Chapter 5 - Dressmaking

Dressmaking was a large part of Jane's life at that time - it is a shame that the pictures associated with this book do not transfer with the text....

 

All her adult life Jane was a dressmaker of some talent, and these excerpts from some of her letters give some detail as to the type of work she was wont to undertake. 

I well remember her making clothes for us �" at least until we were of an age when we were apt to complain about having to wear hand-made clothing �" and doing all kinds of mending to cuffs and collars, rips and tears in shirts, as well as darning socks and stockings.  Who would bother to darn socks or stockings these days? And nowadays clothing is actually made to look old and worn!  Her forte, of course, was women’s clothing, and junior children’s wear.  She related a number of stories about her sewing skills;  this first prior to getting married.

 

Peg and I are going to spend Easter in furbishing up our winter wardrobes. I have my new checky tweed frock to make and also a light navy wool skirt - the dressmaker’s perk I got last winter with the rusty fleck in.  I also intend lining my astrakhan coat at long last with some black crepe-de-chine that was another perk. I am thinking of cutting a new bodice for my brown wool frock because I am tired of it as it is, and have plenty of stuff for a new top.  It will make it seem like a new frock and cheer my wardrobe up a great deal.  I am also going to dye the jumper Marion knitted for me, because it washes whiter each time and gets dirty very easily.  I want to knit a new blue one, and reckon that if I start now it might be nearly finished to wear in England.

            I have descended a little from the glories of trousseau-planning and now think of what real clothes I must make myself.  I have enough lacquered satin for a very flash evening blouse, so I will get a black velvet skirt to go with it, and a couple of other blouses, and then I will have lots of evening wear for the boat at little expense.  I will wear out all my old evening frocks on the boat too, so as not to strain my new clothes too much.  I don’t intend to have so many clothes, I prefer to get things that will last a long time and always be in good taste, and this is more easily achieved when one invests in the more expensive and hard-wearing materials.

 

            Presumably either Peggy bought Jane a going-away present, or gave her the fabric to be made up. In any event, the purple tweeds are obviously new;

 

            Do I love my purple tweeds? Yessir! And my brown coat and skirt, which I am cherishing most carefully and only wearing on very best occasions.  I plan to purchase very good plain brown cloth, out of which I shall cut a very plain but handsome coat suitable for morning or afternoon wear. In it I should look well dressed for any occasion, and if I cut it as well as I hope to it should look very nice.  Coats now are being cut with no belt in front but a half belt across the back and a full skirt below it. So I will make mine with a neat front and a straight stitched collar like on your wool coat and a cupla buttons on the stummick, and a gored back with pretty fullness below the waist, and a half belt.  I tried on one today that was very much like that, and it suited me well. Done in a good dark cloth it should be a very smart and useful garment. I must also make myself a series of really good blouses, because I will have lots of skirts and both my costumes to wear them with, and I am tired of the kag-maggy skirts I generally make myself.  My little green one that I made in my last letter, so to speak, is a huge success, and makes me feel beautifully tidy. 

            In addition to all this I very much want to make a coloured velveteen frock - blue I think, because I love them so.  Something with rather full gored skirt and a demure little bodice with buttons down and a round collar. A day frock I mean, not a dinner frock.

I hope you don’t mind all this clothes talk, but I want to know what you think I should have, because you know so much more about it than I do, and can tell me what’s what.  I have to start planning now because I can only afford to get these things gradually, and don’t want to be suddenly summoned to foreign parts and find myself with only the most unsuitable clothes. I would probably get sent straight back home again if I arrived looking like old Mrs. Bailey in her best wash-day garments.

 

Later, when Jane had children to look after, she would habitually make all their clothes, from nappies to nightgowns, little dresses to dungarees.  This description is one from one of Jane’s letters from November 1939:

 

What I’m dying to tell you about is young Allberry’s nightie. I had a Clydella nightie that had shrunken on me, or else I expanded inside it, so I simply cut it up into a nightie of a very small size and tender little shape. Like this:

 

There is an opening down the back, and as you see the yoke and sleeves are cut in one.  I have put casings at neck and wrists, with ribbons through, and the nightie is supposed to expand when required and fit the child for at least a year.  I welted the yoke over the gathers with blue silk stem stitching, and have a dear little lace edge at the neck and cuffs, and am going to embroider a few flowers and seeds on the chest so that Eric will know which is the front.  It’s 24 inches from the neck to hem, which looks to be long enough so I hope it is.  Despite its small size it seems nice and roomy, so I shall use the pattern again �" it came free in a magazine so I thought it worth while to try it out on my old nightie just to see what was what. It is the most exciting sewing I have done for years, and I am very thrilled with it and long to rush off and show it to you.  I’m crosser than ever that you don’t live next door. I will probably do some knitted things now and get some more nightie material later on, and also stuff for two little frocks.  Eric is quite excited about all this too, and says he must get busy with his binders.  Whether he means his own private ones or intends to knit some for Junior I don’t know, because that’s all he says.

 

Earlier, not long after the wedding, she had this to say about a new dress she made: 

 

Have just this minute finished my new frock, of which I will enclose a sample. I did every stitch by hand, of course, and even the most critical eye could find no fault with either the cut or the make of the whole thing, and I am feeling pleased with myself and it looks moderately handsome. I gave it a flared skirt, cut on the bias, and a bodice with six brown wooden buttons down the front, and shirring at the waist in the middle of the back and on each side of the front. A peter pan collar with long points in front and a slight point at the back. The sleeves are quite full and shirred into a narrow cuff, and I wear a narrow brown belt that matches the colour of the buttons exactly. Cloth, cottons, buttons and fastenings cost me exactly 10/-, [ten shillings �" about the equivalent of $A2 - Ed.] which shows how much cheaper it will be to clothe myself rather than buy things ready-made.

I shall wear this new creation in Scotland next weekend, and hope to look very dashing and beautiful.

I have been busy this week making Gerry a pretty blouse out of some gay patterned georgette, to wear with her warm suit and new overcoat.  The blouse has a pair of narrow frills down the front, with a fine rolled hem to each, and tiny red buttons down the middle, to match some red in the pattern of the stuff.  It is very pretty and suits young Gerry very well.  I had the piece of stuff put away for future use, and this seemed a very good use for  it.

Much knitting has passed through my hands too, and I am nearly finishing a little blue coat with some very manly double-breasted chest-work.  Rather a poor drawing, but you can see that it has raglan sleeves and zigzag lacy patterns on its edges and there will be a bit of crochet round the neck and lapels, and little flat pearl buttons on the chest.  This manly coat is to even things up with the very lacey and feminine pink frock I knitted first, and is much more to Eric’s liking, I may say.

 

Of course children’s clothing was high on the agenda after Jane and Eric started producing a family, and she was as energetic about it as usual:

 

I've nearly finished Richard's little jersey with the checks on the stummick, and then I'm going to start some more leggings in blue, to match a lot of blue jackets and things that I've already got. I've decided that pale colours are highly impractical for a Glasgow winter, so if Richard has nice pink cheeks I shall knit some little suits in a bright dark green, with little berets to match, and some and warm brown with bright red buttons and things.  I'll make him a pixie bonnet someday, to see if it suits him because they are wonderful things for keeping his little neck and ears warm.  Have you any bright ideas about styles and colours for him?  Just forward them along, if you have, because I love to make things according to plans from you.

I have been busy making nevermentionems lately, mostly for Richard.  I made him a pair of warm dungarees out of an old blue velour curtain, to keep his legs warm, because he’s always sitting on the cold linoleum.  He looks very funny and sweet in his long pants, and shows off no end.  Out of the same curtain I made him some short ones with braces for afternoon party wear, and he is very smart in these.  Now I am knitting a pair of pink ones for myself �" for when I sit on the cold floor with Richard.

And so it went on.  The thought keeps occurring to me that not many housewives today would contemplate doing half of what wives in those times did �" or would be able to!

Not long after she and Eric went to live in Glasgow, they befriended the lady in the upstairs flat Mrs Barron, who took them on a trip to a weaving mill. Jane describes her purchases and what she did with them:

 

Here’s what’ll make you slather at the jaws �" Mrs Barron took me to the mill at Paisley that makes Viyella and Lystav and lots of other lovely stuffs, and I purchased yards of it at 1/3d a yard.  Sometimes less, sometimes more, for all sorts of things.  The mill  has a little shop beside it, and there they sell these stuffs at cost price, but only pieces with flaws of some kind, ends off the rolls and bits with badly printed patterns.  I got the blue Lystav with white spots and next day made it into a smock with flared back and pointed yoke in front with a few tiny gathers over the bust, Eton collar, eight white pearl buttons down, tucks at the sleeve head, wide enough sleeves to go over all the woollies I wear under it.  Then I got 3 yards of pink flowery Viyella at 1/3 yd, 27”, and the day after the smock I made myself a nightie with a yoke of white Viyella that I had in hand, and bindings and ties at the waist.  Pink ribbon ties the yoke at two places, and the opening is bound with white and very slightly contracted so that it doesn’t gape over the bosom.  The back bodice is gathered too. 

Next some blue flowery Viyella, 27”, which made into Tiny Wee’s new nightie.  2 yds at 1/3.  Then 3 pieces of different lengths but the same pattern, 2 yds at 1/3, then 2 1yd pieces at 1/- each, white ground with pink flowers on in sprays. This is for more little nighties. It is 36” wide, so with piecing and white yokes it should make at least four nighties �" price 4/6 all told. 

Then a gay flowery Viyella for a little frock simply because 1½ yds was 1/6 and I loved the stuff.  Then, 2 yds washing silk, white with sprigs on, for a small frock, 1/6 because it had been splashed with dirty water which will wash out.  Then a heavenly gay linen sort of stuff with a flaw in the printing, just a smudge, and enough for two aprons. 2 yds, 2/-.  Last but not least some 54” undie silk in pink, a 3 yd piece which will make a very flash hospital nightie and a petticoat for me to wear when Tiny Wee has finished distorting my figure. I am seeing to it that I have a tidy trousseau to wear when I come home from the hospital to make up for the rather peculiar garments I have to wear just now �" worthy and warm, but NOT, in any degree, dainty and seductive.  My new nightie is very becoming, but I can’t wear it all day, no matter how much I may wish to look pretty for the coal man.  I really look very neat in my smock, and it is very kind to my shape, so that’s all right.