Pair of pockets

Pattern: Patterns of Fashion 1 (c. 1660-1860) by Janet Arnold

Fabric: printed cotton, plain cotton

Haberdasheries: 3.5 m petersham ribbon, 16 mm wide

A rather peculiar accessory to modern eyes, pockets or hanging pockets were worn underneath women’s clothes from the 17th through the 19th century, as their dresses did not contain pockets like modern clothes do. The dresses often have their opening on the side, and the pockets could be reached through it.

I had been planning to make a pair of pockets for a while, when I found there is a pattern for them in Patterns of Fashion 1. Of course they are easy enough to improvise, but using a pattern is easier still! The pattern is for a very large pair, though, so instead of enlarging it using inch blocks, I just scanned the pattern and printed it so that it would fit an A4 paper. This made the finished pockets 28.5 cm high.

 Pockets were often richly embroidered, but I found it rather a shame to embroider something and then hide it underneath my clothes, so I opted for printed fabric instead; there are plenty of examples of printed cotton pockets from the period as well.

I based the binding with petersham ribbon on these pockets from the V&A.

Edwardian combinations

Pattern: from Vintage Lingerie by Jill Salen

Fabric: about 1.7 m fine white cotton, 1.4m wide

Haberdasheries: 10 buttons, 1.5 m 3 mm wide satin ribbon, 1.1 m lace, 2.6 m wide lace

The first step to making these combinations was enlarging the pattern. Most patterns in the book Vintage Lingerie use a 1:1 inch scale, but this one uses a 1:2 inch scale because it’s larger than most of the underwear in the book, such as bras and tap pants. I bought squared pattern paper with 1 cm blocks and thick lines each 5 cm specifically for enlarging patterns in books. I looked for paper with 1 inch blocks first, but strangely, it doesn’t seem to exist. Paper with 1 and 2 cm blocks is readily available from shops where I live, but I’ve never really seen the use of that, and nor would it have served my purpose now. But the 5 cm paper did, because each inch square in the book became one 5 cm square on paper, and that made drawing the pattern quite easy.

Once I had the pattern drawn and cut out, I made a mock-up of one half of the combinations. I expected them to be too small, since I’m quite tall for the period, and did want to make sure I would be able to sit in them. However, the size turned out fine, and the crotch hanging quite low enough, so the only things I changed about the pattern were the front darts, which were originally slightly higher than my waistline, and the scalloped edges at the neckline and on the leg ruffles, which I omitted because I didn’t especially like them, and they would have made it harder to neatly finish the garment.

The c. 1900 original this pattern was taken from, has an open crotch. However, I read in Costume In Detail by Nancy Bradfield that the open crotch style was rare after 1911, so, as I made this to wear underneath my WWI clothing, I decided to make it close with buttons all around the bottom.

I would not recommend this pattern to inexperienced seamstresses, as there are literally NO instructions as to how the garment should be made (apart from two specific projects in the back, none of the patterns have any instructions). On the one hand that was fine with me; this way, at least there weren’t any instructions that were hard for me to understand, as with my Simplicity projects. But some detail photographs, or a photo of what the back of the original looks like, at least, would have been much appreciated!

Nonetheless, I think the finished item is pretty awesome =). Here it is on me:

 

And here are the combinations worn with my longline corset:

 

Some close-ups of the lace on the leg ruffles, and how the corset suspenders go through the gaps in the ruffles:

I English seamed the back and side seams, and used self-fabric bias binding to neatly finish the lace attachments. Where fabric was gathered, I finished the inside seams with hand-sewn sort-of French seams:

Jeans

Pattern: Drafted based on existing jeans

Fabric: 1.5m dark blue stretch denim, 1.4 m wide; a little white cotton for the inside pockets

Haberdasheries: A metal button, an 8 cm metal zipper, 5 metal studs, normal yarn, topstitching yarn and serger yarn

Since my teens, I have only worn flared trousers, regardless of whether they’re in fashion or not, because I like them and find them the most flattering for my body. But the fact that they have been out of fashion for a while means that I find it very hard to find trousers that I like, and I generally wear them out before I’ve found a replacement. Two years ago I ran into a perfect pair of jeans that was on sale, too, and bought a second pair of the same jeans for when the first had become worn. I’m so glad I did, because that already happened after a little over one and a half years. Meanwhile, skinny jeans are still all I see in the shops (grumble… And most already look worn when you buy them, too! No thanks), so I made a pattern from my newest pair of jeans, and made my own!

It wasn’t always fun, and sometimes I definitely wished I could just buy jeans instead, but it was very interesting to have a closer look at this much-worn garment than I would have done otherwise, and to learn quite a bit about its construction! I always wondered why the outside leg seam on jeans isn’t topstitched, while the inside leg seam is usually an English seam. Well, that is because the inside leg seam is stitched first, and then, once the outside leg has been sewn closed as well, it is no longer possible to topstitch it because there’s too little space for the sewing machine! Except for a small distance at the top, which is English seamed to secure the pocket.

Besides this, I found that it is handy to sew the fabric into a cylinder before washing it for pre-shrinking, because otherwise it can get lighter spots from rubbing into the other laundry items. I always was jeans inside out to prevent this, but you can’t turn a piece of cloth inside out – unless you’ve sewn the sides together.

 

 

World War I QAIMNS Reserve nurse uniform

Pattern: Wingeo #411 1910-1915 skirt pattern, heavily modified

Fabric: grey cotton chambray, ca. 4 m white ‘nurses cotton’, grey wool, red wool, white linen

Haberdasheries: Six mother-of-pearl buttons, seven wire hooks, four mother-of-pearl collar studs

Two years ago Welmode and I made a Boer war nurse uniform, using a chambray quilt cover from H&M (and a straw hat from H&M as well!). Now, for the WWI commemoration events, we, along with a few other ladies, decided to make a QAIMNS Reserve nurse uniform as well, and amazingly, the same quilt covers were still available, so we all ordered those again!

This single quilt cover, when cut open, gave me 4.5 metres of 1.4 m wide fabric, which is pretty and lovely to work with. I’d find it rather boring as a quilt cover so I can’t think why it’s apparently so popular, but I do think it makes a nice dress!

To make the dress, we used the Wingeo Titanic skirt pattern, but altered it to suit our purpose. The pattern is for a hobble skirt, but nurse dresses were quite a bit wider and longer than those worn by fashionable ladies. So we made it wider by cutting the two back pieces as one, making it 1.5 times as wide in total, and gathering it at the top (leaving out the pleats). We also added some more space at the bottom of each pattern piece.

The bodice is improvised. It’s got a blind closure with four mother-of-pearl buttons; the collar closes with two wire hooks and thread loops, and the waistband and skirt close with five more hooks and thread loops (in all, the finished skirt has remarkably little to do with the Wingeo pattern :P).

Because the chambray is very thin, I lined the dress with thick ‘verpleegsterskatoen’ (‘nurses’ cotton’), which I thought nicely appropriate, treating outer fabric and lining as one when sewing everything together. When I bought the fabric I wasn’t sure how much of it I needed, so I got something like 4 metres, which turned out to be enough to make an apron as well.

The apron goes over the dress, and over that, a starched waistband closing with two mother-of-pearl buttons, and a wool tippet, which I lined with leftover chambray. On top of that come a starched collar and cuffs closed with collar studs. On our head, we wear a starched veil. A silver medal, circular with the letter ‘R’ in the centre, is worn in the right lapel of the tippet. This is not because I portray a decorated nurse, but it is standard issue, worn by all QAIMNS nurses. The R stands for ‘reserve’.

Have a look at the different layers of the uniform (this way I can show off the dress a bit, which I think is really pretty, but which no one ever gets to see because it’s almost entirely covered):

 

And the back of the uniform:

On the back of the tippet is a red wool rose. This looks strangely pretty and dainty for a uniform, but apparently it had a use – it makes leaning back in a chair uncomfortable, so it prevented nurses from slouching and from falling asleep!

With some of the other nurses in our group, Tommy’s Sisters 1914-1918:

  (Photos taken at Archeon by Hans Splinter.)

My starching failed here! When making the mixture for starching, one should first mix the starch powder with a little cold water, and then add boiling water, which cooks the starch and turns the mixture to a semi-transparent liquid, but strangely, the instructions on my package of Crackfree said to use warm water instead. My mixture looked like milk and didn’t work as it was supposed to.

Should you want to know more about nurses in World War I, I can recommend the book ‘The Roses of No Man’s Land’ by Lyn MacDonald. Very interesting and utterly readable, unlike some history books ;).

Light blue 1940s blouse

Pattern: Vintage Simplicity 2277, size 16

Fabric: Light blue poly cotton

Haberdasheries: Three buttons, a snap fastener

This is the blouse I almost finished during Sew For Victory. I used leftover fabric from my mother’s stash, and also the matching Gütermann yarn she still had, which was made in West-Germany! There wasn’t enough of it though, and when I bought an additional bobbin it turned out the colour number was still the same.

Here are all the pieces cut according to the pattern:

Usually I always make a mock-up when using a pattern for the first time, but since the Simplicity patterns I used before all fitted well, I didn’t make one for this blouse. I added three centimetres at the bottom to make it the same length as my other 1940s blouse, which became untucked before I lengthened it. I did notice the back seemed quite a bit wider than that of my other 1940s blouse, but I thought that would somehow make sense once the blouse was sewn up. It didn’t! I thought the blouse much too wide, even when trying to look upon it with 1940s eyes, and considering the fact that tops tended to be much wider then than they are now. The shoulder seam was also going to hang down my arm if I put the sleeves in without altering the cut.

So I took the back in by 8 cm, leaving the front as it was, and also made the shoulders narrower. I cut the sleeves wider, and made them puffy by adding a band, because I thought the suggested straight sleeves would have made the blouse a bit masculine.

I found the instructions difficult to follow, even with the added illustrations, but managed together with my boyfriend after explaining the sewing terms to him. I had to ignore my own ideas about how to sew this in order to understand what I had to do. Other than that, the blouse wasn’t hard to sew.