Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Totally Tubular
















I could have taken the easy way out while waiting to post wedding photos and done another post on the random pretties I've accumulated over the years, but I didn't. I wanted there to be some kind of flow to all the wedding posts, and besides, I was still too tired to string words together in a coherent fashion anyway.

But I've had this piece on my sewing table for a while now to show you all, and it finally nagged at me enough the other night that I took a few pictures to share.

This was an embellishment (faux pocket) from a vintage dress I bought years ago. Probably 20 years ago, and it wasn't in good shape then, but I loved the color and fit, at least until the seams gave out from age and mistreatment prior to my ownership. When the dress died, I removed the embellishments thinking that I would eventually put them on something else. It hasn't happened so far, and I'm not likely to find anything to match these. The color is much more of a solid than it shows up in the photos - not sure what happened with the camera when I took these. The color is very similar to vintage face powder; think of one of those 1940s rhinestone studded compacts and this was the color of the pressed powder inside.

As far as construction of these pockets, can you even imagine spending that much quality time with the tube turner? Or whatever passed for a tube turner in the 1940s? Looking at them, I can see the stitching line and it's machine, so they were somehow turned out, and then curved/curled into position and hand-stitched together around a central piece.

Very elaborate embellishment on what I recall as a very simple dress, but that's the point, isn't it? An elaborate dress would have eaten these beauties alive; a dress with simple,sleek lines would show them off to perfection.

I might consider constructing something like this out of a pre-made trim, like rat-tail, but I can't imagine doing it from scratch, can you?

1 comment:

LisaB said...

That's a really interesting pocket. I would never have thought to make something like that!

Turning all the tubes may not have been as laborious as you think. There's a nifty point turner used in industry that's so simple, I suspect they had it back when that vintage dress was made.

Here's a link to Fashion-Incubator where I was first introduced to this tool. http://www.fashion-incubator.com/archive/three_nifty_hand_tools/

...and if you want to turn lots of tubes yourself, you can buy one here. http://www.westchestersewing.com/misc/belt_turn.htm NAYY

I have the collar turner on that page, and I can attest to ease of use. Granted, I wouldn't want to turn tubes all day in a factory, but that work sure produced a lovely outcome in the pocket you've saved.