Look what I've got! - the books edition AKA Books are gonna be the death of me

(Paraphrasing the title of this blog post.)

Because one day, they're going to land on me while I'm sleeping, all tens if not hundreds of them. Because I'm running out of shelf space and store most of my new acquisitions on the second store of the storey bed I sleep in. (That's, by the way, a pun that probably only works in English. But it's completely true in my Czech reality.)

In other words, I ought to get rid of some of the old things I've been hoarding, to make room for the books.

In yet other words, it seems I'm not going to get a hat anytime soon. Today, I wanted to try to buy a hat. The shop I went to first was already closed. So I went to a secondhand bookshop next door, and came away with more books than I originally wanted to. And strolling around potentially hat-offering shops was not an option anymore.

But it was worth it. Because I got this:



Picts and Martyrs by Arthur Ransome. One of my favourites by him, and until now one of the few I didn't have yet. (The cover is quite awful, but inside are Ransome's own illustrations.)

And this:



Self-explanatory.

And a thick book that was the main reason why strolling around shops was not an option anymore, but I won't show you that, because it's a Top Secret Gift for my sister, and I can't be sure she isn't lurking around here. Besides, you wouldn't appreciate its greatness (or at least its assumed greatness) anyway.

But the best part are these two:



My Favourite Book Ever, give or take a few. The reason behind my love for Regency, too.
One of those books worthy of a pretty cover, for sure. It's unfortunately a paperback; but a very pretty paperback from the 50s. And yes, those were the dark times of communism in this part of the world, but it must have been a golden age for editions of Pan Tadeusz... the Czech edition in our local library is from the 50s, too.
Now I'll see whether my conviction that I understand written Polish is correct... Seeing as I've read the Czech translation many times, and seen the Polish film from 1999 many times, I don't think it should be a big problem.

Aaaand...



A monography on Czech "national costume" in 1848 (and some years beyond that)! Guess what it has to do with my reading of Božena Němcová's letters?
With pattern drafts! And not just any pattern drafts, with a pattern draft for the jacket I've loved in the series on historical fashions by Ludmila Kybalová! Most of the pattern drafts are for male costumes, in fact, but whatever, it has a pattern for that jacket which I've secretly wished to duplicate, hooorray!

And because I've wished so secretly, here it is:



I've wanted to make it in blue and white, and now that I've read a passage on this type of jackets in the book, I suspect the original might have started out as blue and white as well. (I didn't find the passage about this particular one yet, but it must be there somewhere. I'm sure to find it soon.) I even already have the perfect colour of fabric for it (another of my grandma's hoards), although I do not know if it is the correct type of fabric. From another passage in the book, I suspect it might be. *grin*
I'd probably make the embelishments simpler, because this screams "national Czech costume from 1848" (which is exactly what it is, after all), but I love the lines of it. A wonderful summer jacket, isn't it? Not this summer, but one of those to come for sure.

Look what I've got! - the tools edition

How I managed not to post about my new pinking shears for so long is beyond me. (I bought them on June 3.)
They're from Ikea, and they were quite cheap, so I hope they'll last... but they certainly work the way they're supposed to work, and that's most important now.


But my best finds come from my wonderful crafty grandma. She's quite a hoarder (now I know where I got that from! - although father's an even greater hoarder) and she seemed delighted that her hoards find a use after the years...

She asked me whether I could do... a kind of embroidery. Sorry, I do not know the English term. Madeira? Eyelet? I said I had tried and could not get it quite right. She asked whether I had an awl. That she could give me one.
My heart jumped at that. I'd wanted a tailor's awl for a while already. Never quite got around to ask in the local shop whether they had it... and now I didn't have to!
Grandma set out to find an awl for me. And couldn't find it. And found lots of other things instead, mostly vintage or even antique.

Like needles.
Tiny needles in a lovely tiny needlecase.




I love seeing how things were made and used decades ago... the needlecase is just a piece of paper, a bit cut there, folded there and there, probably a bit of glue there, but it works very well! Although I do not know how old these are, I think they're really quite old.

So must be this needle threader - I love how it has its own tutorial on itself!




And a set of tools for netting, or maybe tatting, or something like that. Could be used for weaving, too, I presume.



I could take all these.

And some fantastic notions and hardware were unearthed, I'm going to share those in separate posts.

And finally she found the awls, too.

I got this one:



A lovely smooth wooden awl, and most probably antique, something other women in my family used to use... I love that feeling. Knowing that I continue in a tradition. (Which is, by the way, also the reason I'm veeeeryyy sloooowlyyy learning how to do bobbin lace.)

She kept these:



Made from bone. Awls, and what's probably crochet hooks, and a needle case with its cap plus one separate cap without its needle case.
I love this piece:



Grandma says there was probably a crochet hook inserted in there - it's a handle. With screw-on cap which would keep the hook in place. Lovely. Who makes this kind of things nowadays? Nobody, I'm afraid.

Anyway, from my previous post and the photo above, you know I've already put the awl to good use. :-)

And you could obviously see how excited I am about all these things. Just count the words "love" and "lovely" in this post!

I finished something!

Not the chemise. I already wore the chemise on Saturday, as a dress around the house, but it's not finished yet - I still need to do the bottom hem, and maybe re-do the sleeve hems with bias tape - but it's wearable, and I needed to wear something cool (in the original sense of the word), because we're having very hot weather. It was fantastic for it. I'll have to make myself a dress of that kind, one day, when I will have finished at least something of the things I want to make now...

I made a headband yesterday. By taking a remnant of red velvet ribbon that I got from my grandma (along with many other amazing things) and sewing a piece of elastic to it. I got inspired by the things Disney from Ruffles and Stuff makes: simple, effective and feminine. It seemed to be the most natural thing to do with the ribbon when I laid my hands on it yesterday. So I did it.



I have to share at least something new about the chemise - my first eyelets made with a tailor's awl:



One bigger than the other and so on, but they work, and look quite nice.
The awl is another of the wonderful things I got from my grandma - actually the one that started the spree. More on that later. As usual.

And look at the tiny tiny tiny stitches I did at the neckline! I'm very proud.

I want a hat

More precisely, I need a hat. But when I need such thing, I might just as well want something I really like, right?

Right. Right now I really like this early 19th century embroidered straw Swiss hat from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:



Although I prefer the shape of this one. And I'd even more like it to have some kind of a crown, to more or less work as a modern hat as well. So maybe something like this one. Or this 18th century bergére.

But I really, really like the embroidered brim of the Swiss one. That'd make a hat I could wear without feeling I have put a basket or placemat on my head. :D

So now I need to get a straw hat with wide brim. The embroidery I could do myself.

Look what I've got!

I found it in a secondhand bookshop, among lots and lots of postcards.
(I also brought some of the postcards home.)

I think the dress is really pretty. What I see of it. Her hairstyle is quite interesting, too. And, of course, it's a lovely vintage photo of a young mother with her child and that's sweet in itself.

How old do you think it is? 1910s? Early 1920s?

Progress, and old new fabric (2) + thrift shop finds

I'm still working on the chemise. I wanted to finish it by the end of June, which I did not manage. But now it's only the neckline and the bottom hem to go. So, right now (or, more exactly, few moments ago), I'm sewing together strips of bias-cut fabric to sew at the neckline, while watching Alarm für Cobra 11 and feeling slightly dizzy at it.
(Funnily enough - remember the film about apostle Paul I mentioned in one of my previous posts? Well, it turns out the actor who played Paul also played one of the main characters in the first season of Cobra 11. Only in the first season; he left the show after that. I only saw one episode from Season 1 and I personally think the actors who came after him were better suited for it. So, well.)

I went to the post office this morning, for a letter, and while I was in town, I bought some notions (short zippers for eventual new versions of Andrea or something - one pink, for the flowered seersucker) that were on discount, and dropped into a thrift shop. That didn't go so luckily. I found a lovely pair of vintage-y modern shoes - too small. Plus two drapes with pretty print that would be suitable for eventual Regency dresses - cotton/polyester blends. Eugh. Thanks, I won't take that. So I felt a bit disappointed about that...

The Very Pink Poplin is probably some kind of blend. More on that later, perhaps. (I seem to be promising that very often, did you notice?)

Here are the promised treasures:



Purple velvet drape-thingummy. It's a very, very pretty colour, but the person who made it into the drape-thingummy sewed a number of pintucks on it - on the wrong side. To attach some rings for the draping. So now, when I rip the seams at the pintucks, there are stripes of different texture (and colour) on it. Still, it's lovely. I thought of making a short-sleeved spencer out of it (if such thing existed), but then I decided it'd be better to make it into covers for some of my favourite books. You know, I really like books. And some of them really deserve pretty covers.



And more velvet, two rusty hues. I really, really want to turn these into a dress for winter. Something to wear to church and similar places. Based on the medieval pattern I'm draping for myself. I really think it would be lovely. I only have to figure out how to make it look not costume-y, just unique.

The velvets seem to be cotton or rayon. Certainly not the melting kind of artificial. Fantastic.

There are still more fabrics, but I do not have good photos of them, because the light changed after that. It's VERY sunny and very hot now. :P I want some rain!


Oh, and while I did not score at the thrift shop today, I did on Thursday, in the bookshop. I got C.S. Lewis' Four Loves. In English. As good as new. For 50 CZK.
Remembering that makes me realise that the shoes and drapes of today were far less interesting finds.
(I also got Hiawatha that day. Czech edition from 1952, with pretty patterned cover and Native-American-like illustrations. For 45 CZK. And the other day, a thick Hungarian-Czech dictionary from 1910, in perfect condition, for 80 CZK. I love that bookshop.)

Design your own 1860s dress...

... by tracing. Bonny Blue designed clever kits of printed designs that you can trace and combine and colour out and, simply, play dress-up on paper with.
It's something I would have totally loved as a child. I still love it, only I'm not so much into 1860s. I mean, I am into them, the way I'm into almost all historical fashions, but I'm not into them enough to really really want this. I'd rather love the Regency kit that's coming next.
But if you are interested in 1860s fashions badly enough, and manage to read this before Saturday June 26th (not much time left, I know), you can even win one of the clever kits in a giveaway.