Ellie and I share an interest in lots of periods of history, not just medieval and we are particularly interested in WW1 and WW2, from lots of different aspects.

One of the birthday presents I bought her recently was the book Fashion on the Ration by Julie Summers which I intend to borrow from her once she has read it! We both love making and re-purposing garments and the ‘make do and mend’ that people did during WW2 is really fascinating.

A few weeks ago she invited me to take part in a WW1 event at Clumber which is happening next weekend called, ‘Bonnets to Breeches’, celebrating the work of the WW1 Land Army Girls.

I did a bit of research on the uniform as had only come across WW2 outfits before. This site was very helpful so I took my main inspiration from here and went charity shop searching. I was lucky to find most of what I wanted in one shop in town and then a nice hat and shoes in our local charity shop.

 

I also found some great images with a Google image search including this one of the armband that they wore.

I made my own version last night.It is a darker green than it looks in this picture.

Today I have been working on other aspects of the costume. I bought some men’s wool trousers to adapt for the breeches.

I cut the legs down to just below knee height then made a casing for elastic.

Here they are with and without the lovely knee high socks and my charity shop shoes.

I have been listening to podcasts as I have been sewing, I wrote about the Love to Sew podcast last week and today I have been listening to some more, including a very apt one all about refashioning garments.

There is a yearly challenge run by Portia from Makery blog  which involves doing this with a specific type of garment and I was very interested to hear her talk about all the ideas behind it.

I love making things from old finds but have not really considered using them to refashion clothes for me, apart from the Steampunk jacket in progress made from tablecloths, but I will definitely follow up this as an area for future makes. I would like to try some sewing of things for me to wear.

I have had a very productive weekend apart from this as well, more churn dashes as have become a little bit obsessed with them but am making some different ones, not just Liberty ones.

It is back to marking assignments tomorrow but I am hoping to get an early finish and sneak in a couple of hours in the craft room. Hope that you have all had a lovely weekend and thanks as always for visiting.