Tricks of memory

It's been one of those weeks where I've done a lot on various things, but not enough on any one thing to be worth a blog post. Instead, I'm raiding the archives and looking at a 40-year-old copy of Vogue Patterns. I've chosen 1984 because last week I was at an event related to the Liverpool Waterfront Transformation Project, and talking to someone about when I first came to the city in the early eighties - so the decade was on my mind. Although looking at some of the images now, they seem more alien to me than many of the illustrations in 1940s-50s issues. Even though I can remember many of the styles, it feels odd that I actually lived through that period.

Autumn 1984

In November 1984 I was a second year geography student, and most definitely not using Vogue patterns as they were well outside my budget. (For example, a Style blouse pattern from that year cost £2.25, while a Vogue blouse pattern cost £4.00.)

One thing which immediately struck me was that whereas in the 1950s and 1960s there were a lot of large advertisements for fabric manufacturers, complete with a list of stockists (usually department stores), by this time most of the advertising was for individual fabric shops.

Two of the fabric shop adverts

There are a couple of features on fabric brands: the much missed (by me at least) Viyella, and John Kaldor which, 40 years later, is still producing top quality fabrics.

Sadly not forever

I never knew the John Kaldor was originally an Australian firm

By 1984, Vogue patterns were clearly into the 'dress like a rectangle' years.

Why?

At least I like the shoes

The 'long skirt and flat shoes' combo was popular, too. I do remember dressing like this - at 1.63m/5'4" I must have looked swamped in fabric!

Worryingly familiar

I'm rather taken with the jumper in this illustration; I might need to look out for the issue of Vogue Knitting which contains it (because obviously, I am in desperate need of another knitting project!).

Promising

This jumper however I can definitely live without!

Bright and batwing and mohair oh my!

Skirts may have been long, but apparently trousers were not.

For that 'shrunk in the wash' look

After all these up-to-the-minute styles, it's rather a shock to turn a page and come across these.

Possibly aimed at older readers?

This issue also features Vogue's foray into patterns for interior décor. They are, to put it politely, not to my taste.

Frilled to bits

Readers were advised to "watch for more patterns in this series", which to me sounds more of a threat than an enticement! Certainly I won’t be rushing to hunt through later pattern books for them, although I do wonder how long this line lasted.

Something different

I have started work on a new dress. Hardly out of the ordinary for me, but there are a couple of things which make this one a little unusual. First, it's black. The only completed plain black item ever to appear on this blog is a skirt which didn't even get its own post, and my previous attempt to make a black dress, Butterick 7598, has languished in the UFO pile for ages. But suddenly, I felt the urge to make a new black dress after over a decade of not wearing the colour. Second, possibly inspired by the Bedazzled exhibition, I decided to include some sort of embellished element.

I couldn't find any fabric I liked on the roll in my local fabric shop, but then I spotted this remnant. It's embossed in a pattern of circles, and has a very slight sheen. Unfortunately, the pattern is not on the crosswise grain (a common issue with remnants, I find), so I am cutting out in line with the circles and hoping for the best.

The fabric with the grain aligned to my cutting board

The obvious thing with remnants is that you have to work with what you've got, and in this case, I don't have a lot. My first idea was to make another Butterick 6866 view B, but that skirt takes a lot of fabric.

I have less than 3m of fabric . . .

. . . and this pattern needs far more than that

Instead, I have just cut out the bodice pieces for now, excluding the facings as I'm going to line the dress. Once the bodice is made up, I will find a suitable skirt pattern for the fabric I have left.

For the embellishment, I'm using black sequins in satin and shiny finishes. So far, I've made buttons for the bodice using square sequins sewn in a chequerboard effect and wrapped over a base of scrap perspex.

I'm on a bit of a fancy button roll!

The plan is to make the lower curved section out of fabric the wrong side up and covered with round sequins. Unfortunately, it's a long time since I have worked with sequins, and I had forgotten just how long it takes!

Thread-traced pattern piece prepped for embellishing

My (limited) progress so far

Hopefully I will get faster as I get more practice.

New Look 6000, again

Finally, my sewjo appears to be making a cautious but welcome return. I've made a new dress - entirely unplanned and, for once, not in a vintage style!

It's a pattern from the 21st century!

When I went to the preview of the Bedazzled exhibition the other week, guests were encouraged to wear their most sparkly outfits. Unfortunately for me, the most/only sparkly thing in my wardrobe was the purple version of New Look 6000 view C with its beaded buttons.

The sum total of bling in my wardrobe

Given that I made it back in July 2012, I wasn't sure if I would still be able to get into it! To my amazement, I could, and wearing it again reminded me just how much I liked it. So much so that I decided on a whim to make a new version, using a stashed length of blue/grey fabric. It is suiting weight, slightly stretchy, and was part of a bundle of sewing stuff that I had bought in a charity shop because I wanted something else in the bundle.

New dress!

There isn't really a lot to say about the construction. I made the sleeves a little longer and omitted the cuffs as they are a nice feature, but bulky. Something which can't be worn with a jacket or cardi over the top was fine when I worked in a warm office - nowadays, not so much! I had also forgotten just how much New Look patterns run short on me; even though I had lengthened the skirt, it still needed a seam binding finish in order to make the hem as tiny as possible. Finally, I definitely need to learn how to do a full bust adjustment on a sheath dress, as it's undoubtedly snug in that area. Overall though, I'm happy.

#sewnshownseated

I'm particularly pleased with the button on the collar. I wanted to do some sort of beading again, but couldn't think what. Then I remembered this hair ornament which Dante Gabriel Rosetti used in several of his paintings.

Clockwise from top left, details from: Monna Vanna, The Beloved, A Christmas Carol, Mariana, The Bower Meadow

I drew a spiral freehand on some tearaway stabiliser (accidentally in the opposite direction to the original!), and sandwiched the fabric between this and a scrap of cotton to stop it from pulling out of shape. I sewed down a small cabochon at the centre, then couched a string of silver beads around this and along the spiral, and removed the stabiliser. Finally, I did single stitches in silver thread between the rows of beads, and arranged the end result over a large self-cover button. Because the fabric underneath blends into the dress, I feel that it gives a similar effect to the Rosetti ornament.

Close-up of the button

Finally, this unplanned project is another reduction on the Stashometer.

I'm amazed that I've used that much, tbh

It may only be a couple of metres, but with less than two months to go to the end of the year, I'll take any win I can get!

Bedazzled

Bedazzled, the new exhibition at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, looks at the lasting appeal of beaded and sequinned dresses through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Old and new(ish) on display together

Some of the pieces were previously in the Shimmer and Shine exhibition at the Walker, but here they are displayed alongside newer additions to NML's costume archive; items originally owned by local businesswoman Leila Potter. Many of these are from the 1980s and 1990s, but some are almost contemporary.

Sequinned evening coat, 2021-22

The great joy for me is that none of the garments are behind glass, so it is possible to see (and photograph) them without reflections. This 1930 cape, for example, was impossible to study properly in Shimmer and Shine but here it is able to, well, shine.

Sequinned cape and velvet dress

Detail

These two 1920s dresses are displayed with a beaded dress hemline section which was sold ready to be made up into a dress, but never used.

Complete dresses, and a piece for a dressmaker

Early and late twentieth century pieces are displayed side by side.

1980s and 1920s

The notes for the c1925 evening dress on the left point out that the all-over design of glass beads would make it both very heavy and difficult to sit down in. The 1990-2000 jacket on the right, while less densely decorated, was doubtless more comfortable to wear.

Opulence v comfort

Unlike me, Mrs Potter clearly loved pink. Despite not liking the colour, I did admire the way the beading on this dress used large pearls to create a faux collar.

There is no separate collar on this dress

I did, however, struggle to find anything to admire in the jacket on the right. It's just not my taste at all. On the other hand, I was very impressed with whoever in NML's exhibitions team had the job of hanging all the paillettes to make the sparkly backdrops - it must have taken forever!

I did like the jacket on the left

The exhibition also includes information on how beaded clothes are made, and a small display of beaded bags and shoes.

I would love a pair of shoes with heels like these

Or any of these heels, for that matter

Going round the exhibition today I encountered several ladies, all about a decade older than me, who felt that the 1980s and later pieces should not be in a museum exhibition because they were not "old". Which was an interesting reaction. Yes, we could all remember when these clothes were the latest fashion, but plenty of other visitors could not. And surely that's the point of museums - to offer something of interest to as wide a range of people as possible?

Be dazzled at the Lady Lever

If you would like to visit and decide for yourself, Bedazzled runs until 26 January 2025.

Lothian update

Even though there is only a tiny bit left to do, my skirt still isn't finished - for some reason it takes very little for my sewjo to go into hiding at present. I have been knitting, though, and have got far enough with my Lothian shawl to merit a progress report.

The first part is just rows of garter stitch with a yarn over stitch increase at each end of the row. I knitted it on straight needles for as long as I could, but at 300 stitches I had to swap to a circular needle.

No more stitches could be fitted on the needle!

For this section, it is the yarn which provides the effect. I love the way that the occasional copper stitch appears amid the yellows and greys.

Pop!

As I reached the point where the first set of five contrast 'routes' is added, I had to think about the order in which I wanted to use the colours. Along with the main yarn, I had bought a pack of four Easyknits mini skeins from Kathy's Knits in Edinburgh, and also a single skein of Ducky Darlings 4ply at the pop-up wool show in Port Sunlight. Initially I was going to use the variegated skeins in colour order, with the plain yarn in the centre.

Plan A

This didn't feel as though it provided a lot of contrast between the routes, however. To mix things up a bit, I bought a skein of yellow from Strictly Hand Dyed, and experimented with the order of the colours until I was happy.

The final arrangement

And then, it was time to knit the first route!

We have contrast

Obviously, there is always a bit of a risk with variegated yarns, and the dark grey stitch in the 'terminus' rather dents the shape. But I don't think that will matter so much once I have knitted more of the design.

The 'terminus', with a dent at the top

Right now, it doesn't look that big. But there are another 14 colour changes to add, plus I'm aware of how much my Dahlia shawl grew when it was blocked.

141 rows knitted

Of course, now that I’m on to the colours section I’m keen to do more. It may be a while before that skirt gets hemmed!

Short and sweet

Just a brief post this week, to demonstrate that despite decades of dressmaking experience I am still 1) capable of doing something really dumb and 2) bad at estimating.

Wearing my official 'going for a jab' outfit* with my Express Line cardigan last week prompted me to think that I could do with a few more separates. In my stash I have a few skirt lengths which were part of a lot of sewing stuff which I bought at auction, so I decided to make one of them up. It's a lovely vintage fabric, pure wool I think, in a brown and black check.

The skirt fabric

I used my self-drafted straight skirt pattern. I had used this pattern for my black skirt, which is now a little snug, so when cutting out I added some extra width to make the new skirt looser. Then, in what can only be described as a brain fart**, when sewing the pieces together I narrowed the seam allowances to make the new skirt looser. It was only when I tried on what was, by then, a remarkably roomy skirt that I realised what I'd done!

Fortunately I had made the skirt with an internal curved petersham waistband, not a sewn on waistband. Also, I hadn't added the lining by the time the Awful Truth dawned, so it was reasonably straightforward to unpick the petersham and redo the side seams of both the skirt and the lining. Despite this extra work I still thought, last night, that today I could finish the skirt and take photos before it got too dark to do the latter.

Reader, I could not. Somehow I always forget just how slowly I sew. So the big reveal of a not-very-exciting project will have to wait until next week!


* - I went for my covid and flu boosters this week, and wore it again. The combination of skirt, sleeveless top, and cardigan is perfect for the job.

** - Having done some research on brain farts before using the term (academic habits die hard!), I’m slightly mollified to discover that I may have made this error because of my decades of dressmaking experience rather than despite them.

Express Line speeds to the finish

Little more than three weeks after I started it, I completed my Express Line cardigan - the joys of working with super chunky yarn!

All done!

Although the pattern described as relaxed fit in the body, I feel that mine came out as quite close-fitting. It's not a problem, I'm perfectly happy with it, but I might make the next size up if I want one with a boxier fit.

The back view shows off the broken rib pattern

Top-down knits are great for anyone like me, who has to shorten bodices. I knitted this slightly longer than my standard schematic-minus-two-inches, but it still came out a little shorter than I wanted, possibly due to the tighter fit. So I added two more rows to the ribbing, which also gives it that deep vintage welt.

Worn with my covid jab top and black skirt

With hindsight, I think that the full-length sleeves could probably have accommodated another two rows. The thing with super chunky yarn is that two rows equals quite a lot of length, and I didn't want them to end up too long, so erred on the side of caution. Something else to remember if I make another one - of which, more later!

Anyone who reads this blog regularly (thank you!) will know that I normally suffer agonies of indecision over button choices. Not this time. I found the perfect vintage buttons in my button box; the right size, look and colour and, crucially, the right number!

The perfect buttons do exist after all!

Because there isn't a huge amount of negative ease in the design, the button bands didn't need to be strengthened with petersham. However, I did line them with some wide satin ribbon, just because I feel it's a nice touch.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the end result, and even ventured out to take photos somewhere other than my back yard! I'm really self-conscious about taking photos with other people around but Port Sunlight, where my friend F now lives, is both picturesque and quiet, so seemed a good place to start. Most of the time I was trying to be sensible, but I couldn't resist attempting one 1950s knitting pattern cover shot.

Getting in touch with my inner knitting pattern model

It turns out I'm not the only person who likes this cardigan. I took it over to show my mum, and she absolutely loved it - so much so that she's asked for one for Christmas! I really did not see that one coming; the idea that I would ever get good enough at knitting for someone to ask me to make them something is mind-boggling. However, Mum is the only person from whom I would actually take requests, and I'm very happy to do so.