2025, and future plans

I've been writing down projects I've finished on a paper on a pinboard since... 2021 I think? I think I started doing it during lockdowns to make myself feel better. Well, the list for 2025 is fit to make one feel worse: there are only three items. And one of them is this:

- a tiny knitted Christmas ornament I made as a gift for the work Christmas party. I used two acrylic yarns from the stash (one destash from my mum, one bought in a charity sale) and two metallic / Lurex yarns from my huge yarn haul from my previous job. Did I mention that here? Yeah, I must have in connection to the baby blanket from last Christmas. So, yeah. That happened and now I have SO MUCH YARN and so much knitting to do. So this was also a bit of a proof of concept for me for working with those metallic yarns. I declare it quite successful.

Also, it's a tiny thing, but it still took me about three hours to make, so it's not a quick thing, necessarily.

But that short list of three finished projects is a very misleading review of things, because there was quite a bit more I worked on in 2025 - I just hadn't managed to finish most of the projects by the end of the year.

As a most striking example, there's the singlet I knit for my little niece that is already finished - all that's left to do is to sew it up and give it to the intended recipient. Photos to come then.

This I can / want to show. I'm working on a sontag for my grandma from the same yarn that baby blanket was made in. I currently got fed up with it but on the whole, it's a very exciting project because - you may notice I have that 1860s knitalong badge on the right. It's been sitting there since 2010, a reminder of a failure. It didn't work out for me back then; a big part of the problem were terrible old circular needles. Also, I think the yarn wasn't that great either. I have nice new circular needles now, and a yarn that's almost too luxurious (although it tangles a lot in its current unwashed, doubled up state). I recalculated the pattern a bit to work better with my gauge, and of course it won't be in the original design, with this marled yarn (is that what it is called?). But I WILL finish that sontag! Soon! Soonish!

I got fed up with it right now, though, so today I reached for a ball of mystery yarn from that same haul, and started knitting a Monmouth Cap. Well, a modern version. Here is the pattern. I started a hat from the yarn last year (I think it was), trying to figure out a historically inspired top-down construction. But it wasn't working out the way I thought it would (it was far more flying by the seat of my pants than I realised at the time, life's been A Lot), and it was sitting in the naughty pile. Then, going through my Ravelry library today, I realised this yarn was the perfect gauge for this pattern (well, not row gauge, but that's par for the course for me), meaning this pattern was perfect for this yarn and my intentions for it, and off I go. Unlike the written pattern, I'm doing the whole thing on DPNs, and because I don't think I'd have enough yarn if I made it as written, I intend to make the body of the hat an inch shorter. It should still fit me and work for me as a modern winter hat.

There's also the mitered square blanket (separate squares this time) I'm making out of the acrylic I'm never ever gonna wear. It's intended as a baby blanket to be sent to Ukraine. One of the yarns I used turned out to actually have wool in it, and a number of my finished squares shrunk in the wash, so I need to make more. Again, it even could have been finished in 2025, were it not for that. (Well, and the priority Christmas gifts took.)

So that's some of the things that should be finished soonish in 2026, and if all goes well, this year will be better on the finished projects front than last year was.

Of course, things going well really isn't a given these days...

HSM '23, Ch. 12 - Paired to Perfection: A pair of mustard-yellow fingerless mitts

 

I wanted to have these finished during my summer vacation of 2023 - when Leimomi came visiting and we took photos in historical clothes in historical backdrops... and then the mitts took longer to make than I had hoped, and I lost yarn chicken with the ball of yarn I had with me on our travels. So they only got definitively finished in January of 2024. (It's always the weaving in of ends that takes forever because procrastination.) Aaaand I'm only posting them here now. I have quite a lot of blogging to catch up on.

The yarn I used comes from the same deadstock haul the yarn in the baby blanket I made last year came from. This one is a 28/2 merino; preeeetty fine (I have a couple in 30/2, too; even finer). I doubled the yarn because undoubled it would be a recipe for madness, and also because the few fine wool items from the period of around 1800 I did find (most of them in the V&A) suggested to me a gauge closer to that. Here it's about 10 stitches and 16 rows per inch - I'm always proportionally higher on the row count than the usual 3:4 ratio.

I knitted the mitts according to info I found online in lots of places - both people's descriptions and pictures I peered at. I'm not certain I got it right, but at least I made a good stab at it. My favourite thing about this historical mitt construction as I've inferred it is the way the long body of the mitt is shaped - much like with historical stockings, you do the shaping along one line down the garment, on both sides of the "seam"; in this case, the "seam" is on the outside of the arm, opposite the thumb. It's easier to do than trying to distribute it evenly all around, and actually looks quite good.

Like so:

In this lightweight yarn, the whole pair used up only 44 g of it. Which makes it rather funny that I lost yarn chicken with it anyway. It goes to show that these were truly made from remnants :D - my ball was pretty small. 

* * *

I have quite a lot of this mustard yellow, actually. It's a colour I'm not sure would look good on me as a main garment close to my face, but for historical accessories, it somehow seems close to perfect for me. And yellow is such a cheerful colour.

I reeeeally want to make yellow stockings now. Do I have any use for Renaissance stockings? Nope. But I want to do it For Reasons. Also, I do have Knitting with the Modern Maker, I do want to make more than just socks out of it. (Given my short thick-ish legs, I was thinking I might have to adjust the pattern, whichever pattern I end up using; and then I remembered my row ratio and thought, maybe that would actually end up perfect.)

If I feel particularly crazy, I could turn this yarn into a sweater, and dye it into a more suitable colour... probably not. I also have this yarn in other colours, though. One is a perfect match for a beloved thrifted turquoise-ish turtleneck sweater that, alas, got shrunk in the wash years ago (I had carefully put it in the laundry storage area separately, someone grabbed it with the regular stuff anyway). I am about 99% certain that sweater must have been made from the exact same yarn, considering the yarn's industrial production origins. So there is one definitely madness inducing knitting project in my future. I think the original was indeed made from a single yarn; I'm not doing that, but a sweater on 2 mm needles will be bad enough.

For now, I started with modern socks, just to see how this yarn wears in something less madness-inducing - and to see how I feel in wool socks with zero polyamide in them. :-) There was recently a very funny situation when my mother and me met up for a brief spot of knitting in the park, we pulled out our projects... and they were both mustard yellow. :D With the difference that mine was a sock in this yarn, and hers was a not-sock in a regular modern sock yarn. :D

* * * 

I'm honestly not entirely sure how I made the thumb gusset anymore...

 

I might write up something about making fingerless mitts like this once I am more certain I know what I'm doing. I did write it up, but currently it's just notes for me to remember what I did - it needs a more substantial treatment for something presentable to the public. I do have a lot of yarn to use up, so I do intend to make more - also to go well with different outfits. (I have a lot of fabric to use up, too...)

Just the facts, ma'am:

What the item is: Fingerless mitts
How it fits the challenge: It's a pair. Strictly speaking, they're not paired to perfection, there are imperfections between them... but they're minor. :D
Material: Thin merino cone yarn, doubled (Filati Biagioli Modesto Lambswool extrafine 28/2)
Pattern: My own
Year: c. late 18th-early 19th century
Notions: 2 mm double pointed needles (in reality they're more something like 1,85 mm)
How historically accurate is it? I'm not sure; it's as good as I could figure out, but it's not perfect. I'm not sure if my thumb construction is correct (or more precisely, I'm pretty sure it could be done better). And I'm not sure how accurate the yarn is for my timeframe. (Merino definitely already was around, but I have no idea if they would have made yarn exactly like this out of it, or if they would have used it exactly like this exactly for mitts. Very fine wool yarn did exist, but I'm not sure exactly how fine we're talking.)
Hours to complete: No idea :O
First worn: In January 2024, as they were finished, just because. :D I got quite a lot of wear out of them in Autumn of that year with modern clothes - they do make a great addition to your wardrobe in changeable weather or cold rooms, and having the fingers free while staying more toasty is indeed great.
Total cost: I got the yarn for free! It's old unused stock remnants from work that was sitting in storage and being a moth hazard.

 

Further knitting facts:

Yarn weight: Lace - as mentioned above, Nm 28/2, i.e. 1400 m / 100 g; doubled. So gauge equivalent would be something in about 700 m / 100 g.

Gauge: c. 10 stitches and 16 rows / in

Amount used: 44 g

An understated 1930s heroine's wardrobe

 

A look in the calendar informed me it's the nameday for Erna (a pretty unusual name in Czechia), which makes this the perfect day to post about Erna Ženíšková's wardrobe in Děvčata, nedejte se! (1937).

It's a 1930s film with shenanigans: Here, a single mother starting in a new job temporarily deposits her baby with her no-good former partner who is so no-good that he immediately puts his own baby daughter in his neighbour's room to get rid of her, and skips town. Said neighbour is a good-hearted teacher who is just about to head out to his new job at a girls' boarding school, also in a different town... and because he's good-hearted, he won't leave the accidentally acquired baby behind. Hijinks ensue. The baby acquires a schoolful of young "mothers"; the teacher acquires a young admirer, but then also, ultimately, a prospective wife to go with the baby. The baby acquires a father and her mother acquires a far more responsible if rather scatterbrained prospective husband.

The whole film's now legally free on YouTube, courtesy of the Czech National Film Archive. It was already previously there temorarily during lockdowns, in what I understand was probably some sort of lockdowns measure?, which is how a couple years ago I found out that I LOVE what Erna Ženíšková was wearing there.

And that I want that dress.

My understanding of what's going on here is that there's a centre front seam. There are darts going down from the shoulders, hiding behind the collar here - shoulder darts seem to be the standard solution at this point in time. The bottom of the bodice appears to be bloused. There's definitely a waist seam. I'm not sure if there are or aren't darts in the skirt. The dress has a side opening on the right, where the belt closes with two shank buttons.

The skirt appears to be fairly narrow but not too restrictive, although my screengrabs fail to convey that properly. Maybe bias-cut?

And the collar exists only in the front.

The sleeve heads have only a slight puff, and there are darts there.

 

Plus there's that thin line of white at the sleeves that, in an understated way, ties it all together.

It's like an upgraded Little Black Dress, and I love it. I do wonder if the white parts might be made interchangeable, snapping in, so that it's a proper LBD that you can change the look of with accessories?

It looks very similar - though it's not identical - to this vintage pattern, which gives me those interchangeable accessories ideas:

I found this image here. If anyone knows which pattern this actually is, please let me know!

Erna's also wearing a sweater in the film! This is, in fact, her first appearance.

 

Actually I think it's a cardigan... there appears to be an overlap at the hem here...

 

I don't really see any obvious buttons and buttonholes in my screengrabs, though. Not enough detail. :-(

In any case it's quite fitted, shaped largely by being ribbed, and I think the basic construction could just as easily be applied to a sweater. And I love that it goes a bit further down the hips than many other 1930s knits. A practical garment for an active person!

The skirt she wears in this first scene is another thing I'd love to recreate - it appears to be a simple flared gored number.

Not sure if this is the same skirt or a different one:

I think that might be another knitted jumper? With a lacy collar.

And that's all there is from her! I also love the storytelling in her clothes - I showed it out of order, but she starts out with the very simple cardigan-and-skirt combo, as someone almost at the end of her rope. Later on, already getting on her own two feet with a new job, she has more confidence which shows in the more spiffy, put-together number - we can perhaps imagine she bought that lacy collar to spice up her existing outfits. Then, when she goes to the school to find her daughter, she's obviously put on her very best clothes to present herself in the best possible light.

Erna wasn't a big name actress, in fact I think she wasn't an actress at all - her sister Marie was. And in this film the big-name actress was Adina Mandlová, who's in a greater part of the film. But Erna is "the endgame". :D She was the mother of the baby who got cast, and in the end she got cast in the role of the struggling single mother herself.

It's entirely possible that the clothes she's wearing in the film are her own... What struck me about them, and what I fell in love with, is the fact they're quite understated and practical. Not the usual 1930s film heroine look. These are 1930s clothes I can picture myself wearing!!!

(Well... aside from the greater number of buttons. Koumpounophobia.)

Obviously I don't have Erna's willowy figure; but a big part of what I find alluring about these clothes is that with the appropriate adjustments for fit and proportions they'd probably look good on just about anyone.

Plus I love, love, love her everyday-person hairstyles!

And her winning smile that also won over our good-hearted hero.

Seriously, though, that dress. I have a very very dark navy lightweight worsted wool earmarked for it. It's happening! I don't know when, but it's happening.

A baby blanket

This was the big project of 2024. It seems a bit unimpressive to sum up my 2024 projects with this flat rectangle of kniting, but there is quite a lot of work in it!

I have a niece now. This was made for her. The yarn comes from a HUGE haul of old cone yarn I got for free at work a couple years ago - unused yarn that had been sitting in storage for years and being a moth hazard. This particular one is Kirman by Linsieme, a 2-ply 92% merino 8% cashmere which, amazingly, survives machine washing. I tested that by running a sample repeatedly through the machine at 60° Celsius. So I knew it would be perfect for a baby project - soft and washable.

It's a mitred square blanket made more or less using the Knitting Squirrel tutorial - but I used the same yarn throughout. Kirman tripled. And size 4,5 mm needles. There's 40 squares starting with (more or less, depending on how I managed to pick up the stitches in some of them) with 40 stitches. Then I finished the whole thing off with a crochetted border in doubled Kirman, two stitches per stitch so it formed a bit of a soft rufle.

Not much else to say about this one really - other than I finished it at Christmas at grandma's, and she loved the yarn, so we agreed I would make her a sontag out of it. I believe two strands should be just the right thickness of yarn for the Godey's Lady's Book 1860s pattern floating around. Just the thing to keep grandma warm when sitting next to a window, as she does! I'll probably have to adjust the size - I do have her measurements from back when I was making a dress pattern for her. 😁

Experiments in woven bras, Part 1: The reasons and the initial process (and mistakes)

I've been fed up with RTW bras for quite a while now. The ever-present artificial fibre (even if the bra is mostly cotton, the various findings are not). The fact that I'm nominally one size but then when I try it on the cups are gaping. The fact that I have to keep searching for styles that are both as much natural fibre as possible and a cut that does not result in gaping. The annoyment of the sliders of adjustable straps often ending up sitting right on top of my collarbones, which can be a lot of fun (insert sarcasm) especially with a backpack on top.

I first started out, years ago, basically trying to replicate RTW underwire bras, and it never worked out. Eventually I found out, thanks to a random commenter in the Curvy Sewing Collective Community group on Facebook, that part of my problem probably is that I have Omega-shaped breasts - or something of that sort, anyway (what that article describes doesn't fit me on all counts, I also have top gaping and have never struggled with the bottom of the bra sliding that much; but more or less it does fit). So the standard cup setup probably simply doesn't quite work, even if I had managed to get it "right". (If you do not have that problem, and want underwires, I think the free Maya bra may be a good starting point for that sort of thing - the author says the whole front of the pattern can easily be made without any stretch, so if you combine that with some sort of vintage-style elastic setup in the back, you're probably good to go.)

(I would have shown you my most recent unsuccessful wearable muslin here - complete with self-made bias channels for underwires - but I think it went into the rubbish bin during last year's move. It did not sit right. It did at least serve to drive home the fact I really want to wear woven natural fibre bras in summer.)

And then last year I came across this review of the Vera Venus 1940s bra and realised, over that bra's clearly fabulous support, that proper vintage-style bras might be a much better solution for me. Especially because I had been wearing exclusively wireless in RTW bras for the past couple of years anyway and my absolute favourite, fit-wise (sadly not material-wise), was this rather vintage-style number from Marks & Spencer. 

I lifted this image off the interent somewhere; maybe the Czech M&S site. I normally don't do this. But links break, especially shop links, and I want this blog to serve as a record for posterity and to help people regardless of when they find it. And this image shows the seamlines in relation to fit relatively clearly.

 

Note: shaped cups, fabric around them and full coverage, and - as you will see bellow - taped seams. Those seem to be the crucial elements of support in here to take note of. Also, note central front seam. I don't know if the "grainlines" there also serve a purpose but what is certain - that seam is also taped.

 

It's wireless but it's not woven - I think the cups are some kind of tricot knit? They say it's part cotton and therefore nice to wear. Don't believe them if you have skin trouble and sweat trouble. I definitely sweat in it unpleasantly when it's hot.

 

So, as you can see, the seams are taped. With something that definitely isn't cotton. There's also some kind of mesh fabric under the cups on the inside (it does not look like the power mesh I google but presumably it serves the same purpose). Also definitely not cotton. Aaaand exposed bra elastic.

Sadly far from ideal in my world, even if it is much better than anything else before, and very instructive.

 

So I:

• Collected lots of pictures of vintage bras (mostly from auction sites) in a secret Pinterest board (which I may eventually un-secret for general use but for now it's a bit too personal a research, complete with non-historical related material ideas etc.), and took mental notes of cut and construction.
  
• Went ahead and drafted some patterns last year, based on my measurements in the above-mentioned M&S bra. Which were both (pattern and bra) subsequently, quite soon after I made that effort, rendered obsolete by my losing a whopping 6 cm in the full bust measurement due to a change of jobs (more movement & different food, and my body seems to primarily store fats in my bust area to begin with).

Bra calculators tell me, right now, that I ought to be 30F or 32E in UK bras (my underbust measurement is currently closer to 29 inches, BTW). Which I'm pretty sure would gape a lot in reality. I wore 32DD previously; the bra I have is 34D (I could not find 32DD in the shop when I bought it, so I did the improper thing of buying the upper sister size and wearing it on the farthest set of hooks). It's gaping in the cups now (and as you may guess from the above list of sizes, the band must be too big now). Presumably I could get away with a C or D in this style now?

But: material. I used not to have such a big problem with blend bras, skin-wise, but during the last year I got rash problems in the bust area as well. I don't know, maybe it was the stress of the past year - apparently atopic ecsema gets worse with stress, and let's face it, the past year plus has been... A Thing.

So. Time for more bra experiments. Especially because summer's here and the knit and partially-artificial RTW bras I have, currently also badly fitting, just really don't cut it anymore.

I drew on my knowledge of historical bras - from the Lengberg style and Katafalk's recreation of it through 1910s princess-seamed bras to 1920s and 1930s bras - and took lots of measurements and made an initial draft that I then refined the fit of in a muslin (considerably).

It turns out, as I sit down to document my process, that my initial princess-seamed draft does not exist anymore. Nor does the subsequent muslin-influenced draft because the garment that resulted from that is still faulty. In an attempt to be a good girl who cleans her room, I threw those patterns away immediately upon their becoming obsolete, without documenting them. Oops.

Anyway, here's my back piece, derived from my sleeveless spencer, which exists still mostly unchanged - I just took it in a tad from the top of the underarm area for better support, and I think I scooped it down / out in the underarm / armscye in general? The side seam sits a bit more towards the back than directly under my arm, incidentally. I didn't bother correcting that; it works better with the grainlines this way. (There are additional straps connecting the front and back, BTW.)

 

And this is my initial Lengberg-style front piece, not yet muslined, which is basically where I started - by drafting this flat piece out of my measurements, with breast cutouts, because I could hold that against my chest and roughly "test the fit" even in paper. (Considering my further fitting problems, I suspect this is inaccurate.)

From there, I drafted two princess-seamed pieces following that vertical line, both with a "bulge" for the bust, based on measurements of my breasts.

And then I made a muslin of that, with a front opening, and pinned and pinned. The bulge was reduced, more so on the central front pieces, but really both of them. I generally took in the seams for better support.

So I think you could basically arrive at a similar thing just by starting out with a vertically princess-seamed pattern for wovens, exactly as The Dreamstress recommends for 1910s bras.

I made a wearable muslin with lacing in the front (that will be Part 2), and found out that, oops, my muslin fabric was an old bedsheet and old bedsheets have considerably more give than new fabric so I had taken it in too much, especially in the underbust. Fortunately, the lacing takes care of that gap, and it definitely is a wearable muslin and already far nicer to wear than my RTW numbers. But - it needs improving.

So this is my pattern for the front with those further changes taken into account (and some sort of basis for a bust cup drawn in tentatively): 

Which will presumably go into a Part 3 of this adventure, this time with elastic. We'll see how many parts will follow after that. :D

#CoBloWriMo 21: UFOs

That is, for those unfamiliar with this online sewing jargon, UnFinished Objects.

I have a lot of those. Some aren't here with me.

Some are. So here's a selection of my unfinished object, to take a stock of the making before it's done, fingers crossed.

Or not. The purplish "modern" spencer never got finished.

It's all the fault of my enthusiastic unresearched patternmaking; I'm now too bothered by the fact I put the deep-inset armscye in the front as well as the back.

Not good for the period, and bothering me in this modern-constructed garment as well.

It's a pretty good fit, though (although it could no longer fit with a button overlap), so it's a bit of a mock-up. A starting point.

* * *

In further bathroom photo adventures: Mock-up Nr. 2 of the Utrecht wrap stays.

Way better than mock-up Nr. 1, which I'm soooo not going to show you, because it didn't fit at all. That was how I found out that only one bust gusset for a DD cup was a bad idea. That volume needs to be distributed more evenly, without all the strain being focused on one point. And it plays havoc on grainlines, so I ended up with a lot of wrinkling and buckling etc.

It's still not completely good. I'm thinking of slanting the inside gussets, or moving them closer to centre front, because there's still some odd wrinkling happening there that I think could be taken care of with a change of grainlines. And I think I need to play with the slant / attachment of the side-front and straps, too, because there's fabric excess there.

Also wondering now if I should try cutting the front on the bias, like in the Bernhardt diagrams. Namely, the diagram C - the basic shape is very similar to it, after all. Maybe that would take care of the problems I'm having, too; so I might start with that.

* * *

Also in the realm of underwear, conical stays teetering somewhere on the edge between late 1780s/1790s, and a folk costume bodice (Central Bohemia, specifically).

I am more and more drawn to earlier transitional styles, so I sort of set out to experiment with it from inside out, cheating by machine of the inside layers. Considering how long it took me to finish my Regency stays, by the time I'm finished with these, I might even really be ready to move into the era!

The fabric I'm covering it with is probably more late 17th than late 18th century, I'm afraid. Let's pretend it's a re-use.

* * *

Also in-progress: a shortgown.

I didn't get beyond sewing two rectangular pieces together to create the skirt portion, and pleating the cetre back. Which, in retrospect, was probably a wrong order of things?

It's a quilting cotton that's not-entirely-correct-but-good-enough.

I've found an extant original that's a good example of what I have in mind, so I have something more solid to go on now. Although now I look more closely at it, I realise the skirt is cut together with the bodice. So it won't be entirely the same anyway. :P

* * *

This cutting layout is actually something I'm already wearing. I think the skirt in question needs to have its pocket openings taped, though, something I forgot to do...

Note: that's not flowered fabric, that's flowered tissue paper. Something was wrapped in it once, I think. Now it's become a pattern. A 1915 pattern (although adapted for my modern uses, with the introduction of side seams.)

* * *

Also in the works: another pair of Moravian-Wallachian socks, this time actually in wool.

(That's an old photo. I'm further ahead now.)

* * *

There are more things in progress. Too many. And more ideas of what to make. Still, I think it's overall a lot better than this time last year, with things I have actually finished (though not yet posted about), with a lot of the ideas with much more concrete outlines, and with some concrete ideas for some fabrics that had been lingering in the stash for years.

#CoBloWriMo 9: BIG project

The idea was to write about the Wallachian costume, a sort of "what it involves" post, but... today was taken up by other things, and the big project ended up being this:

Hauling things from my old home. Things like a bale of lining fabric. All my skirt slips. A set of IKEA bedlinen with an 18th century print - turned fabric. That sort of things. One full backpack and three full bags if things, not counting my regular "handbag" bag here (also full).

Hard time deciding what would go and what would stay behind. Concrete ideas won over vague ones, and I took the fabrics on the right in this photo.

The IKEA print will become a dress. So will the green sari (finally, I hope). The nude-coloured used to also be a sari - the idea was also for a dress. It's polyester, though, and for that and other reasons, there has been a change of plans. But plans there are.
The little bit of black you can see on the very right is remnants of fabric from my Little Black Dress. After several years of very occasional wearings, alas, the sleeves started unraveling, so I was thinking of repairing / replacing them.

The exhausting expedition (ugh, I've never hauled so many things at once, and I never want to do it again) was crowned and rewarded with a concert of Druhá Tráva, whom I've wanted to see live for a while now and kept not managing to; so in a way, it was also a big project.
I have no photos of that, although I could have taken some, easily - I sat in the first row! It just felt... disrespectful, somehow. I was there for the music, not to take photos.
They're the sort of musicians who just sort of hang about on the stage, and produce incredible sounds while doing that. Who make it look easy, except clearly it's not...

... and reflecting on them again, I forgot the time, and now it's no longer "today". So off with this post! More tomorrow - I mean today...

Heritage sneak peak

The original idea was a Moravian Wallachian folk costume shirt that could double as a Regency shirt and would involve this so far rather wonky embroidery...

... but seeing how long that's no doubt going to take and that I have other priorities than to spend the month of August embroidering, it got relegated to slow progress and the Silver Screen challenge (I do have a way to make it fit that, honestly).

The green stitches are me finally trying out the various stitches in the book on folk costume embroidery I bought years ago. The diagrams are rather confusing, but I think I've finally figured most of them out.
One of the things learned: Detached buttonhole stitch is called "stínek" in Czech; it's also the name for this, as it's used to connect two pieces of fabric. Based on that and a picture in the book, I'm assuming the name applies to the stitch because it was also used to connect two pieces of fabric.

* * *

What I turned to for this month is, instead, a Moravian Wallachian folk costume bodice.
Which will carry on to the later Sewing Secrets challenge with the addition of detachable sleeves to be turned into an approx. 1790s jacket/spencer (exact method of attachment to be determined). No, I don't think it's entirely accurate, but it's close enough and it works for me! If I'll be attending more of the Regency events, I'll need a spencer sooner or later, so why not kill two birds with one stone?

The pattern was derived from the kacabajka pattern, because I really do like killing two birds with one stone and using what I already have.

The fabric used to be a thrifted coat. It's only 80% wool, but how often would I find quite a lot of historically passable red wool fabric only for 50 CZK? I squeezed the whole of the body from the raglan sleeves. The new, curved sleeves will have to be cut from the body of the coat. Ah, the paradoxes of repurposing!

Making sweatpants the hard way

Sweatpants are a bit of an epitome of boring clothing, aren't they? Navy blue sweatpants. Not even a piping. Just in-seam pockets. Possibly the least imaginative item of clothing you could own.
(I did want to make piping, white, because yay, blue and white; but then I realised that despite my love for the colours and my love of piping, I actually don't like this particular look on other people, so I would be lying to myself about it. Plain navy it is.)
I'm making them because I do have the fabric (got it years ago in that stash haul) and I need new sweatpants (my old pair is really threadbare now, and I'm pretty much fed up with it because I may have had it for ten years or thereabouts already); there's a clear correlation between those two.
And I'm handsewing it.

Not the whole thing! That would take forever. But due to lack of variety in stretch stitches on my machine - the zig-zag turns out quite bulky - I'm handsewing the crotch seam allowances down; and the hems are done by hand, too.

The pattern is, of course, also derived from that one pattern that fits me. (I should settle the terminology, by the way; trousers it is now, when it's a respectable item, but then these are sweatpants - what's another name for this particular piece of clothing?) At that occasion, I've found out I can not find that original basis pattern. I know I took it out to digitalise into Inkscape; I did digitalise the front piece, did not get around to doing the back piece, and now I don't know where it is. *sigh* So I had to put this pattern together from the wide-legged Nancy pattern and a pattern I made for stretch fabrics some time ago but never actually used. I ended up altering the crotch area considerably. I'm not sure I'll be able to transfer those changes back to the pattern.

I think I still have enough of this knit left to make a sweatshirt. Possibly a hoodie, because in that same inexplicable manner, I've lost my orange hoodie.

But that can wait, because after I finish these, I think the most important thing to make are corduroy trousers. My current pairs are slowly but surely falling apart as well and the time of the year slowly but surely demands their wearing. Now that I have a pattern that fits, I feel much more confident about that endeavour than I did when I first acquired the corduroy.

1848 Jacket Sewalong: Construction tips and ideas

The introductory post on the history of the garment and my plans
The post with the pattern

What happened to the sewalong, you wonder? I promised in a comment I would put this up on Friday or Saturday. I didn't. I got caught up in sewing the cording in my Regency stays. It takes a lot of time, particularly with handsewing, but thankfully, I quite enjoy the process, maybe precisely because of the slow handsewing. Anyway, immersed in that, I kind of kept forgetting about this.

And because of all that, I'm also going to be honest up front and share the decision I've made: to skimp a bit on historical accuracy with the kacabajka and sew the bulk of seams on the machine. If I want to finish it this year and not four years later, I've got to. I'm making it primarily for fun and style, not any kind of reenactment, so it's not such a problem for me, just for the unrealistic historical geek in me. The construction method will still hopefully be basically historical, and all the finishing handsewn.

* * *

Here's a different photo of the kacabajka, from Národní oděv roku 1848 by Mirjam Moravcová - it's the same frontal view, but it offers a better view of the sleeve braiding (if you're ambitious enough for that; I'm not) and also of the inside of the sleeve. That inside makes me wonder, but more on that later...

* * *

So, what is the construction method? My preliminary research (read: asking people who know better) tells me the jacket would be flatlined. Flatlining is a method that sounds very fancy and isn't really fancy at all. It is, actually, a very simple matter of cutting the lining exactly the same as the outer fabric and then treating them as one (so you could also see a similar method referred to as interlining or underlining these days).

• Here's an exhaustive yet simple explanation and tutorial from The Dreamstress - including how to treat darts, which applies to our pattern.

Politics of fashion: A broad summary on the Czech national costume of 1848

Another of the Historical Sew Fortnightly challenges is now up with details - the Politics of Fashion. Now this is one challenge that definitely suits my sewing plans wonderfully. I love it when the challenges match things I wanted to make anyway. There's no other point in it for me, given how slowly I make things.

I'm going to - hopefully - deal with yet another way politics influenced fashion: I'm making one of those "national costumes" that were developed during the nationalistic emancipation that happened in Europe during the 19th century.
I've just made up the term "nationalistic emancipation", although it's quite possible someone's done it before. I mean that process of arising national consciousness in late 18th and especially during 19th century that eventually often resulted in new countries in Europe, some actually historical like mine is, others really pretty much new, or new amalgamations of historical states (hello, Italy and Germany!). It was a very political phenomenon indeed, connected to the various attempts at constitutional monarchy or more. Very often, it also led to ugly things, like nationalistic pride and conflicts and stuff like the affair of the ostensibly historical manuscripts (Rukopis královédvorský a zelenohorský) that were to prove the Czechs' famous history but were apparently falsified. People were so proud of them that those who dared to point out the inconsistencies were dubbed enemies of the nation (T. G. Masaryk, famously).
But it also involved language study - in many cases language saving - and recording of folklore, and increasingly successful attempts at literature and translations and similar stuff that is actually still going on around the world nowadays. (Like, hey, Apache Mescalero dictionary! Navajo Star Wars!) So even though it often seems like dusty past (especially if you have to learn about it for school and everyone's either treating it like something sacred, or scorning it, with no middle ground), it actually still carries a lot of significance nowadays. And without it, things like Karel Čapek's amazing writing or Stanislava Pošustová's excellent translation of The Lord of the Rings could not have happened. Just to point out some reasons why I personally am glad it happened. :-)
(Although, in this particular case, the costume does not have so much significance nowadays...)

I know some nations already more or less had their national costume / style of clothing - I think Poland was one (old portraits of Polish nobles definitely have their own style). Others had to develop their own - e.g. Germans were trying, too (I'm not sure what the results of that were - dirndl?). Yet others, obviously those nations that were well established already, did not bother. (Hello, Britain.)

Prague fashions of 1848. Note the red and white. Source (3)

Czechs bothered. And ended up with something that was actually pretty similar to, for example, Hungarian clothes (if you look at e.g. depictions of Lajos Kossuth, it's really similar). There were various reasons for that, one of them being precisely the concern of fashion that this HSF challenge is connected to. I believe, in the end, the most national part of it were the usual colours - they tended to go with blue and white, the accepted Slavic combination (which I so dearly love, too :D), or red and white, the combination found on the 19th century Czech flag. Or all of it, just as it combines on the current Czech flag.
 
You know how I was dreaming about the 1848 kacabajka? Talking about it with nothing happening, as is pretty much the norm on this blog by now?

The "Slavic kacabajka" of Ludmila Tomková from the collections of the Uměleckoprůmyslové muzeum in Prague. Source (1)

The Secret Life of Bloggers: Summer begins

My second and last post in the series...

2013-06-04 Monday
Banana and chocolate; my sister "splurged" on a snack and each of us got a bowlful. ;-)

2013-06-25 Tuesday
Waxing (?) leather, including my beloved red belt and this no less beloved pair of shoes. I've had them since 2007; they already had their soles (and insoles) repaired once and they're in need of another repair at the heel. Which they will get, sooner or later. I think they were Slovakian in origin...
They started out as suede, but some parts are now nearly smooth, so I went ahead and waxed those parts - it improves the leather's flexibility considerably and is supposed to make it water-proof, too. I brushed them thoroughly afterwards to retain some of the original texture.

2013-06-26 Wednesday
"Joy."
I went back to Brno for just two days. I handed in my last essay, and my summer officially began... It was 12 Celsius in the evening and did not feel much like it.
A barbecue party with the English Evenings group (where my sister goes fairly regularly and I go very, very occasionally; but I was very glad to be there this time). Food and games. This was a creative game where the purpose was to create something out of food that would represent one of the themes discussed during the semester. I did not take part in this game, because I felt sleepy at first (which, I later realised, must have been because of my sister's Latvian-inspired garlic-and-dill dip). So I just took pictures.

2013-06-27 Thursday
We went to that Indian/Nepalese restaurant again, which was very nice as usual, and then went back home. After a week when it was about 24 Celsius in the house, the temperature dropped back to 20. It feels cold in comparison, but it's a nicer temperature to sleep in, I think...

2013-06-28 Friday
I finally started sewing with that bedding from the beginnings of this blog. It took cutting and sewing a thin slippery silk to finally gather up the courage to measure out and sew a large rectangle of this... I think it's a good thing I took my time, though. This damask stretches out unexpectedly (probably due to its irregular twill weave), and I think I would have freaked out about it and messed it up back when I found the fabric. Now I just steam-pressed it into better submission, without much further thought. One duvet cover down, minus buttonholes, one more to go.
Also, I got a regular plain heavy-duty leather belt from mom. Heavy-duty is rather guaranteed: she said she had got it in an army shop. :D The thin red belt had gotten much wear since I found it, so I'm glad to have another one for casual wear. I got spoiled by the leather and could not warm up to other belts I've run into... (Well, with one exception, but that's not very casual.)


And, after the end of the blog party, this:

 

This is my Christmas gift from my sister, finally arrived! I went all wide-eyed, to finally hold it in my hands. More stashbusting in my future: I have not used that blue-grey knit yet, busy as I was with many other projects (and generally lazy, too). I'm glad it has sat unused till now, because now I'm (hopefully) going to have the perfect dress.
My sister (other) wants one, too - she fell in love with Tiramisu around the same time I did, in Steph's samples stage. My sister wants a maxi version, though. I'm very gratefull that Cation Designs has made one, because now I can envision it better. But I don't have the fabric for her version. :-/