Time Warp to the 1970's for Grace and Dolly

I have mixed feelings about the 1970s.  Anyone who knew me back then would understand why.  Some points in history should remain where they are, and others, the brightest memories of those years are sometimes encouraged to shine another day.

I began high school in 1971 and these would be some of the most difficult years for me, as well as the years that established who I would become in the future.  While I tried many different dresses on and wore many hats, I identify with the 70s more than any other decade.  I've been watching members of Club Grace post photos of their dolls in the latest offering of the subscription, and there is no more defining determination of where these collectors were at in those days, than how they've created pieces to go with this costume or how they've photographed their doll. 

A large part of what defined this decade for me was the music. 

1974 debuted Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark and it was my favorite album that year.  We were still spinning vinyl records and they were treasures.  Tower Records made money hand over fist selling every kind of album imaginable, and if you were planning on going to a concert, Tower was the place to buy your tickets at their Ticket Master booth.

People who didn't live through these years will try to define them by what they've read from people who didn't live those years.  And that is how history is written.  If I were to tell you all I knew of the 1970s, we'd be here a week.  But what I can tell you is that it was different for everyone.  Fashion was all over the place, and not at all.  As one person put it, "Today's passion for slow fashion and repurposing, has its roots in the 70s."

The people I hung out with went to arts and crafts fairs in Santa Cruz, where long haired guys in Renaissance clothing, sold mandalas, and feather and abalone jewelry, while the braless women dressed in lace and long skirts, sold handmade clothing like they wore.  Heart's Little Queen album cover says it all.  We dressed up in this and that and bought vintage clothing from the 20s-40s and paired it with jeans skirts and platform shoes.  We dressed like gypsies and nouveau Renaissance maidens.  We wore floppy hats and spent as much time barefoot as we did in clogs and granny boots.

We wore feathers and shells and leather pieces in our hair and ears that were now multi-pierced.  We dabbed our skin with scented oils and learned to read the Tarot.  We studied New Age.

One of my first real jobs was working at CreCol (Creative Colors), a company that made latigo leather tooled purses, like the one above.  I learned the trade from the bottom up and could ruby edge tool with the best of them.  I wish I remembered how to braid those purse straps, but I remember everything else about the processes from dying to air brush to gloss finishes.  The man I dated at the time, strung the gussets to the flaps and this was how I got hired at the company.  

At any rate, the 70s would have a defining impact on anyone who lived through them.  As far a music goes, it was all over the place as much as our clothing was.  It was a decade of great variety.  Hard rock got harder, soft rock got softer, and artists frustrated with the standard musical forms, tossed them aside and started their own.  For fans of such new forms as funk, this innovation was wonderful.  Others simply hated the new music.  Groups formed to express their hatred of disco, and some thought that punk culture was a sign of the downfall of

civilization.  Music defined who we were and who we hung out with.  We looked forward to going to rock concerts as they were a great social event.  You'd spend the entire day going to one, being present, then leaving.  San Fransico gave us Day on the Green concerts and I don't believe I missed any of them.

As for trying to define fashion in the 70's, several distinctions have been made.  The 60s were full of bold colors, prints, and color blocking.  Mini skirts were especially popular along with the psychedelic fashion and space age inspired looks.

The 70s casual attire consisted of a lot of wide and flowy designs in skirts and pants, particularly bell bottoms.  Flare sleeves and maxi dresses and skirts were perfectly paired with platforms, clogs and granny boots.  On the other hand, the later disco fashion was full of plunging v necks and lots of sequins and glitter.

For this month's Club Grace, I took a step back into what I believed the best way to time warp into that decade.  Grace's dress was such a surprise to me.  I liked it.  It could be dressed up with vests or jewelry, boots or the great platforms that Rachel had made for the subscription.  I chose to make Grace jewelry like I wore.  Heishi beads and turquoise were very popular, so I found teeny tiny heishi and made her a necklace and bracelet. 

For her hair, I made a leather thong that laced together with suede string.  Dangling from the ends are a feather and a shell.  Keeping these in thin hair was out of the question, so some women braided their hair and laced one of these around the braid.  

Dolly dresses in a jeans skirt.  This is what we called them.  Not denim skirts.  More typical was the split jeans skirt which was made from a pair of very old and worn-out jeans.  The inner leg seams were cut out and filled with a variety of fabrics to create a v-shaped quilt.  Lace and appliques and embroidery covered areas of these skirts as well.  Pair it with a crop top or peasant top and you were set to go.  I made Dolly a laced-up suede cropped shirt since it is November, and she would want to stay warm while she works on her macrame.   Scarves were popular, whether wrapped around your torso as a skimpy top, or in your hair or around your head gypsy style. 

Below are album covers of some of my favorite music of the day.  I still listen to this music, but the 90s would issue in a new love of music with smooth jazz and new age.  I've always loved music and at one time would only date musicians.  I have to laugh because I ended up with an engineer with a degree from MIT and a business degree from Stanford.  This was how many of us changed.  Let's face it.  The 70s were about rebellion and fun times.  Like I said early on, it would take a week to describe all that I knew of the 70s but it is in the past and should remain there.  We didn't call our style boho back then, but this is how I dress today with a bit more subtlety.

This month's Club Grace took my memory down many dusty roads like the one American sang about.  But now it's time to think about Thanksgiving and the grand finale month, December.  I'm working on something special for Cissy and hope to have it done this coming week. 

Wishing you the best of the Thanksgiving holiday!  Melissa 

Grace in silver hoops, beads and leather.

Peter Frampton at Day on the Green

This is a purse I could have made.

Album cover for In Good Graces

 

Emily's Dennison's Bogie Book Costume

We finally got our first cold snap of the season two days ago!  The past few days have been extraordinarily pretty, with days in the high 60s, bright sunshine, blue skies, and leaves changing color everywhere.  The full moon on the pre-night was as glorious as any harvest moon rising I've seen in the best of the past.  It's been an incredible October for me.  My gratitude is abundant, but I also know that staying as inspired and busy as I've been attributes much to my serenity.   And then there's Halloween.  My very favorite time of year.  The second month of the 'bers.  Summer is but a distant memory now.  I never dwell on the recent past.  There's just too much life to live in this very moment.  

I finally named her.  My 1470.  Funny, but while I tried to make her one outfit, I just wasn't into it.  Kitty Hudson's another story.  She's my little muse.  What I wanted was to buy all of Doug James's costuming for my 1470, but when they started those Zoom meetings, they sold the clothing 

immediately concluding the meeting.  And they flew.  It hurt.  I don't Zoom.  I'm terribly self-conscious and it seems rude to silhouette yourself on a Zoom meeting.  You're either in or out.  Maybe someday I'll change my mind in the future, but I'm a serious introvert and hate photos of myself and being on video.  All that said, Emily's Dennison's Bogie Book costume would be the perfect share on one of Doug's Zoom meetings.  But I'll stick to my blog and Facebook.

After finishing Dolly's scarecrow costume to go with Grace's Halloween hayride (or western) theme, I had to take a few days to do things around the house.  Wednesday came along, and I knew it was either do or die.  So, I got busy.  Real busy.  

First, I had to find a costume to make Emily.  Her name came to me while I was sewing this costume.

It was easy to remember (that's half of it), and she just looked like an Emily to me.  So, Emily she is!

I don't know why I chose this costume out of so many, but here's a guess.  Maybe the hat reminded me of the Polichinelle costumes I made for Louise and Lawrence.  Seems reasonable.  And I'd made dresses with lappets before, so perhaps I thought this would be easy.  And I love the pom-poms.  It's a sweet costume.

It's funny, but when people were dressing in crepe paper costumes for Halloween back in the 1920s, they were simply Halloween themed.  Today we dress as ghosts, witches, vampires, bugs, animals, horror movie characters, and so on.  Quite a change!  I haven't done research on this, but my guess is that the availability of masks in the 50's and 60's and pre-made boxed costumes had something to do with it.  And it just occurred to me that this is a Polichinelle costume!  Yes.  This is why I chose it.  I've done it before.

Emily's costume is once again, completely made from silk.  I do love working with silk.  I appreciate the crispness and shine and flexibility of the fabric.  

The dress boasts five lappets generously appliqued with pumpkin head characters and little bats.  Lots of tinsel black pom-poms.  And black shoes with black pom-poms on them.

The shoulder bow-sash adds interest to the rather plain bodice of the dress.

Oh!  The bodice.  Okay.  I had to make this three times.  I forget how sloped this doll's shoulders are.  When designing the pattern, the shoulder seams must slope down at an angle.  This isn't so important for sleeved dresses, but with a sleeveless top, it's a must.

I didn't mention this before with Kitty Hudson's costume, but I've added black netting to the inside of the skirt at the waist, like a sewn in slip, to give the skirt an opportunity to puff out.  I think it's a nice touch. 

I also had to resew the skirt to the bodice three times.  This is a lot of extra work when you're in a time crunch.  Why?  Because I was trying to exact the look of the illustration by making the bodice longer.  Well, guess what?  That illustration is of a girl with a very long waistline.  It is NOT easy translating an illustration to a costume.  No matter how often I do this, it never gets easy.  I never do the same thing twice, so there's something new to learn each time I start a project.

The appliques took just as long as the body of the costume.  Where on earth was I going to find an image that looked like what the illustrator scribbled on the lappets?  I must have spent a good six hours or longer looking for the right image.

 

I studied the little characters over and over again under my magnifying lamp, and finally realized that these were pumpkin head bogies.  The bats were easy to figure out.  And guess where I found the pumpkin head bogies?  On an old scrap of Dennison's crepe paper!  see below   I was thrilled.  But then I had to figure out how to make them.  

They weren't simple black silhouettes like Kitty's cats.  Nope.  These were colorful.  Heather suggested that I paint them.  Ever put wet paint to silk?  Try it sometime.  This would have been a mess.

It took a long evening and a "sleep on it" to figure out that they would have to be done in three stages.  Itty bitty pumpkin heads.  I think they turned out cute, but I need a serious rest from this tiny, fiddly work.  

I didn't have to make the shoes like I did with Kitty's costume.  I had a pair of 1470 shoes, and I removed the bow, painted them black, Mod Podged them with gloss, then assembled the pom-poms on them.  So, they're not the same as the ones in the illustration.  Big deal.  A girl in the 1920's would use what she had on hand, and that's what Emily did.

Emily's hat took a couple of whacks as well.  This was one of the things that kept me busy.  All the rework.  However, I spent the entire day, Saturday, until 10:30pm working on this costume.  The last thing to be made was the shoulder bow-sash, and I did that this morning.  

I finished the costume in time to take a breath and enjoy the last two days to Halloween doing nothing but reading my horror books and watching horror movies.  And enjoying my dolls.

It was a busy month.  Esme got me started with her pumpkin costume.  Followed by Kitty Hudson's kitty costume.  Then there was the Club Grace Dolly Dingle costume, and finally something for Emily.  I wanted to make one of Ann Estelle's costumes drawn by Mary Engelbreit, but that will have to wait.  

One thing I never shared with you was Gracie's second crepe paper lantern.  Last year I had just enough time to make her the pumpkin one, but after Halloween I forged ahead and made the owl lantern.  I've shared a photo of this below.  I also love photos of the costume in progress.  So, I took one for you.  My poor work surface grows smaller and smaller with all the this-n-that I need while making these costumes.  Included in these photos is one of a vintage box to start your decorating that Kitty and Emily might have picked up on their way home from work.  A fun page from a Bogie Book.  And a real crepe paper dress that lasted the ages!  Wow.  Love this.  I also included this photo of someone's vintage inspired Halloween collection.  The shelf was beautifully done.  And now I'm off to sit back and enjoy the day in a quiet way.

Happy Halloween!  Enjoy every minute of every day!

Melissa

Work surface, work in progress.

Dennison's crepe paper

Party Starter

The illustrations are worth it!

The real deal.

Gracie's Owl lantern.

Esme

Dolly and Remmie Lou

Kitty Hudson

Fabulous for next year!

A collector's great shelf.

Happy Halloween from Emily

Kitty Hudson's Dennison's Bogie Book Halloween

"There are stacks of large costume boxes filling my hallway.  All of these tied with sturdy string and filled with Kitty's trousseau for her European tour.  I believe these are being sent by train to her home.  A porter will be coming to fetch them tomorrow.  I bought kitty a special gift for her travels that she can open on her way home.  It is a diary for her to journal her hopes and dreams, thoughts and anecdotes from her travels.  I think one day that she might become a writer.  Maybe her notes will give her inspiration.

She's promised to stay in touch, but I think it unlikely.  This young woman has a full life ahead of her and I hope Charles will be a part of it.  They have so much in common.  I'm not one given to displays of sentimentality, but I noticed my cheeks are damp as I write this evening.  Nonetheless!  I will miss the evenings we've spent reading together, playing cards, hearing of her adventures from the day, her laughter at the small parties I give in my salon, her company on rainy days..." From the diary

of Madame Hoover four years past.

"Mercy me!  Kitty Hudson just arrived the day before last!  She's come of her own accord this time, and not at the behest of her mother.  Such a change in this marvelous young woman.  And she did become a writer after all.  She is here to meet with one of her publishers from a prominent women's weekly.  She's been writing articles and romance stories for several women's magazines these past few years.  Job well done, Kitty Hudson!  And of Charles?  They are an item, but she has no time for marriage and babies... just yet.  Not this flapper girl! 

Her publisher is hosting a Halloween party in a fancy hotel in the city this October 31rst.  Charles will be joining her for the event, and she begged me to make her a special costume from one of Dennison's Bogie Books.  Bogie indeed!  Nothing scary about these costumes, but they sure are delightful."  From the current diary of Madame Hoover

And so, it is from this special request from Kitty, that I came to make her a costume for Halloween.  And have her come to visit a second time.  What was Halloween like in the 1920s?

Halloween began to take off as a holiday in the late 19th century, although trick-or-treating started in the 1920s.  Adult Halloween parties were then all the rage, and a company could make a lot of money selling Halloween themed costumes and decorations.

The Dennison Manufacturing Company would see gold in Halloween ephemera.  After its move to Framingham in 1897, the company rocketed to success.  By the turn of the century, it employed a third of the town's population.  In 1909, Dennison started to make Halloween party items and became one of the two premier American companies selling Halloween ephemera.  The other was the Beistle Company of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.

Dennison published the first Bogie Book was in 1915.  The Bogie Book was the handbook to Halloween celebrations.  Today it would tell us a lot about early 20th century social life, especially for the upwardly mobile city dwellers.  The book gave party advice for simple menus, alcohol-free drinks, dancing and cards.  They also gave ideas for games and how to decorate for one's party.  They even gave advice for the business girl's Halloween party with directions to carefully prepare her decorations and menu in advance.

But one of the best things they offered were costume ideas to create using their printed crepe papers.  The costume pages were lavishly illustrated with ideas for both men and women, and the crepe paper costumes could be tossed the following morning.  There were no patterns to create from, but most women knew how to sew, and even if they didn't, wrapping and taping together a costume couldn't have been too difficult with the delightful border printed crepe paper yardage.

For the party, crepe paper and cutouts would decorate chandeliers, windows and tabletops.  A menu might consist of doughnuts, oranges and apples served "dressed up", chicken patties, potato chips, ice cream, and individual cakes and coffee.

Entertainment came in the form of fortune telling and almost always involved wedded bliss or marital affairs.  Bobbing for apples was a must for the guests, weather the apples were floating in a tub of water or tied to a string from the ceiling. Peeling an apple in one continuous piece, then throwing it over your shoulder, where it would land in some shape on the floor could form the initials of one's future mate.

Kitty was secure in her decision to remain with her soul mate, Charles, but they'd enjoy the games regardless.  Kitty was never one of back out of a challenge!   Or fun!

After looking at so many illustrated pages from Bogie Books on Pinterest, one in particular struck me as the perfect costume for her.  The "kitty" costume.  I thought it would be a snap to make, and Kitty obviously thought so.  But it took a great deal of patience and effort.

The kitty costume is made entirely of silk. Silk replicates the crispness of crepe paper and performs beautifully for intricate work.  

The ruffle around the neckline and sleeves was made from silk cut on the bias and dramatically gathered, pinned and sewn to the garment.

Handmade silk bias tape edges the hem of the bodice, and...okay I fibbed...regular black satin ribbon edges the hem of the skirt.  I didn't have the proper silk-satin ribbon for the hemline, yet the satin ribbon was the perfect choice to use for two rows of stitching.

The outfit is completely lined in cotton batiste.

The main event of this costume are the handmade kitty appliques.

This is far from the first time I've created my own appliques, and the process takes me back to the time I was sewing for Katy Curls and created her autumn apron decorated with fall leaves.  

I used a flexible fuse paper that creates an iron on applique.  Each little applique was made from black silk, and each little scaredy cat was carefully snipped out then iron-fused in place.

It took a longer time than anticipated to find the perfect images to use.  Clip art simply didn't have the vintage look, so I had to look to vintage Halloween postcards to find both the cat face and the scaredy cat.

With the large kitty head, I had to hand draw the features in white charcoal pencil, then snip out the tiny pieces.  Lots of fiddly work, but that's what I enjoy doing.

I have to admit that I was thrilled and inspired to take on the project because I was up in the air about what next to do, and I love sewing for Kitty Hudson.  

The skirt and top are closed with tiny snaps, which I felt much more suitable for a Halloween costume.

There are twelve 1.2" scaredy cats along the hem.  The larger cat in the center of the skirt is 2.1".  While I have all this written down to keep with the pattern I made for the costume, I often go back to my journal posts to find out how I made something.  I do forget!

Close up of applique work.

Kitty has a pair of white stockings to wear under the costume and I made her a special pair of shoes to match the ones in the illustration.  These are made of the same silk as the costume.

The shoes aren't the best I've made for her, but they were made of two layers of silk and one of the cotton batiste, to give them body and support.  Making shoes with heels is still a challenge for me, and since it's been four years since I last did this, I had to try and remember what I did originally.

The hat, as simple as it looks, took me the better part of a day to make a pattern for.  I wanted to make it just like the one in the illustration, and I feel pretty good about the outcome.  

I'd created this costume on my 1470 doll.  When Kitty arrived today, I was a bit nervous that there might be areas where the costume wouldn't fit, but it wasn't a problem.  I think Kitty has a slightly smaller waist and her legs are thinner than the porcelain 1470.  What this actually meant, was that the costume would fit Kitty perfectly.

This project was the perfect way to enjoy Halloween month, and I finished it just in time to return Kitty to Heather so she can enjoy her in her costume for the rest of the month.

Kitty Hudson's story continues, and I couldn't be happier.

I hope you'll enjoy the selections I chose from the many Dennison's Bogie Book pages I have on file.  Maybe one will inspire you to create something for your doll from the 1920s!

As for the rest of the month?  More Halloween costumes!

Happy Halloween!, Melissa