Women’s Land Army hat

Haberdasheries: 80 cm (part) cotton 1” wide grosgrain ribbon, WLA badge

Oh dear, the last time I posted was april! It probably seems like I didn’t do anything for several months, but I did sew – mainly alterations and other things that weren’t really blog-worthy though.

But here’s something I’ve made that I do think is worth posting: a World War 2 Women’s Land Army (WLA) hat. Obviously I didn’t make this as a standalone item, but am working on a complete WLA uniform. Most of which I, happily, have been able to buy instead of sew! The only thing I’m missing is the sweater, which is rather hard to come by in wool.

You can find photos of the WLA on my WLA Pinterest page.

I bought the 100% wool brown hat on sale at H&M. Here’s how it looked before I customised it:

The main example I used to base my hat on, was this one from the Imperial War Museum:

Hat: Women’s Land Army © IWM (UNI 73)

As you can see, the hat has a very particular shape. I expected it would be no problem to permanently reshape my hat, simply by wetting it, shaping it and letting it dry. But what was I going to use as a mould? Eventually I found several items that had the right size to form the mould:

And once I had found those, it was indeed very easy to shape the hat. After the hat had dried (which took rather a long time!), I cut about 4 cm from the brim. I sewed on an at least part cotton beige grosgrain ribbon (it was difficult to source the right colour AND width, but eventually I found the right ribbon on Etsy), and pinned on the reproduction WLA badge. And here’s the result!

 

I did a quick, untidy, sort of ‘40s updo to model the hat. Naturally I’ll post photos of the entire uniform once I’ve worn it, but I don’t know when that will be!

Striped bow shirt

Pattern & fabric: I used a store-bought shirt

Haberdasheries: 14 black grosgrain ribbon bows

A while ago I saw this black and white striped shirt, which was based on this insanely overpriced design. I love stripes, and wear them a lot, and I’ve got a blue shirt with bows at the neckline that I’ve worn so much it’s almost threadbare. So I thought a stripey shirt WITH bows would be a very nice thing to have!

I had trouble finding the right width black grosgrain ribbon in haberdashery shops, so I wanted to order it online, but when I searched for it, I found that there are actually premade grosgrain bows available! Those would save me the trouble of having to make lots of neat-looking bows, so of course I went for them instead. Then all I had to so was sew them onto the shirt I already had, and that was easy peasy!

The shirt I used is by Only and cost me a whopping €7,48 on sale. I actually used it back to front, as for some reason the back was lower. The bows cost 20 cents each, so that makes the grand total for this project €10,28. So even €3 cheaper than the Glamorous Housewife’s version ;).

Ballerina shoes

Haberdasheries: 3 m 2,5 cm wide black satin ribbon

I don’t know what’s happened to my shoe size. For years, I wore size 38 shoes. And then, all of a sudden, all my size 38 shoes (which weren’t actually that many, I’m not much of a shoe person) were too small! But size 39 shoes are too big. That is, I’ve got trouble keeping pumps and ballerinas on my feet. This means I’m probably a size 38,5 now, but half sizes are hard to come by.

Now, I happen to rather like ballet (the clothes – both on and off stage*, the appearance of effortlessness, the discipline, male dancers’ bodies, Ballet Beautiful, &c), and thought it would be nice to add ties to ballet flats, in a similar manner to those attached to pointe shoes. This is a great solution, as it also keeps slightly too large shoes on my feet! And I think it also makes my ankles look a bit less tiny.

Most people seem to glue the ties to the shoes, but as my shoes (Kiomi nero ballerinas) have got a line of stitching, I stitched through that, and the ties, by hand to secure them.

* Except for those man tights, of course. Not one of Rudolf Nureyev’s best ideas! :P