1930s Trapunto Linen Suit - Part 1

 I'm going to kick things off with my first project.

I love the straight clean lines of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Being tall and somewhat on the itchy side of Amazonian, I suit the straight clean lines better than frills and furbelows. I have never forgotten the lovely lilac gingham sundress I wore to work once, and how glamorous and lovely I felt with my net petticoats rustling...right up to the point where one of the senior management team told me I looked marvellous, and was I in a show.

So yeah. That smarted. 

The thing is with a lot of the late 30s clothes, they look quite plain and severely cut, and then you realise that the devil is in the most subtle details. And that, gentle reader, is how I roll. I love all those twiddly little things that you don't notice at first glance and that come back and bite you, hard, shortly afterwards. 

One of the things I love in my "other" life - re-enactment - is trapunto quilting: corded and padded quilting. It's often seen at its plainest on underwear and bonnets as a stiffening, and on petticoats from the 18th century as an explosion of texture and pattern.  

This corset from c.1825 is in the V&A and it's the clearest example out of their trapunto exhibits for your viewing pleasure - the quilts are lovely, but they're not as stunning: some of the detail is lost in the white-on-white images at a distance. 

Now you might be forgiven for wondering what's the connection between Napoleonic undercrackers and a wearable modern (...well, 1930s, at least) wardrobe, and the answer is - quilting. I have been feasting my eyes on the quilted decoration on lots of plain dresses of the 30s and 40s and I'm guessing it was a cheap, simple way of adding surface decoration without any need for additional bought resources. 

So that's the design I'm thinking. I've got some cotton/linen blend fabric that was bought to make a dress that never happened - it was sold as raspberry-coloured, but it's slightly lighter than what I'd describe as a raspberry shade - and it's so flimsy, the quilting will act instead of a layer of interfacing to give the jacket structure. 

Tomorrow, the design.....