The 1910's suit adventure...
Welcome to one of my ongoing sewing adventures. I call this one the 1910's ladies suit project. I aquired 2 copies of the fashion advisory magazine The Minister's Gazette of Fashion on e-bay. One issue is from September, the other one from December of 1913. Both magazines were intended for the professional tailor, to advise in the latest fashions and to teach new skills. Both issues have diagrams and instructions for drafting 2 ladies jackets. This said, I set out to draft the pattern for what is called " A smart ladies autumn jacket". With instructions from 1913. As not to bore you with the gory details, one needs a big piece of paper, a yard stick, a pencil, several cups of coffee, assorted chocolates and 25 hours of time......I made a proto type jacket and below is what it looks like. It's in a style called cut away, since the front is shaped to look cut out. The sleeve style is called a Bishop sleeve, but I have also developed a more modern sleeve. I'm currently working on a second jacket which will have a matching skirt when it's all said and done. Ultimatly I would like to be able to offer these suits in more than just one size and in more varieties of design. Right now I can make the jacket in a size 4, which is what the drafting instructions were for. I'm working on larger sizes as we speak. When I say suit, I mean Titanic style boarding suit, with the fitted jacket and skirt, just in different colors, etc. To top things off, I'm looking into making some matching hats to go with all of this and am currently researching THAT issue on the net. Bookmark this page and check back often, as I will be adding things on as I come along. To be continued!
The jacket on it's own works great with modern styled clothes, such as khaki pants like in the pic or a straight cut long black skirt. The Edwardians were famous for notoriously small armholes and I did make some change in the pattern to accomodate more what todays woman is used to, but the way the sleeve curves around the arm itself has not changed and the entire thing is nicely fitted. The buttons are black satin covered.
1913 Ladies suit...
Here's an update to my 1910's suit project, for all of you who follow my website and watch my auctions, you will notice I have come around full circle. My suit is done and up for auction right now. Isn't this stylish? The jacket is basically the same as my proto type, I did make some small changes in the pattern for better fit. The skirt has the features described in the text found in the 1913 fashion magazine, I modified a modern skirt pattern for general construction. It has a zipper and hook and eye closure in the back. This would have been highly un-edwardian, since zippers had not been invented back then, but the long jacket covers this and heck, it's 2002. I have another suit in works right now, this time in a light blue with navy satin trim and some embroidered "frog" closure details on the front and sleeves. I hope to have this done in the next week or so and will then update this page. It's also going up for bids on ebay. I'm afraid my suit adventures will then have to rest for a while, since it looks like I'm getting clobbered with new customer orders, very exciting gowns are being ordered!
Another suit, pretty in blue/ periwinkle...
This one follows the jacket seen above and has a new detail for the skirt. The frog closures are fake, I couldn't find navy blue ones, so I embroidered fake ones, the jacket closes with an integrated loop and button. The lapels and collar are trimmed with navy blue satin.
Yet another update.....
Well, time flies fast when you're having fun and a few weeks prior to my move to Colorado I completed another suit, the Boarding suit from "Titanic". Since I couldn't locate the off white black pinstriped linen fabric needed to reproduce the suit to a T, I used ivory colored linen instead. This project also made me realize I still needed to improve on my existing pattern, so I made more changes to it and was very pleased with the outcome. Here are a few pics of what it looks like. I'm also in process of re-making the jacket for the grey suit shown above and will update my pictures here once it's done. Unfortunatly I still haven't had time to scale the pattern up to any other size than a 4, so this is still to come.
