Of flat chests, fringe and fabric paint (again)

It’s a rare day at Tulip Mansions when I find myself wishing that my chest was even flatter than it already is, but that's the effect that 1920s fashions have on you. The 1923-5 evening dress on which I’m basing my dress really is a straight- up-and-down shift with absolutely no darts or shaping. In fact in the notes accompanying the pattern, Janet Arnold mentions that inside there is a small label with the word “devant”, as without this it would be very hard to tell the front from the back.

Really such a dress should be worn over a long corselet such as this one.

1920s corselet

There is a pattern for just such a garment in “Corsets and Crinolines”, and it has been made up to great effect by Jo, of Bridges on the Body. I tried various other options for flattening things out a bit, but wasn’t really happy with any of them. So, it will just have to be worn over normal, twenty-first century underclothes.

I made the first toile of the top part of the dress only, as I suspected (rightly) that the shoulder straps would be too far apart. A pleat down the centre front and back fixed the problem, and I used the new dimensions to make a second, full length toile.

The final toile

I eventually decided to make the dress with the satin crepe fabric satin side out, and when I was checking some of the details in “Patterns of Fashion”, I noticed that the original dress is made from crepe-backed satin. Sticking with the period theme, I constructed the dress with French seams, rather than using my overlocker.

As well as making up the basic dress, I’ve been working on the beaded fringe for the sides. I’m making the fringe on lengths of closely woven cotton tape rather than directly onto the dress, both to give it more stability and for ease of working. The first few strands took forever, particularly as I struggled to get the strands the same length, but I’ve got a lot faster now.

Mid gold and dark gold fringe

The top, pale gold, row of fringe will be trickier, as it will have a curved top edge but a straight bottom edge. I haven’t quite decided how to do this, but I’ve got a few ideas.

One thing which I have decided upon (finally) is which fabric paints to use. The first ones I tried were Pebeo Setasilk paints. In silk painting you flood colour into an area marked off with outliner. Therefore the paints are very thin and runny, so don’t stiffen the fabric, but you do need a good outliner technique (which I clearly didn’t have).

Next I tried Pebeo Setacolour and Textil L&B paints. Both of these were much thicker, and could be painted directly onto the fabric following an outline drawn in pencil. The colours didn’t spread, but the Textil paint in particular left the fabric very stiff.

I wasn’t sure what to do, but when I was in my local fabric shop I noticed that they sold yet another brand, Dylon. Initially I just bought one colour, to try it out, and soon realised that I’d found the perfect paint. It spreads very little (more on that later) and doesn’t stiffen the fabric much. Best of all, it needs very little ironing to set the colour, so I don’t have to worry about damaging my fabric.

I decided to go for my original, Egyptian-inspired palette, stretched my fabric over a large frame, and drew out eight of the dress panels. Because I’m painting on satin, the horizontal edges of shapes can end up a tiny bit fuzzy; the paint travels up the long floated warp threads. Most of this will be covered by the beading. However on the turquoise bars on the two panels at the bottom left I decided to play safe, and use outliner. Rather than pipe it from a bottle I painted it on using a fine brush, taking care to keep on or just outside the pencil line. The end result was perfect, crisp shapes.

Six panels completed, two just started

A new skirt for L’s dress

A few weeks ago I was asked by L if I could have a look at a dance dress for her. The dress was from Egypt and was made from orange lycra, with very small gold dots printed on it to give a shimmering effect. Unfortunately for some reason the gold had come off from a large patch in the centre of the skirt front, and it was very noticeable.

The mark on the skirt

The dress was L's first professional costume, and she so she wanted to keep it if at all possible, but it was unwearable in that state.

The skirt had originally been straight, with a slit up the left front. When I first saw the dress, most of skirt part had been cut off with a view to attaching a new skirt of some sort. A small amount of the slit still remained.

The cut-down dress

It seemed to me that the best thing would be to attach a circle skirt in a light, floaty fabric. My first thought was to use cationic chiffon, which is a very fine, almost sheer, silky fabric, usually woven in two colours to give a shot effect. However it is so fine that there would definitely need to be another layer of fabric underneath.

Shot chiffon with a dark red warp and a yellow weft

In my stash I had some fine orange georgette with a slight crinkle. (Stash reduction, yeah!) The colour was far too bright on its own, but I took it and the dress to one of my local fabric shops, and tried layering it with different chiffons until I got a good match.

The georgette and the chiffon, showing the different colour effects

I made the skirt as a basic circle, open at the front seam and going up into the remainder of the slit, which I opened on both sides. L felt that the slit in the dress part was a little too wide, so I filled in the top part with some more of the two fabrics. I had had to remove one of the bead tassels when I sewed the skirt on, so I re-attached this at the top of the slit.

Detail of the top of the slit

The two circles were hand hemmed, and should move beautifully when the dress is worn. Finally I used the beads which had trimmed the slit of the original dress to finish off the join between the skirt and the original dress.

The completed dress

Decisions, decisions

I've been doing various experiments this week, most of which have left me with more questions than answers.

First up was filling in the design I marked with outliner last week. This didn't leave any questions. The thickness and general unevenness of my outlining is painfully obvious.

The painted sample

It's clear that I'm going to have to use a finer nib when applying the outliner, or at the very least, apply it to the outer edge of the area I want to paint. Even though applying beads along the original pencil lines fills some of the void, it's not enough.

Beading doesn't hide the gaps

The sample also made me wonder about my colour choices. Although the red, blue and green are very appropriate for an Egyptian design, I wonder if they are too bold against the cream fabric and the gold beads.

Inspired by the long fringing on the pink dress in the Palazzo Mocenigo, I want to use several shades of gold beading on the dress, and this also affects the palette I might use.

Light, medium and dark gold beads

Another problem I'd discovered was that the hot iron needed to set the fabric paints has caused the fabric to pucker slightly, possibly due to the stretch element in the thread. So, I did samples of some of the fabric paints I have, and experimented with various iron temperatures to find a compromise between saving the fabric and setting the colour.

First colour sample

I have always intended to use the satin crepe fabric matte side up, but also experimented with painting the fabric on both the satin and the crepe side, to see what effect was achieved by the paint soaking through from the 'wrong' side. Unfortunately, the colours look so lustrous on the shiny side that I'm now wondering whether to risk another tussle with satin, and make the dress that side out instead.

Satin or matte?

Still pondering possible colour schemes, I went through my bookcase looking for ideas. In Art Deco Fashion I found this jacket covered in Egyptian motifs. This in turn led to experiments with a few more fabric paints, some of which are a thicker texture, so may not require outlining. (The colour at the bottom left should have been metallic, but has now clearly separated beyond repair.)

Purples and another blue, full strength and diluted

All in all, I'm now spoiled for choice.

1920s dress - skirt patterns

I’ve been unwell this week, and amid all the generally feeling under par, I had to admit that the project I was working on just wasn’t going to come off. So I sulked for a bit, then put it away and set about concentrating on my 1920s dress.

A quick sketch of would-be pattern pieces convinced me that a single tier of long panels, like those on the Met’s Poiret dress, was not what I wanted.

Paul Poiret dress with long panels over the skirt

Instead I’m going for two tiers of shorter panels. The effect should be rather like the Philadelphia Museum’s dress, except that both tiers of panels will hang loose from the dress, whereas on this dress the top ‘panels’ are part of the dress.

Dress with two rows of panels

Having decided on the panel dimensions, I needed something to fill them with. As I don’t have the time or inclination for a lot of beading, this will involve painting the designs onto the panels with fabric paints. My first idea was to use Dover Publications’ “Ancient Egyptian Cut and Use Stencils”, but although I found some suitable images, the detail was too fine for what I wanted.

Then I remembered two books I have by the quilter Barbara Chainey; “Egyptian Treasure” and “Inspired by Egypt“. These contain patterns based on examples from the Tentmakers of Cairo, and turned out to be perfect for what I wanted.

I drew out some designs, and then coloured them in to get a better idea of the effect.

My original designs

Then I tried arranging them in the pattern I had in mind for the skirt.

The proposed layout on the skirt

I was reasonably happy with this, but the stems on centre panel at the top looked too straight compared to the more sinuous designs of the other panels, so I added a couple of buds on curved stems.

The first panel redrawn with more curly bits

Then I drew out the designs again, making a few tweaks where I felt that lines were too close together, and went over the lines in black pen to make them clearer.

Outlines only

Next it was time to start a trial piece. I’m using a fine ivory satin crepe for the dress and the panels, crepe side out. I cut a piece and pinned it over a wood frame, holding it in place with three-pronged drawing pins. The fabric has a slight stretch in it, so I will have to bear this in mind when I come to do the real pieces, to ensure that they are not distorted.

I laid the frame over the black line drawing, face down, and traced the designs onto the wrong side of the fabric. Fortunately all of the motifs are symmetrical, so tracing onto the wrong side doesn’t matter. Then I turned the frame right side up, and went over the faint pencil lines with outliner.

Outliner, also called gutta, is a gel-like substance. It soaks into the fabric and forms a barrier which the fabric paint can’t cross, so you get a clearly defined shape. Outliner can be clear or coloured (usually gold or black), and is applied through a nozzle, like icing a cake. Whereas coloured outliners remain part of the finished design, clear outliner washes out. I used clear outliner to mark the shapes in the design. Although it looks reasonably neat in the picture, my lines vary in width quite a lot, with blobs at the ends of lines. Just what effect this will have will only become obvious when I add the fabric paint.

Outliner drying on the fabric

But that's the next stage.

1920s dresses

I’m busy sewing at present, but what I’m working on may or may not come off, so I don’t want to post about it until I’m sure. So instead I’m posting about my next project, which is a 1920s style dress. This is currently at the ‘research’ stage, which gives me the perfect excuse to drool over lots of gorgeous dresses, and share the images here!

When I say ‘1920s style’ I don’t mean full-skirted dresses like this.

1925 Callot Soeurs dress

I mean the archetypal, straight-up-and-down, beaded ‘flapper’ dress.

Front, side and back views of 1928 silver beaded dress, Alexandre Vassiliev collection

This is beautiful, but it would be impossible for me to replicate all the sequins and beading. Also, I want something which has movement when I dance in it.

1920s fringed and beaded dresses, Alexandre Vassiliev collection

The pink dress has the most amazing long beaded fringe down the front, with three different shades of pink beads, going from pale to dark.

Long, shaded fringing

It was my birthday recently, and I was lucky enough to get the book “Fashion” from my mum and dad. Covering 3,000 years of fashion history, this is definitely a ‘tome’; it is massive, and heavy, and absolutely stuffed with illustrations. Happily for this particular project, it has a whole section on 1920s dresses, including the 1925 Edward Molyneux “Reptile” dress, and a detailed double-page spread of a 1925-28 Reville and Rossiter fringed and tasselled dance dress.

"Reptile" dress

Unfortunately, however beautiful long stands of beading look on a dance dress, they can easily get tangled: I once spent the better part of an entire dance show backstage, trying to untangle another dancer’s long-fringed beaded hip belt! So instead of fringing, I’m looking for something which moves, but won’t get tangled, like this.

Voisin dress, c1925, V&A

The two dresses below have a similar outline to them, with rows of beaded motifs hanging separately from the main dress, and this is the look I’ve decided to go for.

1925 beaded dress, Philadelphia Museum

1920s Paul Poiret dress, Metropolitan Museum of Art

I’ll base the pattern on the 1925 dress in Janet Arnold’s “Patterns of Fashion: Volume 2”, not that there is a lot of complicated pattern drafting involved.

Finally, I also want an Egyptian theme for the dress, partly to go with my Assuit shawl. There was a craze for Egyptian-inspired designs after discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, so this is in keeping with the period.

Left-handed sewing

Some months ago at a vintage fair I came across a book from the 1950s or 1960s. I can't remember the title, but it was something to do with left-handed sewing. As I'm left-handed, I had to have a look.

It turned out to be a guide for home economics teachers, on how to teach left-handed children to sew. The introduction began with the words,
"With the correct tuition, there is no reason why the left-handed child cannot learn to sew as well as her right-handed classmates."

Humph! The cheek of it. I didn't buy the book.

Most of my sewing tuition came from my (right-handed) mum, and I don't remember having any problems swapping over what she taught me to the other hand. In fact, the only things which I can really recall as troubling me were certain embroidery stitches, especially French knots and bullion knots, which just came out as flat stitches (more on this later).

It's just as well that I was able to manage, as most sewing books give very little thought to left-handers, beyond the 'hold a mirror next to page' approach. Really? By the time I've got the book in one hand and a mirror in the other how, exactly, am I going to hold fabric and a needle?

Some years ago Mr Tulip spotted Sally Cowan's Left-Handed Sewing in a bookshop, and bought it for me. Although only a slim volume, it contains instructions and diagrams for a number of hand sewing stitches, plus other useful information. For example, I had never noticed that the cutting layout diagrams on commercial patterns are laid out with the assumption that you will be pinning from right to left, so the pieces tend to have the wider end to the right and the narrower end to the left.

There seems to be some debate over whether sewing machines are left or right-handed. One theory is that as both Elias Howe and Isaac Singer  (the inventors of the sewing machine) were left-handed, they designed their machines to use their less dominant right hand to crank the machine while the left hand did the fine dexterous work. Other people claim that machines were designed so that the stronger, right hand did the hard work of cranking. I've no idea which is correct, but I can't imagine using a machine with the balance wheel on the left and the needle on the right. A few early machines for specialist work such as glove-making were made this way, and to me they just look so, so wrong.

'Left-handed' sewing machine.Scary!

The one thing which left-handers really do need for anything which involves cutting cloth is a proper pair of scissors. Most left-handed scissors have the blades arranged the same way or ordinary scissors, but with the handles moulded to be held in the left hand.

Left-handed scissors (bottom) with blades aligned the same way as ordinary household scissors, and snips

Most people will find these scissors to be perfectly effective, and they have the advantage that they can be sharpened using a normal scissor sharpener. However the pressure of your hand means that the blades will be at a very slight angle to one another. True left-handed scissors have the blades transposed, like these ones from Morplan.

True left-handed scissors (bottom)

In the long run these are more comfortable to use. However you do have to learn how to use them, as the transposed blades mean that the cutting edge is several millimetres away from where you expect it to be. Practise first on some scrap fabric before you use them to cut out anything important.

After scissors, this is my best left-handed find ever!

Left-handed measuring tape

A left-handed tape measure really is one of those things which you didn't realise you needed but once you've got one, you can't imagine how you coped without it. It's natural for me to hold the end of a tape measure in my right hand and pull it out with my left; getting this little wonder from Anything Left-Handed put an end to having to read the numbers upside down!

Finally though, back to the embroidery stitches. While checking out the links for this post I came across "The Left-Handed Embroiderer's Companion" by Yvette Stanton. This may finally be the answer to my problems with bullion knots, so I'm going to order a copy.

Left-handed knitting, though. Now that is a different matter altogether.

Decorating Meroe’s dance dress

This post is certainly well overdue. The dress was finished in August, but I didn’t post about it at the time, then other things happened for me to post about, and somehow it got overlooked.

The dress didn’t start off as a dance dress. It was originally a plain blue, jersey dress, which Meroe bought. She must have been able to see its potential, because on a hanger it doesn’t look much at all. Once it’s put on a dress form, though, it looks much better. When I took these photographs I was in the process of sewing a bra into it, hence the black straps.

The original dress

Meroe wanted a blue and silver colour scheme, with small sections of beading in the ruched areas, and most of the decoration on the bodice and around the hips.

I found a brooch and some earrings which I thought would be a good starting point for the design. To these I added various types of beads, blue and silver sequins, and some sew-on embroidery stones.

Various trimmings

I originally planned to trim all the edges of the bodice with rope beading, but came to the conclusion that this would look too much. There was also the problem that if I beaded the edges of the wide horizontal back strap, the vertical straps would rub against the beading, and possibly break it. Instead I left the edges of the back strap plain, and concentrated on decorating the area in the centre. As well as proving a focal point, this also had the advantage of covering any bumps where the bra strap fastened underneath!

The back completed

Another of the small jewellery pieces was attached to the bodice immediately below the bust, and as with the back panel, different combinations of beads and sequins were sewn on to form radiating lines of varying lengths.

The top completed

A third piece was placed on the back of the skirt, towards the left hip, and the same starburst effect added.

The brooch was placed at the top of the vertical drape, and the top part of it was outlined with silver beads. The outline then continued down the drape in broken sections. The brooch formed the focal point of the design and again, rows of beads and sequins radiated from it.

The brooch decoration

With hindsight, I would have chosen a different design for the decoration, namely one without straight lines. The rope beading around the edges wasn’t a problem, but it was very difficult to keep the radiating lines straight on stretch fabric, and to keep enough give in the stitching so that they wouldn’t pucker when the dress was put on. I had to keep putting the dress on the dress form, to mark the lines and to check that what I had completed so far was correct, then take it off to do a bit more. At one point I even tried sewing it while it was on the dress form!

The completed dress

Finally, though, here’s a picture of Meroe wearing the dress.

Meroe