Category: Dresses

 

 

 

I love the metropolitan-museum´s online-collection. I could spend hours on this website….

One day I stumbled over a 1920s lingerie-gown, made by the callot soeurs.

I wanted to sew myself a similar dress, but then it was impossible- I simply had not enough or the right  vintage material to work with. And modern lace and fabric won´t do. They are not comparable in quality nor beauty.

The only solution was to wait and collect. Which I did. For years I stockpiled like a hamster. But some key-pieces still where missing.

Until some weeks ago. Then I got a huge lot of vintage items from California.

The californian treasures included some of the “missing links”, so I could finally start my project: Four dresses, inspired by vintage 1920s lingerie-gowns, made by the boué seours and callot seours.

Of cause, it´s impossible to copy the gowns . The vintage originals are hand-sewn, custom-made luxury-items. They´re made from finest muslin or batiste, heavy embellished with couture-embroidery and  priceless lace.  I have not the time nor the skills for such embroidery and my stock of fine batiste is very small. And I will use a sewing-machine. It´s also impossible, to use such huge amounts of bulk stock  lace, like the couturiers in the 1920s did, Most of the vintage lace pieces on the market today are short. (Or very, very expensive!) And to find the same lace, used for the gowns,  is also impractical.

Another problem will be the beautiful patina of the  genuine gowns. My material may be from the same era or before, but it comes from several nations and was stocked under completely different conditions. Which means, the patina of my gowns will be mixed.

Seems, I have to make some compromise.

At least, my gowns can only be a poor tribut to the masterpieces from the roaring twenties. Maybe there will be no visible consensus But give up the project? NEVER!

So wait and see, what´s ahead. Gown number one is nearly done!

 

 

 This dress is almost completely made of vintage napkins. I always try not to cut them up, but to use them as they come, no matter shape or size. (The only exception is, if they´re flawed.) This approach isn´t easy, because you´re restricted in your possibilities. You can forget the most patterns, but I think it´s  exciting and worth it.

For the dress I patched some of the dyed napkins together and made a simple skirt. I had to lift the skirt up, because it was to long.  Than I used another napkin for the back and some scraps in shades of brown for the front.

If you want to try something in that way, every napkin, vintage or modern, does a good job.  You can even try to combine such with completely different shapes or sizes. A bit tricky, but fun!

For this project, I wanted something curvy, flowing, like some of the dresses from the 30s have.  But not to much! So I used some old lace-borders, a vintage cushion (including closure and  mother of pearl-buttons as you can see on the front of the dress) and fabric from a damaged duvet cover. I dyed everything, as usual and turned it into a slightly curvy Dress.

 

I made this gown from a piece of simple vintage linen  and two embroidered items.  One of them was a bit weird. It had one big circular cut-out on every small side. Maybe it was used as a runner for a dresser with pilars….I´m not quiet sure.

I didn´t change much. I just put on some color and used the embroidered items as they came.

 

 

Once upon a time, there was a raggy-shabby-sewing princess, accursed by the evil queen of dress-codes, so she had to work in a dull office every day, wearing minimalistic sentence-suits. But one day she had enough and made herself a romantic rag-dress from a chinese tablecloth and some satin duvet cover, to show off her true nature. Then she walked around the office building with her head high. Unfortunally, her  pinstriped co-workers  all nearly collapsed, when they saw the magic dress she wore and  as soon as they recovered, ran and complained to the boss.

Now the Boss (Prince Charming himself!) went to view the monster, got a nasty shock and ordered  our poor rag-princess into his office immediately. He gave her exact order to put off this ridiculous eyeshocker and asked her, if she was totally out of her mind. In this situation, there was only one way to save herself from beeing sacked and further tortured with senseless questions:  She had to put off the dress and marry him. (Which broke the curse!) But from now on he lived in wild and weird sewing-wonder-hell and  really deserved it.   And of course he never got an answer to his question. 

 The dress ended up in a dustbin, where I found it and shifted it for me, because a little bit of magic had remained.  

There is more than one rag-princess on this planet. So boss beware!

 

Some companies  sell  rice in bags made of rough  cotton fabric. That´s much better than the plastic bags. But what to do with the bags, when the rice is gone?

There are some possibilities to be creative with them. I used my rice bags to create a loose summer dress. All I needed was the bags, some shreds and rough ribbon, made of  cotton. I dyed it all in a soft tone, so the writings on the bags are still visible.

Acctually I´m not so fond of this red & white combinations. (Of cause there ARE exclusions, like my Art Nouveau skirt!)

But they seem to like me. They follow me, wherever I go and always find a way to slip in my sewing room under the noses of my gards.

Seems, there is only one way to cast them out forever: Making a dress so weird, that those, that want to come in, get in a state of shock and avoid me from now on!

Now, here is the dress….let´s see if the plan works.

To make this dress I grabbed almost every piece of  vintage red & white fabric in my stock. As you can see, there are napkins, doilies, towels, lace, ribbons, table runners and a damaged piece of peasant tablecloth.  Nothing fabric is useless. You just need to know what do to with!

 

Every year the same question: What on earth could I wear for Christmas this year?

I didn´t want to go green-red-gold like a classic christmas tree decoration and I also didn´t want to make myself up with a “rudolf the red nose reindeer”-hood And I absolutly refuse to wear one of this synthetic fiber evening gowns. That ment DYJ again.

I had a piece of never used art nouveau fabric, some smaller pieces of vintage lace from Plauen in Germany, parts of some 1930s curtains and bits of antique lace and velvet ribbon. I dyed the fabric, curtains and the Plauen-lace, -the velvet ribbon already had a matching shade- and made a loose gown with overgown, inspired by those beautiful Titanic era dresses. I think, by wearing this dress, I can survive another Christmas.

Imagine  walking around  a garden party  on a bright summer evening in a dress like this….It´s made of some doilys, scraps of old linen and cotton, short pieces of vintage lace and two big embroidered triangles, ment for pillowcases. It´s very comfortable, but beware the barbecue sauce!

vintage tableclothes can make a nice ensemble for summerdays.  The white dress with red stripe is made from a peasant tablecloth, embellished with bobbin lace and a little embroidered doily. The bobbin lace at the neckline was actually ment for a pillow-cover, but it suits perfect.

The wrapp-vest was a 1930s tablecloth, so heavily flawed, I thought it first a hopeless case and could not be used anymore. But I found a way in cutting out some little intact pieces and use the more sound middlesection of the tablecloth.