Adverts for fashionable clothing in 1916

Still doing research on Swedish weekly magazines from the 1910s. The bonus of this is of course that I get to photograph a lot of adverts that are useful sources for fashions of the time.

The summer blouse "Astrid", sold by "Astréamagasinet", who claim to be Stockholm's oldest shop specializing in blouses)

Advert for Florodol soap, who advertised in every issue of "Vecko-Jorunalen". This one claims that you increase your marksmanship (in the game of love) by using the soap.

"New corsets", ad for A. Jönsson & co, from Göteborg.

Cheap ladies' lingerie advertised by Nordiska Kompaniet, the first Swedish departement store, in Stockholm.

"All kinds of clothes, for gents, ladies and children" . Advertising for "Syfabriken i Älfsered".

Viking shoe polish for textile shoes. The brand still exists.

Two ads from the Gothenburg departement store Vollmers-Meeths (later just Meeths). Taffeta skirts and white blouses; and their corset "Tango". Of course tango was all the rage at the time.

And finally four adverts from the Gothenburg based sewing factory Wettergrens, who were known for staying very true to the Paris trends.

Bliaut and Visby town wall

Going through old photos I realized that I never posted this photo, where I think that my green silk bliaut look particularly fine. It's from Medieval week 2005.

Fashion in Sweden 1915

I'm currently doing some research which involves looking at Swedish weekly magazines from the 1910s. And I thought that I'd share some images of fashionable dress from them with you.

Vecko-Journalen 1915

What I am making for Valeria

It took one of my friends less than a minute to guess.

Guess what I am going to make?

Today my white cotton/silk satin arrived from Pure silks . There was no way I could have afforded 100%  silk satin of this thickness, so I went for a mix, justifying it with the fact that mixes of cotton and silk were not unknown in the 16th century. This is it.

So - can you guess what I'm making? It's for my daughter Valeria btw, not for me.

The trim is from Indiabeautifulart on eBay, my absolute favourite eBay shop.

A waffenrock

In January baron Måns and I made a waffenrock for him. He doesn't normally do 16th century German, but he and some friends are going to the Estrella War in the US as a co-ordinated group, and they decided to do landesknecht/German 16th century.

We will have proper photos taken later, but here's a sneak photo, on his Instagram.

This was the image we used as inspiration. From the Hofkleiderbuch des Herzogs Wilhelm IV. und Albrecht V.

The mint green satin kirtle is finished

Yesterday we had sewing meeting at my place and my friend Anna helped me even out the hem of my mint green kirtle. The satin had been stretching like crazy (cutting it was a nightmare) and finally we decided that the best we could do was taht I put it on and she cut the fabric while I wore it - pinning it would have been useless, sincethe fabric would have moved in all directions when I took the kirtle off and put it on the table.

To stabilize it I used a cotton bias tape to hem it, like I had done around the neck line. While cotton bias tape certainly isn't period, using tape or strips of fabric to stabalize things is. It's all hand sewn anyway - I would have haed to sew this fabric on machine.

These are just quick photos, I put on a slightly supportive shift (that badly needs ironing, if you see lumps showing through the satin) and hubby took some quick photos. No headwear or anything, just shift and kirtle.

When I have forgotten how much I hated cutting the kirtle I will start on the surcoat from the same fabric. It may take a week or so ;)

Photographing shiny fabric is...interesting.

16th century lace edgings with a fringe

As is well known, Italy was the birthplace of lace in the late 15th/early 16th century (an short history of lace can be found here). It appears that it is a very good place to find lace for your 16th century costumes too. I bought this in Bologna, because I had a memory of having seen Italian lace with a fringe, or small tassels at the edge. And because Dr Lena Dahrén, a good friend, lacemaker and expert on renaissance lace said that it looked okay, for a modern machine made lace - it is always good to have one of the leading experts in a field with you when you go shopping for haberdashery ;)

I put it aside when I got hoem (this was last September), because, as you might have noticed, I am currently only making stuff from ca 1250-1330.

But just because I'm not actually sewing stuff from 16th century Italy doesn't mean that I'm not doing research for further use, and this week I have been looking at Italian lace, mainly from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has an excellent collection of early lace. And see: fringes and tassels!

link to object

link to object

link to object

link to object

I don't really know what I'll make with my lace yet, but it may end up on an apron with lace insertions and this lace at the edge, or a towel, like this 16th century Italian one, also from the Met.

link to object

Having another go at photographing the colour of my silk

Taken on the balcony. It's cloudy, but still daylight, and on my monitor this actually looks like the fabric does.

The new colour

Of course it's impossible to take  aphot that really shows the colour properly. Especially since it's dark  and grey outside and the lamps give a yellow light, but this is a try.

A much better colour

I wasn't really happy with the strong colour of my new silk, nor with the blue tint of the green. But I was content to live with it and thought that I would get used to it eventually. I cut out the front and back pieces and side gores - and let me tell you that that fabric is Evil! It moves if you just think about it.
This meant that I had to recut pieces while sewing to make them fit together (the armscyes looked totally different on the left and rigth sides for example), but now it looks rather good. The body part of the tunic is now hand sewn together and all the seams are felled. Later today I will hopefully have the energy to cut out the sleeves

When sewing I tried removing a smudge of dirt on one of the pieces and found that the fabric became much lighter in the colour. So I washed it. First the two pieces of the gown by hand in the wash basin, then I took all of it down to the laundry room and washed it on the wool cycle. it was a lot of extra dye in that fabric: