mandie_rw | Entries tagged with great war blue linen

An event! I took no pictures! You're all very surprised!

We met at the Village Teahouse in Lansdale - it's in a Victorian house and is very charming. The owner came out and told us how nice it was that we dressed up for tea, and she loves when people visit dressed up. Good tasty food, and we (accidentally) stayed a few minutes past closing time because they were too polite to throw us out right on the dot. Also was about $10 more expensive than the average market rate for an afternoon tea in our area. (IMO worth it, but also not necessarily my new default tea house. Well, it's also an hour-plus from me!)

I made Tom take a few pictures when I got home to prove I wore something, and bless his heart, he got the compost tumbler in all the pictures. Oh well. xD (We have a good-sized yard but every side looks like shit in some way for costume pictures background! The compost tumbler made it in frame because the kids jumping into the above-ground pool just on the other side seemed like a greater evil, I guess lol)
a woman wearing a blue and white 1916 dress outside in a yard

a woman wearing a blue and white 1916 dress outside in a yard

Mildly less dorkface pictures posted on Insta

Sunday was running around and doing errands, and acquiring more old furniture from FB Marketplace that I GUESS we didn't really need but yes, we totally did. (And now I'm really not allowed to get any more antique furniture apart from a nicer desk for the sewing room, and a bed frame, because this house is not that big.) The listing was for a china-cabinet-type thing for $50 - we've been on the lookout for one for a liquor cabinet, because Tom wanted an upgrade from the cheapass particle board microwave cart, which I felt was fair. Guy had it out for us, and then said that he had a bunch more pieces he was trying to get rid of in the garage, and did I want to look at them?

(The garage door was open and Tom was with me; this was not the beginning of a Lifetime movie plot.)

O ho ho, did I ever. They were mostly china cabinets, and we already have a china cabinet, but I spied a pretty Something, a little more fine-looking than the other pieces, and a little smaller. Hello, my pretty, you appear to be a secretary desk! I think I need you. How much, sir? $75? Negotiable? Honeeeeeeeey...can I buy another big piece of furniture? Where am I going to put it? Who cares! In my sewing room if I have to!

Reader, I did not negotiate, I zipped right off to that Wawa ATM and gave that man $80 because the ATM only gives out 20s! (Also because he helped us transport the pieces home in his enormous Lincoln towncar trunk when the bigger bases wouldn't fit in either of our wee cars. He's only about half a mile away from us, and he offered, for $10 more. Sold, sir!)

We haven't exactly decided where to put the secretary yet - a distinct down side to a previous owner having open-concept-ed the downstairs as much as they could means there are no goddamn walls to put furniture against! - but here's one I found online. It's early-to-mid 20th-century, mahogany, Hepplewhite-style, by the Maddox furniture company, and although it's certainly not pristine, it's in nice used shape. AND it's pretty! AND it was $75!

Now I guess I have to do my lesson planning at my secretary to justify having bought it LOL.

Current Mood: chipper

Back in the day...I would keep sewing until 2am or even later because this is going to be wearable, dammit!

These days...I like getting a reasonable amount of sleep, and it's technically wearable...dammit?

The bodice is at a place where I could totally get it 85% done and 100% wearable if I wanted to stay up that late, but I'm sleepy enough that I know I wouldn't be doing my best work. Or, like, halfway decent work, honestly.

I decided this about an hour ago, and spent the intervening hour leisurely collecting all the bits I need for tomorrow, ironing things, and starching the collar of the guimpe. All set to go, except I can't find my bag of "daywear" costume earrings, which is vaguely annoying, because I only keep costume jewelry in one box, and if it's not in that box I have no idea where it is! Oh well, I'll pull from the normal jewelry box!

Tea house is about an hour away, but it's not til 1pm, so thankfully I don't have to get up at the asscrack of dawn, like I do for some events! Plenty of time to have a hair meltdown (hm, I wonder what I usually do for 19-teens hair...).

Current Mood: sleepy

Good lord, that guimpe took FIFTY-SEVEN times longer (approximate measurement) to make than I thought it would. THREE DAYS. Lots more hand-sewing than really intended, mainly because the fabric's so wifty. It is now done, however! I think the bodice will be less fussy than the guimpe, actually. Once hopes, as I want to wear this on Saturday ha ha haaaa.

Did a basic mockup of the bodice for the shoulder/neckline fit, and will just pleat the fabric down into tucks one the front shoulder/neckline and hope it ends up fitting into the pattern pieces. Living life dangerously! As I was completely making up the back, I just put a little box pleat/tuck at the CB that will mostly be hidden under the collar anyway, and called it a day. Up to the point of putting the tucks in the front pieces; did it once and didn't like it, so unpinned and decided to call it a night for now.

If the blue linen bodice crashes and burns, I could honestly probably wear the guimpe as a shirtwaist on its own, just with a wider belt as it's a little shorter than the blue bodice will be! The sleeve heads are gathered in pretty sloppily since it's not intended to be seen...but I've worn things that looked way worse, so.

I have to got to the shoe repair place tomorrow morning and pick up the shoes for this outfit that needed new heel caps, and pick up spray starch for the guimpe collar (it's interfaced but I know it'll look better starched)...and then sew like the wind!

Current Mood: awake

Popular opinion, both here and on FB, was solidly in favor of the 1916 linen dress for tea, so that's what I...didn't work on over the weekend! (Spent time with husband instead. Also a valid use of time, probably. He wanted to hang out with me, so the most sewing-related thing that got done was a decent bit of the cross-stitch cat Christmas stocking that I couldn't find after we moved and just unearthed recently! Can hang out with husband while cross-stitching on the sofa; can't hang out with husband while fitting mockups in sewing room.)

I worked on the guimpe today, which seems possibly counter-intuitive, as the under-blouse-thing isn't quite as important as the dress bodice that goes over it, but I always prefer to fit over all the layers, so under-bits it was!

My inspiration for this dress (in case you don't remember from when I started it in 2018 LOL) was the following illustration, dated 1916:
1916 fashion plate with women wearing five different outfits

1916 fashion plate with women wearing five different outfits

Miss Second From Left with the horizontal stripe on her skirt.

I'm not trying to recreate it exactly - the lace I used for trim is relatively wider than the illustration, and I don't love the collar as-is, plus the tiny back view shows that the bodice is almost tunic-like in the back. I have no interest in puzzling that out, plus I do like the idea of still being able to wear a shirtwaist with the skirt if I want, so I'm going to construct the bodice like a waist - have it close at CF and make sure there's enough length to stay tucked into the skirt.

I also decided to make the guimpe like a full shirt with collar and sleeves; I probably could have made just the collar/dickey piece and then sewed the long sleeves into the dress armsyces, but this way makes for easier fitting! I'm making it out of a lightweight linen from the Stash - very nice and light weight, but a little wifty and loosely woven for hanky-weight historical stuff. Like making little hand-rolled hems on 18thc caps would be an exercise in frustration. (Actually I bought it for curtains, two apartments ago. I cut the panels and never sewed them up, because making curtains sucks and is super boring.) Not too picky to use it for a mostly-machine-sewn 20thc guimpe, though!

Primary accomplishment for today was probably putting the buttonholes in the wrong side of the CF. Oops. Even if it was the dress bodice I probably wouldn't care, and since it's the guimpe I definitely don't care! At most the top button will be visible, and possibly not even that.

Other accomplishments include going out and setting up/moving around the sprinkler in 19-teens underwear. Along with taking out the trash. Well, I was fussing with the fit of a guimpe, I wasn't going to take it all off every time I needed to go out and move the sprinkler! If the neighbors don't know I'm a weirdo yet I haven't been doing my job.

Tomorrow:

finish guimpe - collar and sleeves
mock up and fit dress bodice
cut out bodice pieces and sew basic seams

Current Mood: okay

For the 1916 skirt. Ugh, blog posts take forever to write! Good thing I don't sew much anymore. :P

Neck still slightly out of whack, so no mockup fitting yet. Maybe I'll unpack from the weekend and wash my unders and spray that corset...

Current Mood: okay
Crossposts: https://mandie-rw.livejournal.com/628237.html

Long time no post! I am basically drowned (yes, drowned, not drowning...I have no fingernails left and I hate everything) in school stress, hence no posting, but we're going to pass over that.

Belvidere is just about a month away now, so it's time to get crackin' on that. I still have some kind of idea of a tea gown to wear for Sunday morning, but while that would be nice, the dinner bodice to go with the skirt and train I made last summer is absolutely required! So that's happening first. (Also

miss_philomena lent me her TV bodice pattern for that bodice, so I currently have that, while

robinsnest still has my TV tea gown pattern!) So I was fairly dedicated and traced off the pattern, cut out a mockup, and sewed it together today. Didn't do a fitting, because I slept funny a couple of nights ago and my neck is still slightly out of whack, which is not great for bodice fitting! Plus I know I want a good couple-hour chunk to work on this, because I want to do a fair amount of tweaking to the basic pattern. Soooon.

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So, event! Robin and the 3 A's traveled up to North Jersey (shock! awe! very far!) for a Great War event this weekend. Kind of obscure, but mid-later teens is something new and fun, and we haven't done much this summer. Me especially! So out of the sewing groove. I had plans for a pretty white lingerie-type dress, but two weeks out from the event, I decided I couldn't settle down to commit to that much sewing, so I decided to make a skirt to go with the blouse I'd made for the blue 1914 spring suit and call it Good Enough.

I'll do a more detailed blog post on the skirt (there's not very much detail! it's a skirt. it's blue. it's linen) tomorrow, but I'll do the event writeup here...not that there's very much to write up! It was a werry werry small event...

( I know everyone has missed my O SO ENTERTAINING event commentary )

Current Mood: chipper
Crossposts: https://mandie-rw.livejournal.com/628182.html

The end of the semester approaches, and despite summer semester starting immediately after that (actually, it starts before all my finals are even over, which I think is rude), I'm taking some time for CADD. It's been awhile!

And, weirdly enough, it's about 19-teens. I know. Much wow. But there's a 1918/Great War event in August up in North Jersey that the Usual Suspects and I were invited to, which will still be while I'm in one of my classes, but it's an online one so FIGHT ME, I'M GOING ANYWAY.

Now, I don't like late teens. Along with 1920s, I think they're dumpy and stumpy and generally kind of unflattering on anyone with a bigger hip than bust measurement! I do, however, think the slightly earlier A-line skirts are cute...the ones you see 1915 up through about early 1917. And...this will be an event with a lot of boys, who certainly aren't going to notice if the cut of somebody's skirt is a couple years out of date! And it's wartime, right? Out of date is okay!

I'm trying to keep to the stash, plus I want another delightfully impractical summery dress (yeah, this will limit what I can wear it to, but...how many 1918 events to I actually go to, ever?), plus I've always like the summer whites of the Edwardian period, and there's definitely still a holdout from those lingerie dresses into the late teens. I love the overall feel of this outfit, although I have no intention of trying to replicate it exactly (see: lazy).
19 teens summer dress photograph

We're going commercial-pattern with this one; I really am getting casual in my old age. ;) Probably this c1915 pattern from Past Patterns, although I haven't bought it yet. And I might do something else with the skirt; there are some funky drapey skirt things on my Pinterest board that might be fun to do instead (the "handkerchief-hem"-type overskirt out of light fabrics seems to have been popular in 1916), but a skirt is easy to fuss with. It's the collar and sleeves I mainly want a pattern for, and I like the ones on this pattern.
pattern illustration

And I also need new linens (because otherwise I'll be wearing my 18thc shift; my Victorian combies have very high necklines, not to mention my 1860s drawers would probably hang out from under the hem of a cute little 1916 frock, cause they're so long! which would be A Look), so I'm going to buy the Wearing History teens combinations and corset cover patterns. The current question is whether I feel like spending more money for convenience, or spending less money but printing out and taping 7000 pages together...

(Could I figure combinations and corset covers out myself? Yes. Have I done so in the past? Also yes. Do I feel like spending the time and brainpower to do so? Nope.)

Also, hats. I have enough of my tax return still set aside for play money that I won't feel bad about spending 20 or 30 bucks on some straw blanks, just for funsies! The Usual Suspects get to be the beneficiaries of my occasional spate of YAY HATS urges, LOL...and then I get to make crappy practice hats and pawn them off on people. ;)