The Dreamstress

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The fabulous, flirty 1950s

My next class at Made on Marion is a full skirted, 1950s dress class.

Why?

Because full skirted dresses are awesome and gorgeous and fun to wear.

However, they can also be a little tricky to make.

How to gather all that fabric in, get the hem of a circle skirt to be perfectly even, fit the bodice? Does it need boning? What about a petticoat, and what kind? What about horsehair at the hem? Will it work for a border print? What about a directional print? A class is the perfect way to work through that, whether you have a vintage 1950s pattern you want to tackle (and maybe need to size up from a 32 bust to a 36 bust!) or a modern reprint of a vintage.

To inspire prospective students, here are a few of my favourite 1950s patterns, some of which I own, some of which I don’t:

I just got this one. Look at the gorgeous nautical detailing:

McCalls 4935

The pattern envelope describes this as “A dress to be worn with a light heart, a light step”. <3

Butterick 7238

The low back is so ‘on-trend’ right now, and this dress is such a classy way to do it. Also, that pleated skirt? Swoon!

This sexy dress is ‘Easy to Make’, and the overlapping front pleat is tres chic.

Vogue 7536

And for really sexy and gorgeous, try this dress. Ooh la la!

Simplicity 1848

I love the simple halter on this, and I love, love, love the pleated skirt. A great alternative if circle skirts aren’t your best look.

McCalls 3566

If vintage patterns are too scary or scarce, you can always go with one of the fabulous reprints that Vogue are putting out:

Mmmm….stripe matching!

Vintage Vogue 8789

Vintage Vogue 1172

So how many of these could you actually make or do?

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week’s poll was about inventions:

I found the answers intriguing. On the one hand, this is a sewing-focused blog, so it’s not surprising that the largest amount of you voted for the Sewing Machine as the item you would ‘invent’ if sent back in time to before it existed. On the other hand, at least to my mind, with the possible exception of the stocking frame, the sewing machine would be the most difficult of these to recreate and invent.

I’d have no problem making a paper clip, barbed wire or a spiral hairpin with some pretty basic materials, the postage stamp is a easy idea to recreate, the sandwich is a slam-dunk, I know how a printing press works well enough that I could explain it to a medieval craftsman, and variolation is a scarily easy concept.

Mary Wortley Montagu who helped to bring smallpox variolation to the West, by Charles Jervas, after 1716

But the sewing machine?

I may work with it every day, I can take one apart to some degree and put it back together and make it work, but I still couldn’t really explain to an engineer what would be needed to recreate a working one.

There is an interesting discussion of how useful a modern person would be in a historical situation. Of course, the answer depends hugely on the person, and the period.

I think I’d be reasonably useful all the way back to prehistory: growing up on a farm gave me a decent background in a lot of really practical, hands-on skills, from plumbing (I can start a basic gravity intake and transport the water for miles), to carpentry, to medicine of the scientifically-proven herbal variety, to cooking in cast iron over fires, to (of course) agriculture. My trump card would be sewing: hand-sewing goes back millennia and as far as we can tell has been valued for all that time.

But I couldn’t tell an inventor in 1790 how to make a working sewing machine.

So, if you voted for sewing machine, could you actually work with an engineer/mechanic and make one? And what about the other stuff? Do you understand variolation? Could you make barbed wire quickly and easily without tearing yourself to shreds? Or would your skill just be awesome sandwiches?

18th century Orientalism and Theresa

Published by The Dreamstress

It was interesting dressing Theresa in the pet-en-l’aire.

I always visualize pet-en-l’aires on rounded, full-busted figures, with dimpled arms and round faces: the sort of figures shown in French fashion plates of the era. Theresa is tall and slim. The pet fit her perfectly, but the change in proportions completely changed my perception of the pet-en-l’aire aesthetic. The pet suddenly looked elegant and exotic, rather than sweet and coquettish. Theresa in the pet looks like a Gainsborough rather than a fashion plate.

To play up the exotic aspect of the pet-en-l’aire, made as it is out of an Indienne chintz, and to worked with Theresa’s features, we focused on the orientalism so fashionable in the 18th century for the styling. Theresa’s hair is not hedgehog-friendly, so we did a turbaned headdress, and skipped the full ‘poof’ of petticoats and bumroll.

I wish I’d been able to find my proper ostrich feathers, not the skimpy ones I did find, and I still need to trim the pet and find proper silk (or at least rayon) ribbons for the front. But it looks pretty darn good, and Theresa, well, Theresa looks gorgeous!