Wiener Werkstätte ensemble - pictures

My historical sewing has had to take a back seat for a while, as I just have too many other things to do at present. But a couple of weeks ago I had the rare treat of a free day, plus I was due a haircut, which meant that my totally non-historically-accurate fringe (bangs) was long enough to be tucked out of the way. So, I decided to do something that I’ve been meaning to do for ages, and photograph my complete Wiener Werkstätte ensemble; dress, hat and bag.

On the basis that ‘if a job’s worth doing . . . ‘, I also wore all the period underwear I’ve made; my Edwardian chemise and (adapted) drawers, petticoat slip, and 1911 corset (all of which make this the most hyperlinked blogpost ever). The last item wasn’t really necessary as the Wiener Werkstätte, like the Aesthetic and Rational Dress movements in the UK, advocated not wearing corsets. But I was determined to go the whole hog, and I suspect that at least some of the Werkstätte’s clientele would have been reluctant to abandon corset-wearing. To finish the whole look off, I wore my American Duchess Astorias, and Edwardian stockings.

The results were . . . OK, but I’m a long way off happy with them (I did have fun messing around with filters on the photos, though!). I see it more as a learning exercise, and it shows how much I’ve got to learn about historical costuming.

The original dress (image © MAK) and my version

None of what follows will be news to anyone who does a lot of period dressmaking, and it all pretty much echoes what costumers such as Jennifer Rosbrugh regularly say on their blogs, but in no particular order here is what I discovered from the exercise.

First up, I wish that I’d used better quality fabrics for the dress. Even though I have no reason to wear it, if you’re going to put that much time making something, it’s not worth skimping on materials. I was far happier with the feel of the underclothes, which were made in period-appropriate fabrics.

It's a bit too shiny!

Which brings me on to the discovery, made very early on, that the chemise pattern (Truly Victorian Edwardian Underwear pattern TVE02) was not designed for dresses with wide necklines. Even with the alterations I made to lower the neckline, it was well and truly visible. For the sake of the photos I replaced it with a modern vest top (see the ever-excellent Frock Flicks for why I had to replace it with something).

Unboned sections of a corset will go where they want to go, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In this case I had clearly made it too long, so the top inch or so folded over, and resisted all of my attempts to make it lie flat. Unpicking and reshaping the top edge is fiddly, but do-able. 

Despite all the arguments I found when I researched the subject, I remain unconvinced by the combination (no pun intended) of long straight skirts and closed-leg drawers. They must have been a nightmare to do up after a bathroom visit.

The hat brim is too floppy. Much as I like the scalloped edge it definitely needs stiffening, either wire or brim reed. I shall have to take it to one of the Hat Chat sessions at the Millinery Studio for remedial work; although getting it on the train may be interesting!

The brim edge is lovely, but will have to be covered up

By this stage, the brim was buckling a bit

Far and away the most successful element of the whole outfit was the petticoat slip, made from a pattern in Frances Grimble’s The Edwardian Modiste. This was drafted to my measurements using a scaling system, and fits beautifully - so much so that I even photographed it! I can see that if I want to make any more clothes from this period, the Edwardian Modiste patterns are the way to go.

Fringe looking dreadful, slip looking good

Although there is so much of this outfit that could have been done better, I'm working on the basis that all of the items I made were for challenges in the Historical Sew Monthly, and one of the mainstays of the HSM is the "pursuit of greater historical understanding". Simply knowing that it could have been done better, and having some idea of how, is a start.

I do look a bit too chirpy in the pictures as well. Most of the models in the Wiener Werkstätte archive photographs look rather gloomy - sometimes with good reason.

If I was wearing that flowery-swimming-cap hat, I'd look glum too! (image © MAK)

Clearly I need a small dog

For me the most interesting thing about the whole exercise was how totally alien the whole outfit felt to wear. I regularly 'dress like my grandma' using patterns from the late 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, but even when I go for the whole 'look' with period hair, stockings, hat etc, it still feels like only a very small variation from normal dress to me. This felt like 'dressing up'; definitely something from another world. But I’m aware that I was born in the mid-1960s, so would 1930s clothes feel like another world to a younger person? Or was there some fundamental change in clothing, say after the First World War?

That aside, I’ve left the most important thing I learned from this to the end. If you are wearing a long-line corset and shoes which fasten with buttons, there is a definite order in which these items need to be put on. Very definite.

Trying to use a button hook on shoes when you can't bend is doomed to failure!

Re-Do / Brown

The last remaining Historical Sew Monthly challenge for me to complete was September’s; Brown. For this I decided to make a bag to go with my Wiener Werkstätte dress and hat.

I turned to the Wiener Werkstätte archive for inspiration, but couldn’t find many images of complete ensembles with bags.

Mela Köhler illustration (with bag), 1911, image © MAK

Photographs which included bags weren’t especially inspiring, either.

Woman with fringed bag, image © MAK

I did find some images of bags in the archive. The styles all seemed to involve either long straps or drawstrings.

Photographs from the Wiener Werkstätte archive, all images © MAK

Widening my search, I found lots of Wiener Werkstätte beaded bags. Some were even brown! However most were from dates later than my dress and hat, and anyway a completely beaded bag was more work than I had time for.

Beaded bag with drawstring and beaded tassel, circa 1915

Beaded bag, 1910, image © Leah Gordon

I was still wondering what to do when I went on my London trip. But then, in one of the shops on Goldhawk Road, I found this brown silk with a metallic brocaded pattern, clearly inspired by Gustav Klimt. It was just the thing for a drawstring bag.

Tree of Life by Gustav Klimt, 1905

Brocaded silk, showing scale

I turned the fabric sideways, so that I could use the contrast selvedge as a feature. It was folded in half to form the top of the bag. I sewed on a length of cotton cord in loops, and covered this with blanket stitch in a metallic yarn to create the looped top common to many of the beaded bags I’d seen.

The loop top completed

The loosely-woven selvedge wasn’t strong enough to support the pull of the gathering, so I added a strip of cotton to reinforce it.

Showing the cotton stay inside

The drawstrings are two simple twisted cords of the same metallic yarn.

With the drawstrings added

The bag is lined with cotton from my stash. I gathered it at the bottom, and added a ‘tassel’ of a glass bead, and loops of rocaille beads in two colours, inspired by the 1910 bag above.

The bead tassel

The completed bag

The small print:
The Challenge: Brown
Fabric: Metallic brocaded silk, cotton for lining
Pattern: My own
Year: circa 1910
Notions: Metallic yarn, glass beads
How historically accurate is it? It’s a mix of lots of different bag styles rather than a copy of any one, so I'd say 50%
Hours to complete: About seven
First worn: Not yet
Total cost: Silk £5, yarn £3.50, everything else from stash, so £8.50

Heirlooms and Heritage

This month’s Historical Sew Monthly challenge is Heirlooms & Heritage, and you can see what the other challengers have made here. This challenge is all about honouring history and the future by celebrating our own personal heritage, or creating something that will be a heirloom for the next generation of sewers and makers.

The requirement is to:
“re-create a garment one of your ancestors wore or would have worn, or use an heirloom sewing supply to create a new heirloom to pass down to the next generations”,
but I’ve bent the rules slightly, and instead undertaken a task which I know my maternal grandmother did; trim a hat.

You can read my original post about the sewing gene in my family here but here's a brief recap of my grandmother’s story. Her mother died then she was 16, and four years later her father remarried. Her new stepmother owned a hat shop, and this photograph from 1915 shows the lady who would become her stepmother standing in the doorway of the shop. The ornate sign was painted by my great-grandfather who was a signwriter as well as a painter and decorator, and later a photographer.

My grandmother and her sister had to serve in the shop. On top of that, in the evenings they had to trim hats for customers – all for no wages! This photograph shows them standing outside the shop, now renamed, so it must be from 1921 or later.

My grandmother (on right) and great-aunt

So trimming a hat was a way to honour my grandmother’s hard, and unpaid, work.

I had decided a while ago that I wanted to make a hat to go with my Wiener Werkstätte dress. The online archive of the Museum of Applied Arts has plenty of examples: some more, shall we say, 'unusual' than others. I settled on this one.

Hat: straw, feathers, silk and silver, 1908-09, © MAK

Stripes, feather trims and metal ornaments all seemed to be common features on Wiener Werkstätte hats.

A selection of Wiener Werkstätte hats, © MAK

The hat itself came from British Home Stores. I forgot to photograph it in its original state, but here are two images from the BHS website.

The crown was far too high for what I wanted, but I took the hat along to a course at Hat Works (more on that soon) and Sue and Marie very kindly helped me to reblock it to a more suitable shape.

The reblocked hat

The hat’s stripes are not made from two different colours of straw, but from alternate bands of wide straw plait and black ribbon.

Close-up of the striped brim

The way it was stitched together looked fine on top, but on the underside both sets of stitching were visible; which meant that they would show when the brim was turned up at the side.

The underside of the brim in its original state . . .

The only solution was to unpick the stitching a bit at a time and redo it on my sewing machine with a cream thread on top and black thread in the bobbin. This took a long time, but was worth it.

. . . and after its makeover

Some of the feathers were bought, others I picked up in my garden. We have a lot of gulls in the area, and I think that the large brown feather on the left might be from a juvenile herring gull. The two black feathers on the right are probably from magpies, as they are slightly iridescent.

Feathers from my garden

The feathers were made into pads on felt backing. Originally I was just going to sew them into place, but found that it was much easier to (whisper it) glue them, and then sew over the top for extra security. Trying to do the whole thing on one pad proved far too awkward, so I made it in several sections and sewed them together.

Feather pads in various stages of completion

I couldn’t work out what was at the base of the feathers in the original hat photograph; it is too blurred. However several of the examples in the archive seem to have frilled trim on them, so I gathered up some lengths of folded tulle, and sewed then onto a further felt section.

The metal trim was recreated from materials not normally found in Historical Sew Monthly challenges.

Parts of a tomato purée tube and a fruit juice bottle

The interior of metal tubes of tomato purée is discoloured by the tomatoes over time; the longer it takes to use the purée, the darker the metal becomes. Because it is a soft metal, it is easy to emboss. I drew out my design, and then copied it onto tracing paper.

The design, and the inside of the tube

This was then turned over, and fastened to the wrong side of the metal with sticky tape.

Ready to start embossing

Then I went over the design with a biro, and filled out some sections with a ball-ended tool. Finally the piece was cut to size, and folded over a curved template made from part of the plastic fruit juice bottle.

The embossed strip

The completed trim

The rose was made using a technique I learned on the Hat Works course. In order to tie it in with both the dress and the metal trim on the side, I covered the centre section with some of the leftover organza.

Fabric rose

Once all the various parts were made, putting it together was easy. I attached the feathered section to the underside of the brim, then sewed the brim to the crown. Sewing the brim up at both sides, as in the original, looked ridiculous. Fortunately there were several hats in the archive with just one side swept up, so I left it at that. The rose was sewn onto the hatband, and the hat was complete.

Trying to recreate the original photograph

Front view

The small print:
The Challenge: Heirlooms & Heritage
Fabric: Tulle, organza and silk – all synthetic, felt
Pattern: From the Wiener Werkstätte photographic archive at MAK
Year: 1908-09
Notions: Purchased hat, feathers, fruit juice bottle, tomato purée tube
How historically accurate is it? Given the list of fabrics and notions, I’d say 40% would be generous
Hours to complete: I lost the will to count partway though restitching the hat brim
First worn: Not yet
Total cost: Hat £12.50, feathers £2.60, fabric for rose £5.51 (with a lot left) everything else from stash, kitchen, or garden, so £20.61

Re-do, part 2 - The Politics of Fashion

Woo-hoo, my entry for the Historical Sew Fortnightly Politics of Fashion challenge (due Sunday 15 June, so only a mere 24 weeks late) is finally finished!

Done at last!

When last seen, my Wiener Werkstätte inspired dress was complete apart from adding the rose decoration. So, once the roses were finally (and flatly) made a couple of weeks ago, it should have been quick and easy to finish the dress.

File under "Good in theory". The roses and leaves on the dress sleeves and the corners of the organza overskirt were easy to attach, but the posy at the bust just didn't want to play at all.

Part of the problem was not so much attaching the roses, as working out where to attach them. Trying to do this with the dress laid flat on the table didn't really give a clear idea of how the finished dress would look. Trying to do this with the dress on Nancy usually meant that the pinned-on roses had fallen off by the time I'd got the dress back on the table to sew it.

Then there was also the question of how the fasten the velvet band round the bust. The band is sewn on under the flowers on the left, and the original idea was that it would be left loose to wrap round the back, and close with a hook and bar concealed under some of the flowers on the right. However it tended to slip on the organza, which left the join of the bodice to the skirt visible at the back. In the end I sewed the top edge of the band to the bodice/skirt seam all the way round to the placket on the right.

The velvet band sewn in place round the back

The part of the band which was originally going to be attached to the dress does not have velvet over it, it is just petersham ribbon. I sewed this in place with a row of stitches to mark the centre, then added one large rose and a leaf. Then I sewed another large rose and a leaf to the other end of the band. The third large rose was attached to the dress, above the band, A medium rose was added below this one. When I tried fastening the band, some of the petersham was visible, so I covered it with a scrap of green satin.

The trimming in progress, with the band unfastened

Next three smaller roses were attached to the dress on the left of the posy, while on the right only two were attached, with the third one was added to the loose end of the band. Finally leaves were added round the edges, with two filling the gap in the centre.

The dress fastened, with not a hook or bar in sight

Actually getting the hooks and bars fastened when the dress is on is quite tricky under all those flowers, but it works, and I think it is quite an accurate reflection of the fiendishly complicated fastenings of the period.

So here is the finished dress shown beside its inspiration. For some reason the bodice looks quite a bit longer on my version. Not sure how this happened, as I can confirm that the band on mine is directly below my bust (making it even harder when trying to find the hooks and bars to close the dress!). Still, I'm really pleased with the end result.

The original, and my interpretation

Re-do, part 1 (probably of several) - roses

The current Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge is "Re-do", defined as:
"Pick any previous challenge and re-do it (or do it for the first time). It could be one that you didn’t finish, one that you wish you’d had more time for, or any time for, or one where you loved the theme so much you want to do it again."

Well, it's been a while since I've done much Historical Sew Fortnightly sewing, but this challenge throws up so many opportunities that the main problem is, where to start?

Under "one that you didn't finish" comes my Politics of Fashion Wiener Werkstätte dress and, specifically, the roses.

The first one turned out really well; exactly what I wanted.

It all started so well . . .

Unfortunately things went downhill from there! I just couldn't get my subsequent attempts to produce the flat flowers that I needed for the dress. Eventually I gave up in disgust.

The re-do challenge has inspired me to have another go. I unpicked the later roses and tried again. It took a couple of attempts, but eventually I produced the other five roses I needed for the sleeves and the dress corners.

The smaller roses on the bodice are made from narrower tubes of a different satin, and also turned out nice and flat.

The bodice decoration - apologies for the grainy image

However despite my best efforts and my new-found skills in rose flatness, the large bodice roses turned out very flouffy indeed.

Flat rose and flouffy rose

So I decided to cheat. I cut out small circles from a scrap of pelmet vilene left over from making last year's straw bag, stitched a double thickness thread into the centre back of the rose, pulled the ends of the thread through the vilene disk, and tied them in a knot.

Rose flattening - after and before

So now I have a selection of roses, in different sizes and colours.

Finished roses

When I checked through the previous posts about this project, I realised that I hadn't explained how the leaves were made. I hadn't taken any 'in progress' photos either (bad blogger!), so I part unpicked a leaf in order to explain now. Each leaf is made from half a circle of green satin. The half circle is folded to form a cone, then the raw straight edge is turned under and slip-stitched in place. Finally the curved edge is gathered through the double thickness, and the gathering pulled tight to form the leaf.

Leaf in progress and completed

Now all I need to do is assemble the leaves and flowers on the dress.