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Download: Re-Make Wrinkles (1940s Canadian guide)

Susannah — Mon, 17 May 2010 11:28:53 +0000

Shortly after the US government published Make & Mend for Victory, Canada’s Wartime Prices and Trade Board issued a similar wartime publication of its own: Re-Make Wrinkles. Illustrated with simple line drawings and stapled into a plain brown cover, Re-Make Wrinkles shows how to cut down adult clothes for children’s and women’s wear and even suggests which patterns to use.

A great way to use up all those spare petticoats you’ve got lying around the house. Enjoy!

Download: Re-Make Wrinkles (PDF, 1.14 MB)

Tagged: 1940s, books, history, how to, make & mend, refashion

Vintage video and giveaway: Anne Edwards, fashion expert under fire

Susannah — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:18:33 +0000

Pity Anne Edwards of Woman magazine. The onset of war catapulted her into the unenviable role of fashion guru during a time when stringent rationing and austerity measures must have taxed the creative powers of even the most inventive stylist. In this series of British Pathé shorts, Anne does her best to hearten and inspire the women of Britain by providing tips for dressing and accessorizing in wartime.

Here a model gamely demonstrates several ways of wearing a headscarf:

[Link]

This film shows how to make one dress do duty all week long by adding collars, waistcoats, false bodices and other embellishments:

[Link]

I showed that video to James, who wasn’t convinced. “‘Lancelot’s coming over — put on a pinny!’ That’s the best you can do for a Knight of the Round Table?“

Here are several ways to wear the ubiquitous turban — some more successful than others:

[Link]

Here’s her method for making your own handbag (assuming you could obtain a hide, which was a pretty big assumption at the time):

[Link]

And here’s her advice for making women’s hats from hubby’s. The amount of millinery skill she assumes is pretty impressive — how many women do you suppose actually owned a hat block?

[Link]

I like how some of these fashion ideas are so dubious even the models betray visible uncertainty. Still, it’s a great insight into how much innovation was required to stay smart in wartime.

And now for the giveaway!

Up for grabs is one copy of Complete Dressmaking in Pictures, a postwar British dressmaking guide edited by Constance Howard and published by Odhams Press. Those of you accustomed to freewheeling American vintage sewing books may be amused by the comparatively prim illustrations.

Others overwhelmed by the proliferation of sewing advice available in books and on the internet may enjoy how blessedly simple it makes sewing look by reducing the options to an acceptable few techniques.

The book also includes instructions for how to draft basic pattern blocks and adapt them to make the illustrated designs.

The Complete Dressmaking in Pictures giveaway is open to readers everywhere — just leave a comment below about your favorite wartime fashion tip! I’ll be picking a winner at noon (London time) on Monday, April 19.

Tagged: 1940s, books, history, how to, make & mend, refashion, video

Download: Make & Mend for Victory (both parts)

Susannah — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:24:37 +0000

As promised, here is the second installment of Make & Mend for Victory. And, for those of you who missed the chance to download part 1, I’ve uploaded it again. Good news! These downloads will be available indefinitely.

In this episode: crochet your own accessories, cut down a man’s suit to make a woman’s, and remake men’s shirts and old dresses into clothes for women and children. Plus basic sewing and pressing tips.

Enjoy!

Tagged: 1940s, books, history, how to, make & mend, refashion

Download: Make & Mend for Victory, pt. 1 of 2

Susannah — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:01:38 +0000

Several of you mentioned an interest in seeing more of Make & Mend for Victory, the 1942 booklet published by the Coats Co. in the USA. My bargain-basement scanner is glacially slow, but I’ve managed to digitize the first 25 pages to present to the innernets in all their glory.

Part 1 covers a lot of ground — from equipping your sewing basket to repairing and restyling clothes to whipping up accessories grown women can no longer get away with (jabots? dickeys? vestees?). Multitalented types can even take advantage of its instructions on how to crochet their own hats and collars.

The PDF is only available for 7 days or 100 downloads, so get ‘em while they’re hot. And stay tuned for the second installment!

Download: Make & Mend for Victory, part 1 of 2 (PDF, 21.7 MB)

Tagged: 1940s, books, history, how to, make & mend, refashion

You WILL be prettier! 1940s fashion and beauty advice films

Susannah — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:08:10 +0000

I’m off work at the moment with some vile tonsil thing. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good old-fashioned sick day on the couch, and I’m quite enjoying it, except for the hacking cough and the fact that I’ve sucked on so many Strepsils I can’t feel my tongue. Enforced couch time means I get to cuddle the kitties, drink tea and look at vintage film clips. I’ve come up with some fantastic finds.

Let’s kick off with two back-to-back “fashion police” clips from the 1940s. The first is American and comes to us from the Prelinger Archives via Glamourdaze. Here we see the wonderfully named Miss Ratherly Sterns, like a no-nonsense fairy godmother, make over a well-meaning but badly dressed protégé:

By contrast, in this British Pathé film from 1946, a disapproving narrator stationed in London’s Piccadilly Circus tears several women to shreds for minor fashion infractions. Give a girl a break, fella — clothes rationing has been in force for five years! I’m not sure about the “charming wimple” that eventually gets his seal of approval, either.

It’s a sign of how far we as a society have let ourselves go that even the Don’ts in these clips could stop traffic nowadays. They seem such sartorially innocent times by comparison. Fashion sins included things like “wearing the wrong hat or blouse with your smartly tailored suit” instead of “leaving the house in stained pink Uggs, a fake-down puffa vest with ratty fake fur trim, a t-shirt announcing I’M BRINGING SEXY BACK in gold lamé blockcaps and leggings two sizes too small with your underwear showing through”.

Can you keep a secret? I’m a total sucker for the makeover genre. That’s why I love films like Now, Voyager, TV shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and blogs like Already Pretty. The makeover genre is quintessentially American in the best way, with its relentless optimism, its inclusive ethos and its unwavering belief in the life-transforming power of self-improvement.

Here are two more videos via Glamourdaze, also starring Ratherly Sterns. The first contains useful advice on choosing hairstyles, makeup and necklines to suit your face shape — excellent if you’re trying to settle on your vintage look.

In this second film, Miss Sterns (would you dare to call her Ratherly? I wouldn’t) runs us through the basics of applying makeup. Note the total absence of eye makeup, the way blush/rouge is applied further back than today’s apple-cheeked ideal and the strict insistence on color coordination. Also, when did women stop doing their beauty routines sitting down?

This 1944 British Pathé clip about a school for mannequins (models) shows women learning to stand and move to show their clothes to best advantage and offers an interesting fix to keep wardrobe changes from spoiling your hair and makeup — put a (chiffon) bag on your head!

I’ve saved the best for last. Pattern for Smartness, a 19-minute film made by Simplicity in 1948, is vintage sewing paradise — a walk-through of the making of a dress from a Simplicity pattern using the tools and techniques of the time. The detailed instructional advice still holds true, and the evangelical tone is delightful. Who knew that a single home economics class could change you from a shuffling, pimply, badly-dressed troglodyte to a fresh-faced social butterfly with “that know-how look”?

Tagged: 1940s, hair, how to, makeup, sewing, video

Make & Mend for Victory, 1942

Susannah — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:28:54 +0000

Ever since I found it on eBay, I’ve been dying to post some peeks into this great little booklet from 1942! It was published in the US by Coats & Clark, and it’s optimistically entitled Make & Mend for Victory. (“Making do” obviously not being a state of affairs Americans were prepared to accept.)

Cover

The tone is altogether more pumped than that of similar British publications from the war. The first page includes a “consumer’s victory pledge”, which implies voluntary rather than enforced austerity.

The booklet includes detailed instructions on how to alter, mend, maintain and refashion women’s clothes, as well as patterns and instructions for hats, collars and other accessories to brighten up an old outfit. Best of all, it shows in detail how to cut down men’s clothes to make garments for women and children, and suggests which patterns to use for the job. But more about this in a minute.

The illustrations are darling and beautifully depict the style lines of the time. Love that sunburst suit and snood in view A!

The booklet also features a spunky model I’ve dubbed Dolores. That’s her with the dark hair:

I bet Dolores’s phone never stops ringing. Check out that saucy smile!

I imagine Dolores to have a boyfriend in the Navy. God knows what he’s up to out in the Pacific, but meanwhile, Dolores is getting her own back by cutting down his suits to make chic little numbers for herself.

The pamphlet gives layout and cutting instructions for making women’s suits from men’s. Patterns used include Advance 2997, Hollywood 682, Simplicity 3652 and others still available online! I am strongly tempted to have a crack at it, although I’d have to steal a suit off a strapping GI — the booklet stresses that it’s no good attempting the project if your boyfriend isn’t considerably bigger than you, and James is a compact European model.

Here’s a sample layout for Vogue 9137 and Vogue 9001:

There’s also instructions for making women’s blouses and children’s suits, underwear and pajamas from men’s shirts:

And here are the layouts:

I’m happy to upload more scans for anyone who wants to attempt one of these projects. Enjoy!

Tagged: 1940s, books, history, how to, make & mend, refashion

Travel sewing/needlecraft kit

Susannah — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:56:35 +0000

Do you sew on the go? I’ve done embroidery on planes, crewel work on trains and quick and dirty mending on the Tube. I especially love to take hand work to the park on a sunny day. (I think we had three last summer.) But sewing and needlecraft involve a lot of bits and pieces, so leaving Atelier Catbox and taking my stitching with me can spell disaster unless I’ve got a way of keeping it all together.

I was charmed by this tutorial at CraftStylish into making a travel sewing kit, but although an Altoids tin is handy for emergency supplies, it’s too small to store everything I need for regular sewing and embroidery (especially crewel — the wool takes up a lot of space). So I biggified mine. I love the two travel kits — one for sewing and one for embroidery — I made from sweet tins and fabric scraps. They fit easily into a handbag and contain everything I need to work on my projects in spare moments away from home. Idle hands and all that.

Embroidery kit

Sewing and mending kit

It’s ridiculously easy to make your own with a similar tin and scraps from your sewing room. Then, when you want to take your project with you (even just to the couch) it’s just a matter of grab and go. My kits are stuffed with my favorite sewing and embroidery shinies and include a needle-polishing pincushion and a magnetic needle keeper… because you don’t ever want to have to wonder whether the person who sits in your seat next will “discover” the needle you mislaid.

I started by cutting out a felt bottom, as in the tutorial. A felt bottom is a great idea. It stops me rattling like a gypsy dancer every time I run to catch a bus. I made mine by tracing around the tin and cutting out on the line with pinking shears.

Using pinking shears prevents me from obsessing about how the felt isn’t absolutely! perfectly! fitted to the bottom of the tin every time I open it. I hot-glued it in place.

Then I made the pincushion. I traced around the lid of the tin on to a fabric scrap and cut out as before. Then I cut a smaller version of the same shape out of my piece of card, making it a little over 1/2″ smaller on all sides to give a seam allowance plus a little extra room for stuffing.

Then I ran a line of gathering stitches all the way around the fabric, well within the seam allowance.

I put the cardboard back in the middle of the fabric, held it down and gently pulled up on the ends of the bobbin threads to gather the edges slightly…

…then removed the cardboard and stuffed some steel wool into the hollow. Steel wool apparently polishes your needles and keeps them sharp.

I stuck the cardboard back on top of the steel wool, pulled up the threads until the fabric sat snugly around the cardboard, smoothed out the gathers evenly all the way around the circle and knotted the ends to finish the pincushion.

And then we hot glue!

Now for the needle keeper. Super easy. I just took a 1″ badge (this one’s from Wool & Hoop) and pried out the pin back, then stuck a 15 mm neodymium magnet inside instead.

Neodymium magnets are super strong and fun to play with! The needle keeper lives inside my sewing kit, but when I sew I stick it on the lid to keep my needle from roaming when I put my work down for a moment. The curved surface of the badge makes the needle easy to grab.

I also keep one on the knob of my sewing machine to keep my basting and tacking needles handy.

Now the fun part: stuffing your sewing kit full of shinies! Skeins of embroidery thread get hopelessly tangled up. Why not wind them neatly on some vintage-style thread cards from Sajou?

You’ll need some scissors, of course. I don’t know about you, but I find that scissors, like needles, vaporize whenever I put them down for more than 3 seconds. So I use a scissors holder that hangs around my neck on a chain. I got mine from Des Fils et une Aiguille in Paris, but I’ve also seen them online.

Add a couple of needle threaders and you’ve got all you need for embroidery!

My sewing and mending kit contains slightly different supplies. I keep my needles in a wooden needle case (again from Des Fils et une Aiguille, but take a look at these), and I stash scissors, a thimble, a few pins in a scrap of felt, safety pins for emergencies, a seam ripper, buttonhole twist, darning thread and whatever hand sewing thread my project requires. I also carry a measuring tape, in addition to the one I keep in my handbag. I never knew how many things in my life needed measuring until I started carrying a measuring tape.

With this kit I can hem a garment, sew on a button, mend a rip or darn a hole (wool tights are £30 a pair!). I am Ready for Anything that can be tackled with a needle and thread.

As far as I know, everything in these kits is airplane-safe. Actually, I’ve flown with them several times within Europe and nobody’s so much as asked to look inside. Those who have to negotiate TSA screenings may have a different experience.

I’d love to know what you stash in your kit for craftiness on the go!

Tagged: embroidery, gifts, how to, shinies