Thrift Store Finds: making a 1920s Flapper-worthy hand bag from a ladies blouse

A bit of a 'quickie' project to help me feel accomplished in between finishing off bigger fish.  One of the things I made time for on my trip to LA last summer was to hit up some thrift stores.  One of my finds from the Goodwill of Los Angeles (just west of Beverly Hills and south of Hollywood) was this blouse, a Hale Bob beaded silk burnout tank top that I practically tore off the hanger and hid under my arms.  It's the kind of top that, while pretty, I could never personally wear and do justice.  But as luck would have it, it was just enough fabric for a kick ass purse.

The color.  The beading.  The pattern... there was nothing about this that I didn't love.

Blouse was lined in a bright yellow habotai silk, and so I cannibalized that to be my purse's lining.

Only $2.99.  Considering similar blouses on the store's website were running around $140, I got off pretty light.

I happened to already have a ball clasp purse frame in the stash, so I used that as the foundation.  The lining and fashion layers were separated, and a bit of scrap yellow cotton was used to sketch out a pattern (and later as an interlining to give the finished bag some shape).  Basically, from the hinges up, I added a half-inch to the finished dimensions to allow for seams to be folded down.  Then I free-handed a basic purse-like shape that was wider than the handle, but would end up being gathered in at the top edges to meet the hinges.  I did the whole thing over top of the lining to remind myself of what my absolute limits to the dimension would have to be.

I took the cotton pattern and folded it in half before cutting so that I'd end up with something a bit more symmetrical that what I could manage by hand.

I treated the interlining as a sort of flatlining for the lining silk.  I did this because I wanted to install pockets and they needed something of structure to attach to.  I made up the template by pulling out the things that I knew I wanted easily accessible.  By having the heavy phone anchored to the wall of the lining, I could avoid having a bag that sagged in the center under it's weight.  The pen and cash/card pockets were for things easily lost in a big bag.  I just approximated about a half inch of space around each of the items for ease of use.

  

I folded the lining fabric over the edges of of the interlining once on three sides, and folded down twice on what would be the top edge.  The bottom corners were turned in to keep them from straying into the seam allowance on the bottom edge.

Finished pocket attached to the lining, flat-lined to the cotton interlining.  I put a row of stitches across the bottom of the cash n cards pocket to raise these items up a bit to make them easier to retrieve. 

The fashion and lining layers were assembled separately by laying the right sides together and stitching around the bottom/sides to within just over a half inch of each top corner.  The lining was sewn on the machine, but the delicate burnout velvet fashion layer was done by hand (mostly to keep my machine from eating the bead).

So sheer!

The fashion layer was attached to the purse frame first by folding the top edge over the bar and hand-stitching in place.

Then the lining was inserted and the top edges folded under, then whip stitched to the fashion layer just under the bar.  The outer corners were folded under and whip stitched as well, and then the points of those corners were tack stitched to the insides of the corners near the hinges to give the bag a bit of a gathered effect.  I made sure to  put the tag back into the finished purse, as a reminder of the piece's former life.  It makes me smile.

Slap on a beaded tassel and TA DA!  We're done!  Now to find an excuse to wear it.  :)

HSF 15: The Great Outdoors - the Mink Fur Muff

I certainly feel like this is one of the weirder things I've ever made.  About a year ago, my mother let me dig through her significant stash built up from decades of sewing and crafting.  One of the things that she passed on to me was mink stole that had certainly seen better days.  Mom made bears for a time, and one of her friends had passed the stole on to her and so it's just been sitting in people's stashes for ages now.  Fast forward to last December when I had a Steampunk holiday tea to dress for and as it was flipping cold out and I didn't have gloves to match the Victorian ensemble I'd planned to wear, I decided to make a muff.  This was one of those projects that sounded much simpler in my head: cut rectangles of lining, fluff and fur, sew together and Viola!   You're done.

Yeah, not so much.  First thing to do was to METICULOUSLY and very gently remove the fur from it's fabric lining.  The stole was two long strips of fur sewn side-by-side and I needed something shorter and wider than that, so the fur "strips" then had to be separated and cut in half to make the new shape.  

Next up was to sew the fur onto a backing material.  I chose to use the same silk as I was using for the lining so that when I sewed the fur layer to the lining, I could do it by the backing instead of putting more stitch holes in the fur.  This way, any backing that peaked through would be unnoticeable.  I went into this thinking that this step would have been simple... WRONG!  Despite seeming quite rectangular when in the stole, the resulting pieces were anything but.  I ended up having to pull the pieces in towards the cut ends, which ended up giving me a rectangle that was narrower at one end than the other.

Strips of fur had to be sewn together before being sewn to the backing material.
You can kind of see on the left there where even these strips were originally pieced.

Fur whip stitched to the backing fabric in a rust colored thread that would disappear in the fur.

Next I had to work on the insides.  I had seen where others had been quilting the interior of their muffs and I figured that seemed like a good idea.  More than anything, I like how the quilting it kept the lining material from shifting and bunching, which would have been unsightly.

Quilting on the sewing machine, because SURELY that would be easier than doing it by hand, right?

Aaaaand, this is about the place where the project got bagged up and put on hold until today.  I pulled it out and started trying to assemble the layers, not realizing until half-way through that my rectangle of fur was not a true rectangle.  I worked around this by assembling the lining and fur into tubes separately, then stuffing the lining inside the fur tube and hoping for the best.  The added bulk of the buckling lining means that the muff retains a bit of its rounded shape, even without a pair of hands in it.  The fur backing and lining were whip stitched together and a fabric wrist strap was inserted into one end.  The fur was old and quite delicate, and many of the mink tails broke along the way.  The stubby bits were left on one edge and the only remaining full tail was inserted into a pretty yellow bow and pined to the front of the muff.

Now it just needs to be not August and cold enough so that I can find and excuse to wear it!

What the item is: fur muff

The Challenge: The Great Outdoors

Fabric: mink recovered from a vintage stole, silk crepe, cotton batting

Pattern: none

Year: this could work for anything from the late 1700s up into the early 20th century.

Notions: poly ribbon and thread, scrap ribbon for cinching in the ends and a touch of tacky glue.

How historically accurate is it? meh, not too shabby, I suppose. Though I didn't really base it on any existing pieces or images.

Hours to complete: 10, perhaps. The fur had to be painstakingly removed from it's original backing and then pieced back together into a more rectangular shape. Lesson learned, I will NOT be working with real fur again any time soon.

First worn: it WAS intended for a holiday tea back in December, but set aside in the rush. It'll have to wait for it to not be August and sweltering before it gets to see the light of day.

Total cost: fur was gifted to me from my mom's stash and the silk was leftover from making a dress for a friend. So out of pocket? $3 worth of batting. But the valuation would have been closer to $60, given the shabby state of the fur.

HSF 8: UFOs (UnFinished Objects) - Cranberry Short Gown

I first started working on this back in November, thinking that I'd finish it in time for the last HSF challenge of 2013 - Celebrate.  I'd already completed every other item needed for a simple 18th century outfit, all I needed was the top.  Well, life being what it is, I got preoccupied making Christmas gifts and then investing everything that I had into the 1920s Batman villains group.  So, into the bottomless pit that is my WIP basket on the shelf.  Four months later, I finally found the few hours that I needed to finish the trim and stomacher.

So this gown is made from a single decorative shower curtain that I picked up at Goodwill for a whole $2.99.  I kid you not.  It may be polyester, but there's a small diamond pattern woven into the material and it's just worn enough that, from a few feet away it's kind of hard to tell.  I found that using stupid cheap materials helped me get over the freak out of trying something completely different.  Most of my historical sewing has been from the Victorian era onward, so the drastically different construction styles of the 1700s were a bit intimidating for me.  But with this, I found I could just let go of the stress over trying to get it 'right', since hey, it's an effing shower curtain.  It's already so far off of accurate that it's just not worth worrying about.

Pattern listed in this Duran Textiles newsletter, which I almost certainly came across on the HSF Facebook.

As you can see, I took some serious liberties with the pattern.  I had to sew two panels of the shower curtain together to get a piece of fabric wide enough, but then I cut the gown in one piece, just like the pattern said.  But when I tried it on I felt like I was wearing a sack.  While it's not intended to be a flattering piece, I kinda felt like it needed a little something more.  So I took in the side seams down to the waist, putting the rest of the skirt into an inverted box pleat.  There's a box pleat in the center back, which is top-stitched down to the waist, then left open in the skirt.  I also cut back the center fronts a couple of inches and had the gown close over a stomacher instead.

I took advantage of all of those pre-hemmed ruffles from the shower curtain to add ruching around the neckline and sleeve cuffs.  This was one of those things that sounded simple enough in my head, but ended up being awfully cumbersome in actuality.  While technically straightforward, hand gathering all of that trim felt like it took forever.  Seriously, 80% of the time spent on this had to be working on that trim.

The gown closes over a stomacher in the center front, but the front edges tuck under
the giant ruffle so that you can't see them.  It kinda makes it look like it's all one piece.

From the side, showing the box pleat that lets the skirt open up over the petticoats (that I'm not wearing).

It dips down low enough in the back that I shouldn't have any trouble tucking a fichu around the neck.

And the stomacher all on it's own.  There are six zip ties at 1 inch intervals sewn between
two layers of cotton canvas.  then the front and back were covered with cranberry fabric.  

What the items is: 18th Century Short Gown

The Challenge: #8 UFO

Fabric: one ruffly polyester shower curtain from the Goodwill

Pattern: modified from the one published in this Duran Textiles newsletter.

Year: mid- to late-18th century

Notions: polyester thread, zip ties.

How historically accurate is it?  Maybe 40% if I'm stretching it.  I took some liberties with the pattern and the materials are laughable for accuracy.

Hours to complete: 15+ (hand ruching only sounds simple in your head)

First worn: Figments and Filaments is coming up this weekend.  I'm thinking of breaking it out for that.

Total cost: $3 for the shower curtain, perhaps a $1 worth of interlining for the stomacher and a half dozen zip ties.


And to top it off, here are some of the extant garments that I used for inspiration:

18th c Cotton Caraco (Belgian), from the Met.

Caraco Jacketc 1760 (altered 1780), LACMA.

Silk Dress c 1778 (French), the Met

Plaid silk caraco jacket, c. 1770 listed by Whitaker Auctions.