One hour dress

I received a few questions about how exactly to control the side extensions/hip fullness when sewing the 1920's 1 hour dress, so today I decided to break out the muslin and put together three samples to talk about how to sew this section in more detail! It's a good thing I did too, as I discovered just how annoying I find doing the side gathers, but I'll talk about that when we get to it... Here are the three styles of controlling the hip fullness I will cover today. On the left of the stack…

In January of 1924, ladies’ publications were advising them to take advantage of the slow, dark and dreary months of winter to begin making garments for upcoming spring and summer. One …

Once I knew what the One Hour Dress was, I saw them everywhere. http://theclosethistorian.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-one-hour-1920s-dress.html Go search on 'one hour dress 1920s'. Go ahead, I'm here all week. https://youtu.be/VImcfqrqWKQ is the You Tube ad for the book (original link is dead) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/163561029X/ but here it is on Amazon. There are a million variations on the One Hour Dress. I based my pattern on this image I found online, which turns out to be from a…

So last year I whipped up a quick 1920s evening dress using a vintage silk dupatta and a basic One-Hour Dress pattern. It was fast, easy, and the fabric made it interesting despite its shapelessnes…

Simple and elegant. Just wait till you see what I did with an old tablecloth! I promised you a way to get a basic 20’s dress pattern so here we go: This is the Sorbetto pattern from Colette,…

The most popular post of all time on this blog is this one here where I briefly describe how to make your very own 1920's one hour dress pattern. I figured since I had made so many of these dresses since that post ages ago, I'd put together a new post today with photos of each dress and the modifications I made to the basic pattern for each so you could get an even better idea of the versatility of this most simple of patterns. These are not all of my 20's one hour dresses, I actually have a…

Historical costuming

I have written quite a lot about the basic 1920's so called '1 hour' dress pattern, and that is because it's super easy to make both the pattern and the dress itself! I have several of them now, and as a curvier gal I like to spread the gospel that 1920's styles are for everyone, not just the thin boyish figures of 1920's fashion plates. It can be next to impossible to find original 1920's garments, let alone affordable wearable ones (they would be nearly 100 years old these days!), so DIY…