Vintage Lingerie: My Sewcialists' Tribute in a Book Review plus How to Scale Up the Patterns and a Me-Made 1930's Girdle

Are you a Sewcialist? No matter what your answer is to that question it's been a whole lot of fun looking at the wonderful garments made by everyone taking part in August's Tribute Month. I really enjoyed the "Inspiration Post" series that ran in July and how those have panned out into some great garments. Lots of new-to-me sewing bloggers with such a wealth of talent.  

I am absolutely snowed under with work, even on this Bank Holiday weekend (which is why I am procrastinating writing a blog post) and just don't know just how much sewing I will be getting done any time soon so I am going to dedicate this book review as my Sewcialists'' Tribute to Elaine over at The Demented Fairy who makes the most bonkers, wonderful Steampunk-inspired costumes and "muggle" clothes. Honestly, I would kill for half this woman's wardrobe. 

It was her recent post on lingerie that got me thinking, so with my best multi-tasking hat on I will be reviewing Jill Salen's wonderful book, "Vintage Lingerie", sharing the resource that enabled me to scale-up the patterns to a wearable size and showing a couple of me-made girdles drafted from the pattern for a 1932 girdle in this book in a tribute to her "smalls"-making skills. 

This book, Jill Salen's "Vintage Lingerie: Historical Patterns and Techniques", and her corset one, are my go-to books if I want to sew some lingerie. 

The contents are in the format of an introduction followed by projects laid out as gorgeous colour photos of the garments which are culled from her own collection or from museums. The book ends with some very useful techniques.

There are 27 different projects in the book which makes this a very good buy even if you only make 2-3 of them as it is a wonderful resource.

Along with the photos are descriptions and a little history of the garments written in an informal, entertaining style. 

Each garment comes with  a double-page layout of the pattern drawn to a scale at either 1 square: 1 inch or 2:1 and require scaling up to the required size before use. 

This is the tricky part and will take a bit of patience, a decent ruler, french curves and a lot of swearing pattern paper. I drafted up the 1932 girdle pattern above to a modern size 8 using the measurements outlined in "Metric Pattern Cutting" by Winifred Aldrich as I was fitting models but you can use your own stats just as easily. 

I used the method of enlarging based on percentages that is found over at the Foundation Revealed website. The link can be found here. Seriously, this is probably the most useful thing that you will ever learn if you need to scale up these kind of patterns. This technique could probably be used to size-up just about anything. I really must have a go with a "proper" sewing pattern.

 Definitely, owe the author, Cathy Hay an eternal debt of gratitude for writing this guide.

The two things that are massively important: grain lines and balance points. Very handily marked on the patterns so remember to transfer them over. It will make a massive difference to the success of your garments. 

Also, boring I know but you will need to make a toile, unless you are very brave and trust your drafting (or very lucky and fit into the original garment measurements).

So how did my attempts turn out? I think pretty well. I loved sewing these girdles. They are made of an outer fabric of silk duping flatlined to corset coutil and lined in my trademark quilting cotton colourful linings.

I still haven't finished these girdles as they need their suspenders on the bottom so could be considered UFO's.  I also have no idea where to buy the little hooks and eyes that are stamped through the front of the girdles so the bottoms still need some sort of closure above where the suspenders are. I could have used eyelets but they might be a bit of a faff to get on and off then.  A longer busk would have been very unfortunate when you sat down.... ooft!

I do love the lines. They look much better on. If they look a bit collapsed in the rear on my dress form this is because they need a rounded bum to fill them out. These girdles would give you an fantastic shape and would look ace lengthened into a corset dress. No idea how comfy they would be wearing them all day but shaped like that who would care?

So have you taken part in Tribute Month? Do you admire someone's sewing skills or (bonkers) pattern choices? Do you like historical sewing?

Hope that life isn't totally pants, lovelies! (groan)

Kxx

N.B. Just for the sake of clarity I don't own the pics from the book. I bought it with my own money and would gladly recommend anyone with a passion for vintage lingerie to do the same. I also made my girdles a couple of years ago...... but hey who is counting?

The Blog That Time Forgot

Ok, well if there were prizes for most neglected blog I would definitely be a contender. As it stands it has been almost 2 years (2 YEARS!) since I last updated this blog. That is bad, even by my standards. My old PC died, taking all my sewing pics along with it which I didn't back up and although I bought an iPad, I am less than impressed with it for doing anything other than emails. So now I have a new PC I have decided to be a bit more disciplined in keeping this up to date and maybe even posting some tutorials now and again.

So what have I been up to since then? Lots and lots really. Day job is still in Newcastle (at the moment anyway). Have blagged some brilliant studio space in Newcastle City Centre, where I can keep my enormous fabric stash without needing an extension and have sewn my way through two NE1's Newcastle Fashion Weeks, which were the most hectic and fun thing to do. The stuff they have on is fab-u-lous.

I worked with Mel from Le Hat Noir again for the 2012 catwalk show. Her hats were amazing. My favourite was this orange silk one show below. The pink and yellow corsets were from this year's show. I made more stuff than I needed so I have some lovely girdles made from the Jill Salen "Vintage Lingerie" book I talked about in the last post. I don't have any photos of them though.



Some corsets I made for Newcastle Fashion Week. Photo Credit: NFW (orange) and Peter Reed.

Currently, I have my Bad Kitty hat on and am working on a set of four corsets for a shoot sometime in October. They are roughly inspired by the work of Alphonse Mucha, especially the "Gemstones" painting. I am in the middle of making matching neck corsets. I have made one before but I don't think it was a resounding success comfort-wise. I draped this one on a polystyrene head to get the size right (about an 8-10), but as it laces up the back it should be OK. This is prototype B, with hand painted lace and 5 different colours of Swarovski crystals. The others should be fairly similar although I was also thinking of adding in some Steampunk-style boot covers.



Pink Silk Neck Corset with Hand-Painted Lace and Swarovski Crystals (work in progress). I hope that this is a bit more comfy. Boy,does it need a press and the boning put in though.



I bought Simplicity 9553 after being inspired by Peter from Male Pattern Boldness's post on ugly patterns on Pinterest. I love this. Must be my bad taste but I want some for me. To be honest, I also have some of the other patterns from there too. Don't know what that says about my taste, style-wise but people used to raid my wardrobe when we had "Bad Taste" parties so that should tell me something I suppose.

I bought some very practical *ahem* white silk velvet to dye from Edinburgh Fabrics. Probably to go with the red corset that I have made. The two bag patterns that are included are really nice too. This pattern is from 1971 and I do have a bit of a soft spot for late 60's - 70's clothing.  This kind of swims against the tide for all things 50's and "Mad Men"-inspired which I have never ever seen. Too little time to be watching TV!

So lots of sewing to do this week. Watch this space!!