School Needlework

[englishangel]

Hi Kay

I think that you are absolutely correct. I was thinking about my question at about 2am and decided that I sensed her inner nastiness/misery.

I'm sure that Queenie was more vocal in her low opinion of me, but in her I sensed inner fun and caring (I know that not everyone will agree with me on this). With DR I sensed no deliberate nastiness, but a lack of understanding of teenage girls and the outside world of the 60s.

Has anyone ever checked to see whether JK is an Old Blue? SWSNBN certainly sucked all happiness and hope out of me.
xx

http://gaga.essortment.com/jkrowlingbiogr_reak.htm

[Angela Woodford]

I have a photo of the former, unfortunately in black and white, and I still have the pattern for the latter

I really wish I still had some of those 60's patterns Mary, I can't think why I didn't stash them away! Do you remember a Simplicity pattern for a mini pinafore dress with a chunky zip down the front operated by a large ring? It was rather popular. I made it in dark green wool, and appliqued a large sunflower in the region of my right iliac fossa. I loved it, and wore it till it fell to pieces!

One thing I never got the hang of doing well was the Bound Buttonhole. The wretched things never looked right!

How I wish that my mother hadn't chucked away my precious hoarded Honey magazines 1966 - 68! Fashion history.

Love, Munch

[Katharine]

One thing I never got the hang of doing well was the Bound Buttonhole. The wretched things never looked right!

Those I could do! Can't think why the summer dress I made in the Lower V had them in the pattern. It was a cotton dress and stitched would probably have been better, but I really mastered them and used them frequently in my dressmaking days! I can still see that pattern in my mind, and have very happy memories of the dress. Even the remnants had a happy end! Many of them went into toy mice for a charity bazaar in Islamabad more than 10 years later. No, I cannot explain why I got HM Government to pay for transporting my fabric remnants to the other side of the world!

[midget]

One thing I never got the hang of doing well was the Bound Buttonhole. The wretched things never looked right!

Those I could do! Can't think why the summer dress I made in the Lower V had them in the pattern. It was a cotton dress and stitched would probably have been better, but I really mastered them and used them frequently in my dressmaking days! I can still see that pattern in my mind, and have very happy memories of the dress. Even the remnants had a happy end! Many of them went into toy mice for a charity bazaar in Islamabad more than 10 years later. No, I cannot explain why I got HM Government to pay for transporting my fabric remnants to the other side of the world!

Of course you don't need a reason--no woman who has ever held a needle is complete without her stash of fabric remnants and I have xx-year's worth to prove it.
Maggie

[Angela Woodford]

Katharine! I carefully prised the transfer dots from the middle of the smocking book and held my breath as I ironed them onto my prospective "sampler". Would the 33 year old transfer still function?

Yes! I'm now sitting gathering the dots together. The sampler is on its way, thanks to you. I recognise stem,wave and chevron stitch and will practice them, but there are some interesting new ones -

So thank you again!

Love

Munch

[Euterpe13]

Do you remember a Simplicity pattern for a mini pinafore dress with a chunky zip down the front operated by a large ring? It was rather popular.

oh my goodness, even I made a couple of thoses - one in a thick linen-like ecru fabric printed with blackberries !! When I think of how well I could sew at my daughter´s age, it´s a disgrace that I almost have to apply thumbscrews to myself to sew a button back on !

B

[Angela Woodford]

My son Henry emerged from his pristine newly-white painted bedroom this morning, and I observed that on the floor lay yesterday's clothing and an empty pack of Marlboro'.

I was studying Katharine's book "Smocking and Quilting". He threw me a conspiritorial look.

He thinks I was reading "Smoking and Quitting".

It's lovely that Barbara remembers the ring-zip pinafore dress. I don't suppose Mary V has kept that pattern? It was brilliant. Straight seams, zip insertion, neck and arm facings, infinitely suitable to be customised. Barbara's version sounds gorgeous. A blackberry print!

Love, Munch

[englishangel]

I think the orange one may have been a version of that, but I think Imine had buttons, I can still do buttonholes but don't think I have ever done circular ones.

Came downstairs the other morning to find No 1 son sewing buttons on a coat he 'borrowed' about six years ago.

[Jo]

Precisely how she struck fear into our hearts is hard to recall at this distance. With my clients, I always encourage them to try to go beyond what they think and feel and identify what actually HAPPENED to provoke that response in them, and honestly that is very difficult in this case. I can remember her telling Dickensian horror stories of badly behaved girls in the past who had to sew and wear headbands bearing the initial of their misdemeanor, ("S" for SLUT being the only one I can remember!). I felt, as she told those stories, that she wished she could do the same to us. Her class felt like being in a scene from the Crucible. And then, not so much what she did, but what she didn't do; she never smiled, she never praised, and like all the other teachers, she never touched us. For me she crystallised in one person the misery of being away from home;

I think that's it - I was terribly homesick for the first three or four years, and naturally very much in awe of anyone in authority. She epitomised the very nastiest, most bullying form of authority but I felt powerless to do anything about it - I was terrified of her (and I'm sure she knew it).

I believed at the time, and still do, that the academic teaching staff, the ones who had gowns to wear on Speech Day, were much confident than the others - non-academic teaching staff and housemistresses, who seemed to have a chip on their shoulders and used their authority to "prove" they were as good as their colleagues.

Someone mentioned Miss Gravett in this or another thread - I gather she is now at a school with an OB, can't remember who exactly but I think someone a couple of years younger than us. I believe she came along to a reunion recently and shared her memories, which gave a fascinating insight into the life of a young teacher at the bottom of the pecking order in the staffroom. It didn't seem like it at the time but I'd guess that the youngest teachers were even more afraid of people like Miss Morrison and the senior teachers than we were!

[midget]

They were certainly afraid of Miss Mitchell. She was the one who had the (very) young PE teacher, junior to the fearsome Miss Park, sacked for "coming home with the milk" after a night out. We would probably not have known anything about it if she had not been sacked.

Maggie

[Alexandra Thrift]

Re:SWMNBN What DID make her so terrifying ??

She was fearsome and joyless and genuinely believed that perfection could only be attained out of sheer terror.

As we sat sewing in terrified silence (you could literally hear a pin drop) she read us "Jane Eyre" .... lingering on the plight of that poor dying TB victim rather too long.

I made a pair of GOLD, velvet bell-bottoms (out of a pair of curtains), a maroon corderuoy shirt and a spotted "baby-doll" mini dress from a pattern lent by Josephine Maude.
I see that "baby-dolls" are back in fashion but I seem to remember putting myself in grave moral danger wearing it down the yoof club ,aged 14 in the summer holidays !!

[Angela Woodford]

Coming back to our skills at needlework after a long time...

I had to go on a mission to Tiverton yesterday, and thought I would investigate the Heathcoats fabric factory shop which cj had told me about. To my great amazement, masses of dressmaking and furnishing fabrics, patterns and haberdashery! And on a noticeboard, info about dressmaking improve-your-skills workshops! It struck me it would be a fun thing to do at some point. Imagine a no-pain needlework class! No furious SWSNBN quivering with indignation! How nice.

I read on down the noticeboard, and then became seriously excited. Class 2 - Make a Victorian bust bodice from an authentic pattern - you will learn boning and creation of eyelets... (don't remember the exact wording) but my memory had flashed back to when Vivienne Westwood did bodices in the late 80's in fab flamboyant brocades and velvets. I loved them and coveted one desperately!

Then the next notice - Create a Victorian style corset! Boning, eyelets and lacing - cinch in your waistline, mega! Competent machine skills required! I'm sure my machine skills wouldn't be nearly good enough, but doesn't that sound gorgeous? Thinking of construction of a corset, I suppose fell seams would be the thing. I remember SWSNBN teaching us this seam, but I don't remember using them. Then there would be casings for the boning.

What projects for the future! *sits up, bouffs up hair and pulls in tummy *

Munch

[midget]

I take it you are going to model the results of the workshops, and post photos on here?
Magie

[Katharine]

I was at the Stitch and Creative Crafts Show in Manchester today, there were some lovely dressmaking fabrics there - and I DID see a pattern for a corset but no mention of lessons! As well as dressmaking there were several stalls of knitting wool, then many of embroidery and cross stitch, and many of papercrafts of various kinds - also a man selling a grooming kit for dogs !

I would definitely go for it Munch, apart from anything else you will meet some possibly like minded people in the area.

[Angela Woodford]

I take it you are going to model the results of the workshops, and post photos on here?
Magie

!

Maggie,I've just grabbed my copy of Vogue "More Dash Than Cash" no 1, an invaluable reference book - der, der, der, here we are! a Vivienne Westwood bust bodice in a brilliant rosy Boucher print; model poses in the corset, white stilettos, black leggings, black ruched elbow length gloves. a collar of black pearls, an eye patch, and clasping a long pointy swordstick thing.

I reckon the moderators would remove me and it from the Forum.....

Now Maggie, whilst I'm scrabbling in the bookshelves, was it you who set us right on the origins of the Hertford name for a bra "B-squared"? I'm looking at a 1905 picture of a "bust bodice", in the jargon of the times, it says, described as a "BB"! Sixty years later this was still Hertford-speak! Amazing. (Ref: Bras, A Private View, by Rosemary Hawthorne, 1992)

Glad you had a lovely time at the Manchester show, Katharine. I once worked with a girl who designed and made incredible things in tiny cross stitch. She'd bring out her latest creation in the lunch break and worked so fast it was amazing! But I would like to get out that sewing machine again. I'm going to make a couple of tablecloths for starters - quite difficult to find for round dining tables. I loved trying those smocking stitches again with the use of your super book!

Love, Munch