All posts filed under: 20th Century

Rate the Dress: Youthful chic in 1935

Last week I showed you an 18th century inspired 1880s dress, and you liked it, except for the shirring and sleeve trims, but thought it a trifle insipid, so it rated a rather meh 6.9 out of 10. This week, let’s brighten things up a bit with a 1930s fashion plate, featuring a skirt and trim in deep orange. This outfit is described as: Jaquette mi-ajustee en flanelle rayee perpendiculairement, garnie de soie ecossaise. Jupe en lainage chine blanc sur fond orange. Boutons orange. Chemisier en flamisol blanc. Or in English, roughly (since my ability to  speak/read French is confined to knowing all the textile words!) Girl’s street ensemble: A semi-fitted  jacket in vertically striped flannel, trimmed with plaid silk.  Skirt of orange wool, flecked with white.  Orange buttons.  Blouse of white flamisol (a midweight plain weave silk popular in the ’30s, with a twisted crepe weft, and a rough silk warp, giving it an aesthetic that modern fashion writers would describe as ‘luxe casual’). What do you think?  Elegant and suitably youthful, with the …

Doing a Jantzen: 1920s bathers

I was (and still am) working on an elaborate project for the Historical Sew Fortnightly The Great Outdoors challenge, but (as so often happens), I’m busy dealing with stuff, and won’t be able to get it done in time, so it’s been pushed back to a later challenge. Luckily, I quite unexpectedly ended up with the inspiration for a simpler alternative item.  I’ve been working my way through all the various T-shirt patterns that are available at the moment. I was trying the Tessuti Alexa T (not linking to it, because really, don’t buy it – SO overpriced for what it is) in a gorgeous fuchsia merino blend knit.  Unfortunately, I was so disappointed in the cut of the T-shirt that it was unfixable (enormous armholes.  You can fix almost anything but enormous armscythes in a T-shirt), and I almost threw it away. Then I remembered the gorgeous fuchsia swimsuit that Knotrune did for the HSF Art challenge.  She was inspired by Picasso’s Bathers, and my fuchsia wool was the same shade, and looking at …

A checked 1910s blouse

When I announced the Paisley & Plaid challenge someone commented that both patterns were lovely, as long as you didn’t wear  them together. Naturally, that was far  too big of a challenge for me to pass up on! And luckily, I had a length of checked cotton in my stash, just waiting to be made up into a 1910s blouse! So, with some help from Felicity (at her most elegant!) and Wearing History’s amazing Edwardian blouse pattern, I made a 1910s blouse to be worn with my paisley skirt. OK, so the blouse is a very subtle check/plaid indeed,  but it does show that you can blend paisley & plaid! I accumulated a whole pile of inspiration images to base my blouse on, and I settled on a front buttoning blouse with 3/4 length sleeves and  the one piece wing collars that appear in fashion plates around 1914: To achieve it, I altered the Wearing History pattern to have a front button opening, drafted the collar as an extension to the pattern (as it’s cut …