“How about that one over there? The one with the big eyes and mischievous expression?
“Well, that one is cute, certainly, and well behaved. But then you might consider this little one- very obedient, and very clean…”
Decisions, decisions. Elsa always found there was so much to consider in the search for a new pool boy…
I thought I’d start the week with a burst of energy! New patterns are up in the store, including the one above, and the ones below.
The 1930s playsuit on the left has one of the oddest descriptions on the pattern envelope that I’ve ever come across:
“The one piece playsuit, styled for action, features shorts pleated front and at center back and joins to a shirtmaker top. The knife pleated skirt buttons in front.”
Styled for action?? (As opposed to styled for sitting down in, or styled for reclining being fed peeled grapes in?) And what on earth is a shirtmaker top? Pressing questions indeed! (I couldn’t resist poking a little fun at this description in the pattern back story, which you can read in the listing.)
Aren’t these gorgeous buttons? They were designed in the 1940s by Marion Weeber Welsh, who specialised in novelty buttons resembling birds, fruit, vegetables, flowers, and plates of food. (She also designed silverware and costume jewellery.) The buttons are individually molded in celluloid plastic, but what really gives them that wow factor for me is the clever display boards Marion Weeber Welsh designed to showcase them.
Display Cards with Buttons: Old Fashioned Garden, April Showers, Crated Fruit Designed by Marion Weeber Welsh (1905-2000)
Manufactured by B. Blumenthal and Co. for La Mode United States, 1941-47, Celluloid, cardboard
Bequest of Marion Weeber Welsh. 2006-2-18/46, 72/88
I stumbled across these buttons the other day on a beautiful website which is well worth a visit. It’s a microsite for a past (I think past, although it’s not too clear) exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, in New York. The exhibition is called “Multiple Choice: from sample to product” and looks at the role of the humble sample book and other formats that contain examples of a product or technique- tools which link together design, technology, and marketing. Apparently, sample books have been used for more than 300 years for the merchandising and recording of design alternatives in many areas of the decorative arts, including wallcoverings, ceramics, and textiles.
If, like me, you get all over-excited by snippets of fabrics past, these textile time capsules, these little swatches of history, head over to the site for a browse. (Particularly, of course, the textiles and fashion section, although the other sections are fascinating too!)
Dyer’s record book produced by Thomas Ratcliffe Manchester, England, 1812–1823
Block- and roller-printed plain-weave cotton; leather, paper
Museum purchase from Au Panier Fleuri Fund. 1987-46-1
Salesman’s sample book, Manchester, England, 1784
Printed supplementary weft cotton pile (velveteen); marbleized paper, cardboard
Museum purchase through gift of Mrs. Samuel W. Bridgham. 1950-91-1
All images and italic text courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution: http://www.cooperhewitt.org
I must stop knitting socks. Someone please hide my 2.5mm circular knitting needle- it must be time to knit something else. Thing is, though, September’s such a tricky transitional month- I didn’t feel like knitting cosy sweaters, or hats or gloves just yet (although now it’s October I’m getting there), but obviously summer knitting’s off the menu. So marking time as the summer topples into autumn by sock knitting seems like a good idea. Especially as it’s my feet that notice the drop in temperature first…
These are knitted using the leaf motif from a free pattern in the current online issue of Knitty magazine; it’s a Midsummer Night’s Dream by Natalie Bursztyn. (Although rather than Midsummer, these say Autumn to me.)
Being a creature of habit I used my standard toe up sock recipe, and made a few other mods (on Ravelry here if anyone is interested in the technical details).
I tried out a new bind off technique with these- Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off as introduced and explained in this season’s Knitty. I find I am converted :) Definitely give it a try. (Basically, it’s a classic non-sewn bind-off (passing one freshly worked stitch over another freshly worked stitch) with one crucial addition: each knit or purl stitch is “processed” in a particular way as it’s worked.)
The yarn is Dream in Color’s Smooshy in Cloud Jungle. Yes, I’m still trying to use up my stash of this. But I can’t. I think it actually may be regenerating as I knit it.
Every era has their goddesses. The ancient Greeks had Aphrodite and Pallas Athena; the Romans had their Venus and Minerva. In the 20th century goddesses tired of immortality. They headed over to Hollywood instead where they were still worshipped as idols. And as that century drew to a close, a new gaggle of goddesses was born into being, thanks to the magic of Vogue patterns. Miss E. Smith of 5 Acacia Lane, Brighton, for example, looks every inch a goddess in her Bellville Sassoon designed gown. (Although she’s still working on whipping up fiery tempests and turning men into pigs)…
If I’d had this pattern in my clutches when I was designing my own wedding dress last year, I’d definitely have used it to goddess-ify myself. It’s more or less just what I was looking for: a pleated, Grecian, Grès style gown. (Although I might have tweaked the waist sash a bit and lost the stole…)
In a valiant effort to counteract that midweek slump, I’ve just listed some new patterns (including the one above) in my Etsy store. Hurrah! As always, click on an image for the listing:
Let’s talk about fancy dress, as Hallowe’en starts to rear its warty fake-bloodied head. Those of us frantically searching for an inventive and beautiful costume which doesn’t involve vampires, witches or cats might care to consider these gorgeous illustrations from an early Victorian French book called Les fleurs animees by J. J. Grandville. The ‘flowers personified’ include the spiky Thistle, above, and sociable Tea and Coffee, below:
Ok, so perhaps it might be just a little time consuming to engineer one of these costumes, but wouldn’t it an amazing project?And you’ve got a whole month! Which is plenty of time to turn yourself into a wary Hawthorn, below:
(All this reminds me of school plays when I was very young, in which I remember embracing various extremely challenging (and blessedly non-verbal) roles of a Tree, a Sunbeam, and… ahem… a Blade of Grass.)
The Victorians rocked at fancy dress- especially anything that was allegorical rather than a direct representation. They were very good at dressing up as concepts such as Music, Spring, Night, etc. This was possibly due to the wide artistic licence these ideas afforded- after all, Victorian fancy dress was generally all about enhancing one’s own natural charms and looking as stunning as possible. The thought of transforming yourself into a Witch with warts and mad hair and blackened teeth etc etc would surely have been anathema to a Victorian lady!
Instead, the wistful beauty might have made a good Pansy, while the more regal might consider being a Tulip (both below):
Read both volumes of this book (and a host of other books) over at Botanicus, a freely accessible portal to historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. There are many many more images of flower maidens too numerous for me to show here, and you can download them in large format.
All images courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden: http://www.botanicus.org
Population of Jonasville: women= 3294, men= 0.
Desperation had reached fever pitch. Some of the town’s female inhabitants would wander round in full bridal dress just so they could pounce on any unsuspecting man who passed through. (Then they could drag him to the altar before any other hussy got her hands on him. ) But today was a day of unbearable excitement, and there was a lot of hopeful gazing up at the sky. Old Mother Grady (the resident Wise Woman) had issued a prophecy that could change the town’s fortunes forever:
“Tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It’s gonna start raining men….”
(The inspiration for today’s pattern back story is inspired by the plot of a Serbian film Tears for Sale which I was reading about over on Piroska’s lovely blog. In a remote village all the men except one have been killed in the war. When two sisters (who make a living as professional mourners) accidentally kill the one remaining man, they must set out to find replacement men for the village’s women. This could be one of those annoying films that looks really interesting but never gets a widespread release (there’s no UK release date). The costume and design look all gorgeous- check out the trailer here. The image to the left is my screenshot of it.)
Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet for a few days on the blog front- it’s been a busy week.
But at least today there are new patterns up in the store…
“Peggy, what do I care if it has a 3-megapixel camera, voice control, built-in digital compass, internet tethering and touchscreen with 3-axis acceleromator and really cool apps? If it can’t cook the dinner and iron Bill’s shirts I’m just not interested…”
There be new patterns up in my Etsy store! (Click on a pic for the listings…..)
Principal form of distraction this afternoon? The online video tour of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank.
This amazing online resource lets you watch a whole glut of video clips about all the departments of one of London’s largest and best loved theatres.
Navigation is by floor plan, and of course I headed straight up to the Costume Department on the 4th floor. Watch and learn as the costume department staff talk you through a host of topics including buying costumes from vintage shops, researching period costumes and patterns, the costume design process and more. And up on the fifth floor you can pop into the Dye room to see how costumes are distressed and broken down, and swing past the Costume Props department.
It’s definitely a site to browse with a cup of coffee- once you venture in you may not come out for some time…
images are my screenshots of the site
Would you believe that this sewing pattern from the late 1930s/early 1940s is still SEALED? Its previous owner obviously never felt the need to caress its crisp tissue paper pieces. Which is all very disciplined. When I buy patterns I feel the need to look inside immediately. But with this pattern I’m being very good. I’m restraining myself. I’m sitting on my hands, even though I’m dying to look inside.
This temptation, in a random kind of way, reminds me of an artifact in the Pitt Rivers Museum here in Oxford: a witch in a bottle. This small silvered glass bottle has a label on it warning people not to open it because there’s a witch inside. You could open the bottle (if you dared) but then the object would be far less interesting- it would just be a bottle because, presumably, the witch would escape:
To open or not to open. That is the question. So I’m listing the pattern for sale in my store (along with a couple of other ones which are also still sealed!) and turning the dilemma over to someone else :) (Click on the pics for the listings.)
My feet have never had it so good. As far as they know it’s not Christmas, so I must be attempting to atone for years of neglect. Years of neglect in which they shivered through Autumn and froze through winter. Years in which they were forced into hole-y shrunken socks. But now, now, there have been two pairs of handknit socks in about as many weeks!
AND I’m coddling them in handspun, no less. This 2-ply merino yarn is by Krysten over at Gherkin’s Bucket, and the colourway is ‘Hunger’- a gorgeous vibrant combination of yellows, pinks and greys. Handspun, ah, I have a weakness for it (especially when it’s not spun by me) but I’m never very good at knowing what to use it for. So that’s why this yarn has been in my stash for about a year now.
The socks are knit using Grumperina’s great Jaywalker sock pattern, which I’ve modified to knit toe up, magic loop style with aran weight yarn (my mod. notes are on Ravelry here- login required for both links). I think it shows off the handspun nicely, without being too busy. The socks are a mite tight around the top of the heel/ankle, and I can see there’s a little gap at the top of the heel I’ll have to fill, but my feet don’t care.
Don’t get too used to it, O favoured feet of mine. It can’t last.
This blog is where I ramble on about fashion history, costume, sewing, knitting and anything else that takes my fancy.
