Modern life

Two street drinkers outside the Co-Op. The man is hanging on to the wire crate holding all the cardboard boxes to help him stay standing up. Swaying, he gives some money to the woman. As she goes into the shop to calls out to him: "What do you want if they haven't got goat's cheese?"

More upcycled vintage curtains...

And as they originally were:

A little scarf can go a long way!

I make clothes, cushion covers, purses and bags all the time but I honestly cannot remember the last time I went into a fabric shop and bought a length of fabric to make something!

Although many charity shops have been picked clean and all the best stuff has ended up in fancy vintage shops now, there’s always a basket of scarves, and you can make a simple garment out of a couple of these. Scarves come in different sizes, from small  “pocket squares” to sarongs, but a common size is  just under 70 cm square, and these are ideal.

The weight of the scarves dictates the success of the garment. Your fabric your scarves are made of needs to be the same weight  – although not necessarily of the same type. If the scarves are very old, check that they have not thinned through wear or exposure to the light, or the fabric may tear. Look for moth damage or cigarette burns – if you are being economical with fabric there is no margin for wastage. Finally, if you are not sure you’ll have enough fabric, buy an extra one to use for facings (the linings inside the garment that make sure the neckline  and armholes lie flat).

I find my sewing patterns in charity shops and fleamarkets. Originally I bought them for the illustrations of the envelopes. Go by the measurement, not the dress size as sizing has changed considerably over the years.

What particularly I like about these scarves as a source of dressmaking fabric are the prints. When choosing scarves to re-make have a good look at the print and, as well as working out how the colours and prints are going to go together with two or more scarves, consider the placement of the print. As these scarves are not designed to be worn flat, rather they would be tied to go around the neck or folded to be worn as a headscarf, the print is often more dense around the edges than in the centre. This dictates where you will put your pattern pieces.

For this shell top (below) I wanted to use the areas where there were more leaves and to incorporate the border and the rolled edges of the scarf rather than hide them in the seams, so I put the side seams of my pattern piece right up against the edge of the scarf. The rolled edge prevents fraying and means I can get away with the tiniest of seams. You might like to use the zip foot on your sewing machine to sew tightly up against the rolled edge or baste the seam first (this is a good idea anyway as the silks and rayon fabrics usually used for scarves are slippery to sew).

As a rough guide, two 70 cm scarves can make a sleeveless top or a simple skirt, or a dress or a shirt for a small child. The only things you will need to buy are a lightweight zip and a small amount of iron–on interfacing (although I often skip this and sew the facings down, pressing them first to make sure they lie flat).

Two smaller scarves can make a cushion cover. These are, on average, 40 cm square. All you need to do is sew in a zip then sew around the remaining three edges. You can get away with using lighter weight silk scarves than you could for clothing if you back them with iron-on interfacing first. You can also use damaged scarves by making a patchwork of the good bits of different ones.

Any offcuts that might possibly be left after all that make great linings for purses and make-up bags.

Website: http://www.atelierbricolage.co.uk

Silk screen prints on upcycled  wallpaper and fabrics are available at her Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AtelierBricolage

Using collage to make the most of a mis-print

The beginnings of my vintage life

When I was 14 I used to spend my Saturdays in Attica, a second-hand shop (this is pre-"vintage") in The Haymarket, Newcastle, lingering over the full-skirted 1950s dresses. The rails were bursting with them and they were £15 each. Why I never bought one, I cannot tell you. I spent so much of my time in there it's a wonder the owner never once said to me "Oi, you – buy something or get out!"

I remember a particular beauty with big orange roses all over it. Years and years later, I finally got a similar one, and I've just sold it on eBay. I never wear it, but it's such a difficult thing to finally let go of. Goodbye, lovely frock, I feel genuinely sad.

At the time I did buy: old leather hatboxes to use as bags, men's pyjama trousers which I wore as trousers with the flies sewn up and the hems rolled, men's pinstripe suit jackets with the back cinched in with a row of carefully-aligned kilt pins, defunct watches which I took apart and re-made as brooches (how very steampunk – I was ahead of my time!) and those kids' plimsoles (we always called them "sandshoes") with the elasticated inserts on the front.

Attica moved to the other end of the city and will be closing at the end of August.

New screen prints at Jones & Green

A selection of new screen prints, mounted and packed up ready to go on sale at Jones & Green gallery on Brighton seafront.

http://www.jonesandgreen.co.uk

Little bit of sewing…

Using some of my stash of vintage fabric and a vintage dressmaking pattern.

The Seaside Adventure

My new book – hot off the press!

Ugly Beautiful

I'm often drawn to things I find ugly. I can't explain it…

http://www.pinterest.com/carolseatory/ugly-beautiful/

Marimekko pocket pattern riot

I've always loved a pattern mix but it was this dress that inspired me, a few years ago now, to start dressmaking using a mix-and-clash of printed textiles.

The dress is the "Iloinen Takki" dress by Marimekko. Much as I admire a pocket, I love the pockets far more for their scattered pops of colour and shape than their pockety-ness.

I much prefer the child's version of the dress to the adult's. Partly because of the proportion of the pockets against the dress, but also because I'm no fan of cuteness in adult clothing and I find this a tad twee for my liking.

This was the outcome of my first textile mash-up and still remains one of my favourites of my children's dresses. There was very little of that grey leaf-print 1950s' fabric I used for the border as it was once a curtain that someone had used as a dust sheet for decorating and most of it was covered in white paint. 

If you look closely you can see a couple of pockets too – their exact positioning was the subject of much deliberation at the time!

I used a simple 1960s' pinafore pattern with facings and a back zip which I have made so many times since I'm sure could do it blindfolded! (Just as well, as the old pattern has been used so often it is now as flimsy as a cobweb.)

This was a very versatile garment – it could be worn over tights and a long-sleeved top in colder weather and as a sundress in the summer. The A-line shape made it easy to run and climb in and the simple silhouette lent itself to any weight of fabric.

New website now live

I found time to update the Atelier Bricolage website this week and it is now online at: http://www.atelierbricolage.co.uk

Sewing article for HandmadeJane blog

Due to an ever-growing to-do list of dull, dull, dull things I wanted to avoid doing (but had to face eventually) I have been indulging in a lot of displacement activity in the form of dressmaking. As usual, I used vintage fabrics and patterns and I have written a piece about this for sewing blog handmadejane...

I have sewn and made things all my life. I have also always been a terrible hoarder. Along with vintage clothing, I have been collecting pieces of vintage fabric since my teens, mostly attracted by the prints and colours of the early 1960s.

A few years ago, I started making children’s clothes from pieces too small for anything else. I found two vintage children’s patterns that would just squeeze a dress out of a piece of fabric barely bigger than a cushion cover. My favourite arty, abstract prints of the late ‘50s and very early ‘60s made for something quite different from the small, cute prints usually associated with children swear.

Having used up most of my stock of just-about-big-enough pieces of fabric, I allowed myself to start buying fabric again. I have a real fondness for the large scale prints of mid-century furnishing fabrics and if I can find a curtain (I never cut up a pair) with enough usable fabric left after the sun damage to the edges and any paint has been cut off (old curtains were often used as dust sheets for decorating), this can make an adult-sized dress.

For this dress, I particularly enjoyed playing with the contrast of skeletal winter trees with a sleeveless summer dress. But there was also the fact that there was so much damaged fabric there was not enough left for the sleeves!

I started collecting vintage patterns purely for the illustrations on the envelopes. I used to display these in frames, but luckily I saved all the pattern pieces. Alongside the practical considerations of salvaging usable pieces of reclaimed fabric, there are also things to consider about using vintage patterns.

Firstly there’s the sizing issue. Standardised dress sizes have changed dramatically over the years, so whatever dress size it says on the pattern, ignore it and go by the bust size instead (luckily, this is always included).  

Secondly there’s the fit: bear in mind that period clothes were designed to be worn over the underwear of the time – pointy bras, corseted waists, girdled stomachs. What this also means is that the bust and waist are generally high and the bust darts may need to be adjusted unless you’re going to go the whole nine yards with a conical bra! This high bustline can also mean high and narrow armholes, depending upon the cut of the garment.  The waist-hip ratio is often more extreme than nowadays (smaller, corseted or girdled waists) – if a waistband is part of the garment then it may well be a good idea to check and adjust the pattern.

Finally, these patterns tend to have more complicated diagrams and verbose instructions than modern ones. It’s not only patterns – the instructions for my sewing machine (a “Diplomat“ from 1963) have illustrations with so much intricate detail of the engraving on the deluxe model that there is no way of seeing the complicated route the thread is supposed to take. So make some time to read the instructions before you start, with a clear head – especially if you tend to sew at night when the kids are in bed, as I do.

I am finding that as my friends’ parents get older, boxes of fabric from hoarding mothers and grandmothers are coming my way. One of my friends has given me several large boxes of clothes her mother never got around to mending and garments she cut out and never made. In one box alone there were five red and white gingham school dresses to fit a girl of approximately 7 years old – and my friend is now 50!

The huge advantage of using deadstock (old but unused) fabric over salvaged fabric is that it will almost always have been stored away from the light, so there is no fading or wastage. Lots of these fabrics are of much better quality than you would easily find nowadays, particularly the linens and wools. The downside is that, if you make to order, you can’t always have exactly what you’re looking for – you have to wait until the right thing comes along and some colours are not as common as they are nowadays. However, if you like the typical colours of a particular period, dyes are different now and the shades are quite unlike the ones in modern fabrics.

It’s not only the patterns and fabric I’m giving a new lease of life to – as well as using my Diplomat when I secretly have a modern sewing machine stored under the bed, never having taken it out of its box – I also use vintage threads, zips and buttons. I often see free-standing wooden sewing boxes at fleamarkets and boot fairs. Nine times out of ten these are still full of threads, notions and equipment. I started buying bagfuls of this stuff when I was making the children’s dresses and getting through a very large amount of bias binding and I’m still working my way though all the threads, hooks and eyes and zips.

My real weakness is buttons: I have jar after jar of sorted, colour-coded vintage buttons and have to try and stop myself buying more whenever I see them. Recently I bought a very large tin with an enamelled design of a Chinese dragon and when I got it home found that it was full to the brim with sets of beautiful buttons already sorted and bundled.

These two dresses were made from patterns I’ve been thinking about using for some time. Seven carrier bags of fabric arrived from somebody’s mother’s hoard a couple of weeks ago, so I had plenty of fabric to choose from! This wool jersey was great for an early 1960s column dress, but the fabric was too bulky for the bow that trims the “empire band” across the bust in the pattern. I was very lucky to find a deadstock bolt of this leaf print crisp linen in a junk shop – I just have to remember not to sit on the chair (salvaged, naturally!) I upholstered with the same fabric when I wear it!

http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AtelierBricolage

http://www.carolseatory.co.uk

From A to B and Back Again

Hard at work!

…If you can call it work!

Birds, stage-by-stage

Here is the stage-by-stage process of my new bird print – from original line drawing to a selection of prints, finished and laid out to dry!

Original line drawing in Indian ink.

Re-drawn branch, feathers comb and tail detail.

Selection of finished prints on various wallpaper backgrounds, laid out to dry.

Staffordshire China

Great article on Staffordshire China and its enduring appeal for British artists through the generations.

http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/those-of-us-who-love-staffordshire-china/