service, and shows how to add a shirred flounce to a coat dress. I haven’t been able to find an image of the original pattern (Pictorial Review 3758, in case anyone wants to help me track it down), but I suspect it just has the double pointed ends at the buttonholes, and the magazine is suggesting a “hack” to spiff it up by adding a shirred drape. (OMG my nerdery is *really* coming out right now…)

I’ve done plenty of gathering and shirring in my time, so I decided to try this little drape piece to see how it would look, in case it might be something I want to add to a project in the future. Because the magazine “hack” suggested rayon, I used some rayon satin that was leftover from my Vogue cape, and I ran the stitching by hand. According to what I’ve been reading, doing finishing details like this by hand still seems to to be considered the “standard” method in the 1920s, and using a machine is suggested almost as an afterthought.

I learned a new little trick for securing the gathering threads! The book suggests wrapping the thread around a pin in a figure 8 motion to hold them.

The completed practice sample. Do I love it? eh, not really, but I think I have a better idea of how to make something like this work if/when I do ever want to apply it to a project.

Anatomy of a 1920s Pattern
*, 1920s, Sewing, Sewing Pattern

Anatomy of a 1920s Pattern

As we approach 2020, there has been a marked uptick in interest in the 1920s. (How many Great Gatsby parties have YOU been invited to for New Year’s Eve? Remember, ain’t no party like a Gatsby party until there is a sizable body count!) I’ve been beefing up on my 1920s dressmaking for a couple years now, and I wanted to share an original pattern with you.

There were variations between the pattern companies, but this Pictorial Review pattern is pretty typical of the era. The pattern is only provided in one size per envelope, and the pattern pieces are unprinted tissue. There is no separate instruction sheet – all the instructions given are what you see on the pattern envelope. There is actually quite a bit of information provided, but it is certainly much less than modern sewing patterns contain!

Pictorial Review Pattern 1973, c. 1924
Pictorial Review 1974, Envelope Back

The front top of this pattern envelope gives the size (Bust 36″), the price, a sketch, and a basic written description of the garment.

Underneath the sketch there are yardage requirements listed for different widths of fabrics and it tells us that the seam allowance for all seams is 3/8″, and then a visual construction guide for the pattern is provided. The pieces illustrated represent all the pattern pieces provided inside the envelope, and there are notes labeling what the pieces are (Front, Back, Sleeve, etc). This construction guide also numbers all the notches which shows how the pieces fit together – notch 3 on the skirt front matches to notch 3 on the skirt back, indicating that those seams will be joined. Less obvious are the armhole notches – notice that the front armhole has notches 11 & 12, and the back armhole has notches 13 & 14. These notches correspond to notches 11, 12, 13 & 14 on the sleeve cap (both the long and short sleeve versions). ALWAYS mark your notches when cutting out your fabric, as this is how you’ll know how the pieces fit together!

On the back of the envelope, it tells us a bit more about the symbols used on the pattern pieces. Large (O) perforations (like on the long sleeve) indicate the grainline. Three (TTT) notches show where to place the piece on the fold (like at Center Front or Center Back). Some of these symbols are more relevant during the cutting phase, and others are needed during the construction phase.

Next up, we have the cutting guide. This shows us, in diagram form, which pieces to cut on the fold, which ones should be cut separately, and the grainline alignment of the pieces on the fabric.

And finally, we have our written cutting and sewing instructions. I’m sure you’ll notice how brief the sewing instructions are, and that none of the stages are illustrated. At the time, it was expected that you would use a separate sewing manual if you needed clarification on any of the steps. Patterns were blueprints for a garment – they weren’t intended to teach someone how to sew.

This pattern showed up in a newspaper advertisement in The Scranton Republican on April 12, 1924. Big thanks to Erin Lufkin to finding this image and confirming the pattern date for me!