Vintage Scottish Skirt Out

I promised when I finished my skirt made from a 1950s vintage fabric with a lovely Scottish pipers and drummers print to show you later some pictures when I wear it. It was made for a special event, and as usual there was no time to make some pictures before, during or after.

Today, Ascension Day, it's a public holiday in Switzerland and my husband has a day off. As the weather was sunny in the morning, we decided to go to the Zurich airport which is a 10 minutes drive from our place away. There's a huge terrace for visitors and you can show your kids all the things that are happening. Even if they don't yet understand (like our son) or don't are too much interested (like our daughter), there are some attractions for kids that are fun for them.

This is my family. My 3 treasures.

Is there a better place than an airport where people leave for their travel destinations to wear this Scottish themed skirt? Scotland is my favourite country one of my favourite countries, so we hoped to take some nice pictures there.

In the end is was rather difficult. Wearing vintage is a bit of a dare in Switzerland. People stare. Always. Mostly women wearing leggings. I let them stare, but being photographed is intimidating anyway for me. So I thought it would be nicer and more relaxing to make some photographs in our garden, as it's in full bloom currently.

So here you go.

I am wearing a petticoat, but it's not very full, and I will have to try how it looks with another one.

The waistband is a little bit on the wide side, and unfortunately it's even made of a poplin that has some stretch to it (totally not-vintage, I know, but it was the only fabric that matched the black of the skirt and the fabric weight). As I still would like to lose 3 or 4 kilos, I maybe will have to make it a little bit smaller later. Until then I feel quite good with the skirt, even with the petticoat. A little bit "poofy", especially as the skirt is white.

Looking at the pictures now I think I will cut my hair by some centimeters... And I realise wearing this kind of skirt I look smaller somehow. Is this normal?

Ok, I can't pose, but I can make silly faces...

A detail I love particularly is my 1940s celluloid jewelry. The earrings have roses, and the clamper even has some orchids on it! As you may guess from my garden, I love flowers. 

skirt: made by me after this pattern

fabric: vintage fabric form the 1950s found on Etsy

peasant top: off-the shelf

shoes: Swedish clogs from Moheda toffelen (my favourites, veeeery comfortable!)

jewelry: true 1940s celluloid jewelry from Ebay / Etsy

lipstick: Russian Red by Mac

From Switzerland's Countryside to.... the Kentucky Derby!

Picture: Karen Morris Millinery

As some of you may know, I have a weak spot for many things, and one of this spots is all about hats! In my shop on Etsy I have some high quality millinery materials available, mostly raffia braids that are produced in a manufactory nearby to where I'm living.

Straw hats used to be part of the traditional costumes that were worn by many people in the 19th century. There were different types, depending from the region, the social status of a person (and how rich they were, of course), the occupation, and if it was a holiday or just a working day... As a historian (yes, that's me, no joke) I can assure you that in those time by the type of costume a person was wearing you could tell pretty everything about her or his status.

A girl from the Wehntal, my "valley," in her costume with a typical straw hat with dried and artificial flowers, and the clothes were mainly made of linen and wool, or later cotton.

Another girl's costume from here, but for higher holidays (it was called "Sonntags-Tracht", which means "sunday's costume", and it was usually made of finer and more expensive fabrics such as silk for the apron and the black bonnet).

Switzerland was an agricultural country, it is still in some small parts, but straw was an affordable material and perfect for hats. Later, straw was replaced by raffia, which had different qualities and became very common for sunhats in the mid-century.

In some regions of my country there was a proper "hat industry" that produced the typical hats for a certain region. But as the rural occupation vanished, so did the costumes. And the hat makers.

My maternal grandmother and my mom as a child still wore costumes for special occasions, as they lived in the Bernese Oberland, a region that is still very rural and traditional.

To please my international reader's appetite for Swiss clichés: Sunday's costume, Canton Bern. The costume for adults was the same. The jewelry on the female's corset was made of filigree silver flowers. There were materials like velvet and silk, and the bonnet was made of velvet and horsehair lace.

But my paternal grandmother wouldn't even have thought about it, as she thought herself to be a modern (as modern as one could be back in the 40s and 50s) woman with "no dirts on her hands". And as fashion changed, and as traditions and farming vanished, hat makers and the whole millinery industry vanished as well. There are only a few manufacturers left, and even if there are still people wearing costumes and the appropriate hats, it's a very small percentage.

Sunday costume from the Canton Aargau, with a typical straw hat.

Women's costume from the Wehntal, Zurich, my region. It looks pretty much the same as a dirndl, a fitted bodice, a fuller skirt, an apron.

Hats were also worn this way. This is a beautiful example for a very thin straw trim used on this traditional accessory.

And in the nearby Black Forest (Germany), straw hats are bases for the amazing red pompons for this still very common costume.

But there is this manufactory left, and they produce the most beautiful materials, crinol (horsehair) and braided raffia and straw in amazing colours. I was very happy I found them, and as I planned to make some hats for my vintage outfits, I ordered some of those wonderful braids. However, I never came around to realise those plans, and so I put the braids in my shop. Especially, as I had to order the whole skein. What else can you do with so much yardage of raffia braid if you only need a 4 or 5 yards?

A nice customer who was attending a millinery course ordered some of the braids and made her first attempts with this wonderful material.

But the most amazing thing happened when a talented hat artist from the USA bought pretty much of my raffia braids. I asked her if she could show me one of the finished pieces once she used the braids, but I was not too hopeful, as I know too well how easily one can forget to get back to the seller. (Argh, I promised so many vintage fabric sellers to show them the pictures of my finished dresses...) I was hoping to get a link to her homepage, but the lady - Karen Morris - was so nice and wrote me such a kind message, including the pictures of her hat creation with "my" raffia braid.

Picture: Karen Morris Millinery

Picture: Karen Morris Millinery

The hat was a custom order for a lady who needed a hat for the Kentucky derby, and I feel very excited about the idea that something that came from my place will be at that special event. I grew up near the racecourse, and as a child I used to climb over the fences to see the horses. I hope the customer will feel as gorgeous as the hat looks like, it's an amazing piece of millinery art. I am happy I could contribute a tiny part to it. And I LOVE the red and pink combination!

Here are the links to Karen's Facebook page. I used her pictures with her friendly permission, thanks.

The Happy Housewife

No, this is most probably NOT how it will look like some years from now, on a distant Christmas, with my two perfectly educated kids assisting their perfect mother to serve a perfect meal...

I am a modern housewife. Means: I am not don't want to be perfect.

I love my kids. They're the world to me. I love my husband. He's so understanding and patient. (Oh yes, he really has to be patient with me, I admit.)
I make a lot of extra things for my family. We have a garden that makes a terrible lot of work for me. But it's for the benefit if all. My kids can play outside, they can yell and run, be happy, be kids.
From early summer to late autumn I produce syrups, chutneys and marmalades made from seasonal fruits, mostly from our garden. Elderflowers and -berries, rhubarb, strawberries, black currant, pumpkins, apples, prunes, onions... Perfect as gifts for Christmas.
If there is a special event, I sometimes work day and night to create special outfits, to make last-minute homemade gifts for newborns and other children.

But I'm not perfect. When it comes to housework, I'm a rather desperate case. I like to cook, but I don't stand up at 5 a.m. to prepare home-made pasta like my mother-in-law does.

That's probably me. I don't like to clean, but I do, as I prefer to live in a clean place.
But we will never live in a place as shiny as this one pictured here:

And that's how the kitchen is looking when my husband prepared a meal. But I wouldn't look as amused as the lady in the drawing.

Tidying up is the most difficult thing for me to do, as I am a rather chaotic creative person.

Looking at 1950s illustrations of perfect housewives doing a perfect job for their perfect families in perfect little homes in a perfect way, always with a perfect smile and looking - just perfect, makes me feel - not so perfect. But human and just like any average woman, not like a domestic goddess.

But still I LOVE such illustrations, as they show a variety of clothing from those times, especially lots of aprons. I didn't like aprons when I was younger, but I think vintage aprons are so adorable!

Yes, I love my husband for doing the hoovering (I hate hoovering! makes my backbone ache...) and for his understanding. Sometimes he comes home, and the dinner is not yet finished, but our daughter's new dress is. Oh yes, I am a very happy housewife!

My Vintage Style Silk Wedding Gown

Maybe it could be a good way to make you know me a little bit better by showing you my handmade vintage wedding dress. As many of you I'm not a professional seamstress, and I never had a particular sewing education, so this project was really something special. It was my first vintage project EVER. And it was a lot of work.

The whole thing started when I tried on a wedding dress in a bridal shop. I liked it a lot, but it was not comfortable, I don't like polyester and I was afraid of the embroidered tulle train. Besides that, it seemed to be "not me". The seller tried to hurry and made a lot of pressure, as it was the last piece. But I needed more time to think about, and I was not really sure about it, so a real odyssey on the search of the perfect dress began. 

I don't know how many gowns I tried on. And I guess I lost a lot of weight trying them on. Wish I could repeat it, it was an entirely comfortable way of losing weight... In my head I had the picture of my wedding gown I once had seen in a Vogue pattern book in the early 90s, but no dress came close to that somehow blurry picture. It had to be something completely different that was available in all those posh shops. In the end, I was so desperate that I started to search the internet for Vogue wedding gown patterns, hoping to find the ONE pattern I thought I had in my mind. Of course it was a hopeless quest...

But I found something else instead: pages and pages with the most beautiful vintage patterns from the 30s, 40s and 50s - and they all were much closer to what I had in mind than any dress I had tried on before. I fell in love with this vintage Givenchy pattern so much, but the only copy I found was too expensive. The fact that Hubert Givenchy designed this dress for the unforgettable and outstanding Audrey Hepburn makes it a very searched after item for pattern collectors... 

But I saw very soon that there are many very similar designs. So I bought some of these patterns and thought that each one of them, without sleeves and with some accessories, could make the perfect wedding gown for me. I soon realised that I would have to make it myself, as there are not so many professional seamstresses here in Switzerland, but I thought it would be possible. I had made some decently good fitting garments for me before, and I was confident to make it in time. My choice was this vintage pattern from about 1956, Butterick 7708. As many other patterns, I bought it on Etsy.

Still, the whole idea made me very nervous... 

Finding the perfect fabric was sheer luck. There are only two fabric stores left in Zurich, and I was so lucky to find the most beautiful Duiponi silk in champagne colour. I love roses, so I knew already from the beginning that I would add some fabric rose accessories. I was lucky again that they had the same fabric in a shade of pink. I felt so happy when I came home with my big bag full of this wonderful silk. I love silk, and I love roses (did I mention it before?), and therefore I had to have roses on wedding gown!



First I made the ring-cushion, just to get an idea of the fabric, how it felt to work with this silk. Then I made some kind of moussline, a test-bodice from a cotton-fabric to make all necessary alterations. I don't tell you how many times I had to alter the pattern (I guess women in the 50s had different body measurements, and I have a rather small bust), how many times I had to change this and that, as I wanted the dress to be sleeve-less and with some boning added to the side of the bodice. You really don't want to know that I had to re-make the silk-bodice again as I made a terrible mistake when I cut it the first time... At a certain point my dear husband (DH) and me had some sleepless nights as it seemed my sewing-machine didn't work properly anymore, and we were afraid it was broken. I always was afraid to run out of fabric (I still have some left!), and of course, I always was afraid to run out of time. Of course, it's a nightmare for a bride to add such a project to all the other, regular wedding preparations. I had so many sleepless nights, and in those hours in my mind I was always trying to find the perfect solution for the boning, for the under-skirt, for the straps, for the fabric roses etc... I was mentally sewing, when I was at work in my office and even at night. And, in addition to all, we were expecting our little daughter (I was in the 2nd month of my pregnancy at the wedding). This was such a special time, and my DH and I still look back from time to time and lough about it - especially remembering all the many times when he had to assist and close the zipper of the almost finished bodice with his eyes closed...

My dear friend Kunigunde with the finished gown

Of course, at a certain point, he couldn't help me anymore, and I'm glad I had a dress-form. (Her name is, by the way, Kunigunde.) Of course, I put an awful lot of work and time and nerves in this dress, but the more the dress advanced, the more I enjoyed it. In the end, making a pompadour and the rose accessories was just like having a delicious desert. The roses were made after a Vogue pattern (Bridal accents V7009), as well as the ring-cushion. The pompadour was made after a pattern from a 90s Burda magazine, and, the day before the wedding, I even had to make a bolero, as the weather was not so good as expected.

I was so proud when I put my dress on on my wedding day, so proud. And so were my parents. You can't imagine the feeling, and it made me feel even more special on this special day. And my husband's smile and look when I entered the church - I was so happy, and it was worth all the labour and the fears and the troubles.

Yes, I was already pregnant, but it's not the belly that shows it but my gesture. But nobody noticed... :-)

Today, almost 5 years later, when I look back to those weeks and especially look at my pictures, I don't regret it at all. Of course, some people looked down their noses at my "homemade" wedding gown, the probably thought it was not chic enough or not as posh as this or that glittering designer dress sold in the boutiques in Zurich City. But I don't care - this is a one-of-a-kind vintage style wedding gown, as unique as I wanted to feel on that wonderful day, and nobody ever could take that away from me and from my DH's memories. I certainly would make SOME things in a different way, and definitely I would start earlier. But this dress really makes part of our wedding, and I would do it again. 

My brand new Lutterloh measuring tape

Certainly to many a seamstress out there, Lutterloh is well-known. A sewing system called "the golden rule", which allows you to draw a pattern in your size from a miniature pattern. All you need is the Lutterloh measure tape inlcuding a special scale and some enlargening skills. And the original miniature pattern, of course.

Sounds simple enough. And yet a brilliant idea.

Recently I was given an extremely precious and generous gift: a kind lady gave me the copies of her Lutterloh collection, which is almost complete from the very beginnings in the mid 1930s until the year 2000 and somewhat. This IS a real treasure, believe me. I was so agitated and almost moved to tears, as I was a complete stranger to the nobel donator. I still feel very touched when I look at the inspiring designs of these decades. 

Look at this lovely design from the autumn 1939 issue. My father was born then, but I doubt my grandmother was looking so stylish. Living on the countryside in Northern Switzerland she probably was dressed more like a peasant woman, even though she ran a hardware store.

Autumn 1939

And these two beauties are from the winter/spring journal 1942/1943. Hard to imagine how during the WW2 such wonderful and lovely patterns were designed. It was, by the way, probably the first partially coloured issue.

Winter/spring 1942/43, during WW2

Well, of course, I'm not so taken with the 70s, not to mention the 80s (I grew up in this time, so I know how we look like on the pictures taken then....). But still I treasure these patterns. And you never know, what to me seems to be not so vintage, may be very vintage for my daughter one day.

Look at the coat, isn't it gorgeous?

Winter 1952

I could go on showing you pattern after pattern, each one beautiful and stylish. I promise, as soon as I tried out my fist Lutterloh pattern, I will surely make a very detailed post about it.

You see how small the patterns are. All those tiny numbers make me feel a little bit uneasy, but there is a nice instruction video on the company's homepage, which should make it easier to draw the patterns for my size. (I wouldn't probably look THAT slim, I'm still fighting to get rid of my "not-so-vintage" pregnancy pounds, he hee...)

But here's the best thing about it. As the measure tape the nice lady gave me was almost useless, I contacted the Lutterloh company.

They still exist, not so far from where I live, in Germany. I was called by Mr. Lutterloh himself who is an extraordinary kind and interesting person. The system was invented by his grandmother, so the company is still run by the family, now in the 3rd generation. He probably could tell a lot about his company. I like stories like this, really. He was very kind, so I could order a new measure tape. So, I am very sure that one of my ned projects will be a Lutterloh pattern!

I only (only?) have to figure out how to enlarge the pattern, but as it was easy enough back in 1936, it should be feasible today as well.

And there's good news! They plan to make a re-issue of some vintage pattern - so maybe some of you vintage sewers will be interested in this.

Welcome to my blog!

I'm quite busy being a mom to my two kids. I am a hobby-seamstress as well, sewing mainly children's stuff for my little ones and sometimes for customers. I'm a gardener as well, so during the summer months there's always a lot work out-doors. I have already two blogs, but one of them is put on ice for a while until the kids are older. So why another blog?

My other blog just wasn't the right place for my vintage obsession.

I have collected so many vintage sewing patterns I would like to show them to people who love them as much as I do.

You just can't do only vintage sewing. By and by, you get caught by the charm of those decades long gone. You get amazed by the hair-styles, the music, the life-style...

I was infected with the music of the 30s and 40s already as a child, listening to my father's jazz and swing music records. Yes, in those days we used to have those huge black records... And my mother used to sew. She still has a huge pile of vintage Burda magazines from the 60s and later. That collection of patterns was continued by me when I became a seamstress as well. And as time went by, I bought more and more vintage patterns. I have quite a nice collection, including many Lutterloh patterns from the very beginning in the mid-30s.

I am well aware that I never ever will be able to sew only half of all those. But I feel a joy in having all those beauties and looking at them makes me feel happy. Looking at photos from those decades is great fun.

I deeply hope to share this joy with others.