Autumn Adornment and other things

Sometimes I don't sound my own horn. It is a bad habit I have had since, well forever. 

Lets start by going back to last year. If you have read this blog you know that from August through December, for the past three years, I have been back in France. It is the best time of the year starting with warm sunny long days and ending with the threat of snow while drinking mulled wine at various Christmas markets in both France and Germany. 

Last year I had lots of time while there to be creative. France truly does bring out the creativity in me. At the end of the four months here I sent several items off to Classic Sewing magazine for consideration. They published me! In the fall 2018 issue there was an article about embellishing shirts with lace bits, one of my specialties, as well as an article about a jacket, an article called Autumn Adornment.

Its about Autumn Adornment that I want to focus on.

Several years ago I found three old yearly review books of the weekly magazine "La Mode Illustree from the years 1893, 1897 and 1905. In the one from 1897, during the months of May though August there were a series of four filet patterns depicting people in court clothing. I immediately saw jacket. As I don't "do" filet, I thought it would be nice to  convert the pattern to "red work". First off it is a fast form of embroidery and best, it is not too hard to do. 

I took the original from the magazine:

And redrew the design so that  all of the extra was removed and it was just a simple line drawing:

Transferred the design with a water soluble pen on to my fabric and embroidered it:

Finally I made a jacket using the four designs.

Here are my pictures of before I sent it off
Front:

Back

Far better than any picture I can take, you can see part of the article using the link for Autumn Adornment from Classic Sewing Magazine.

That was sew much fun to make and I should gets lots of wear out of it as well.