Winter owls table runner

Pattern: none

Fabric: about 2,5 m cotton Andie Hannah for Robert Kaufman ‘Polar owls’ fabric

Haberdasheries: two tassels

Time for another tasselled table runner!

 

There isn’t that much to say about how I made this – tried to find symmetry in the fabric design, cut a piece of about 48 by 250 cm, made pointed ends, hemmed it, and sewed on tassels by hand! I was able to find tassels in exactly the colour I was looking for, which was nice.

However… I’m not sure how long they’ll last! :P

Very optimistic of me, perhaps, to think that I can have a tasselled runner when I’ve also got a kitty! Oh well. She's generally very sweet, so I forgive her ;).

P.S. I apologise for these and future cat photos to all people who haven’t got a cat :P. I didn’t understand it either, why people are so fascinated by their cats and take and post so many pictures of them – until I got one myself!

Women’s Land Army shirt

Haberdasheries: 9 white plastic buttons and 1.5 m white cotton twill tape

Here’s another addition to my WLA uniform in the making – the shirt. This was worn with the breeches and often the tie and wool sweater:

A Women’s Land Army girl wearing the uniform shirt, tie, sweater and hat

These shirts were fawn-coloured, made of cotton, and had the pointy collars also typical of men’s shirts of the period, but unlike most modern ‘reproduction’ WLA shirts, they had the female style closure. Here are two examples of these shirts:

WLAblouse, Imperial War Museum

WLA shirt used 1942-50, Museum of East Anglian Life

I definitely wanted a female closure, so I couldn’t buy a reproduction shirt. The originals are hard to come by, but I found that contemporary ladies’ British Army shirts are the correct colour and still have rather pointy collars, as well as the same collar stitching. So I bought one on eBay and customised it to look as much like an original WLA shirt as possible!

 

The contemporary shirt came with epaulets and breast pockets, which the originals did not seem to have, so I removed those. I also removed the semi-transparent buttons and replaced them by opaque white plastic buttons with four holes, like those on the originals shirts I studied.

The IWM shirt has a “length of white tape, enabling the garment to be tightened for comfort around the body and into a bow”. I decided to do this as well, because, although I hardly think tying a tape around the waist adds comfort, it probably makes it easier to neatly tuck the shirt into the breeches.

Et voilà, my WLA shirt!

You can find more photos of the land girls on my WLA Pinterest board!

17th Century muff

Pattern: improvised

Fabric: 19 x 50 cm silk and about 50 x 50 cm fake fur

Haberdasheries: 1 m gold band, and 76 small pearls; cooker hood filter

Yesterday I posted the cuffs and ruff I made for my husband to wear at the ‘Battle for Grol’ event. I also made something for myself, which was a nice dainty muff!

Me with the muff, although not much of it is visible! Photo by  Phil Thomason

This is the second muff I’ve made. I made a Regency muff before, and the nice thing it that the two are about as different as they could be! In the 17^th century, muffs tended to be small and have fur on the inside and fur or fabric on the outside, whereas in the Regency period, muffs were huge and had fur on the outside and fabric on the inside.

On the left, a 17^th century Dutchwoman with a small muff; on the right, a Regency lady with the typical large muff

To make this muff, I first took a strip of silk and sewed gold band and small pearls onto it. Then I sewed the strip into a cylinder shape. I then cut a wider piece of fake fur and sewed that into a cylinder as well, after which I added both cylinders together on one end. I then realised that if I stuffed the muff, the filling would probably look bumpy beneath the silk, so I also made a cylinder out of cooker hood filter and put that in before adding the stuffing. I placed only a little stuffing inside the tube, and added more inside the edges so they’d stand out nicely. This also makes it impossible for wind to get into the muff, so it actually keeps my hands very nicely warm! Finally, I hand sewed the last cylinder edge closed.

Sewing on the pearls

The cooker hood filter cylinder

The finished 17^th century muff!

 

Here are my two muffs side to side for comparison: