One of the American Red Cross buttons on the left, obviously, and the British Red Cross Society ones. I think I'll use them for a more daytime-friendly version of the panzer dress - not the colour scheme, just the double-breasted cut with very wide lapels and separate collar. That kind of cut really calls for oversized buttons like these, and with that huge collar you can't see the buttons on the shoulder straps properly anyway, so I could use all six of them for the front closure. I'm very happy with that dress (even more so since I added some silver braid to it for the second time I wore it), so I would like to re-use the pattern for something else.

The jury is still out on colour, fabric and so on, but I'm tempted to go for grey cotton twill - I saw this lovely, warm grey one at NK when I bought the fabrics for my New Year's Eve dress. With my luck they're probably sold out of it by now, and it was ludicrously expensive for cotton twill, but on the other hand it's NK, which means that it will add up bonus points in their very generous customer bonus system anyway... I will look around a little, and think some more.

I have another batch of vintage buttons on their way too - faceted chartreuse glass this time, hopefully arriving some time this week. Browsing buttons on Ebay is an expensive pastime, it seems..

I just won an auction for these babies:



British Red Cross Society, bakelite or some other early plastic. So pretty! No idea what I am going to do with them yet, but I'll think of something. They are large, 3 cm, so maybe a jacket or something? If there were more I'd love to put them on a short-sleeved shirtwaist or something similar, but six is an awkward number for projects like that - I would have to choose between having shoulder straps or having it buttoned all the way up, even if I did a front button closure from the waist up.
Maybe with a notched collar, though... That way I could possibly get away with just three front buttons, since they are so large, two for shoulder straps and one for a pocket flap or something.

I have a decided preference for plastic military and civil uniform buttons - I don't like flashy brass buttons much, and while silver tone buttons work if the design is interesting I usually prefer the plastic and glass ones. The classic Soviet brass buttons with the hammer and sickle in a five-point star are nice, sure, but I like the subdued plastic version below better:



Hotness, I must get hold of some. There are gorgeous white plastic and glass uniform buttons too, usually for various navy uniforms - the white glass German Kriegsmarine ones are to die for. Perhaps a white navy-inspired dress is in order?

Tired, but more hungry than tired at the moment and I love eating in the middle of the night - I should probably be thankful that I don't eat in my sleep. I had a friend who couldn't keep any food in the house, because she would sleepwalk to the kitchen and eat anything that was available, without waking up.

My ears are ringing and my feet hurt, too. I've had a really good evening, great live show as predicted, great dance floor too, apart from a couple of random guys who wouldn't stop trying to make eye contact, and as usual when I'm out on my own I had some interesting conversations with people I usually don't talk that much with, and some complete strangers too - note to self: dresses without acres of cleavage seem to make me more approachable to people who aren't hitting on me. Nice side effect.

As always after a good night out, I'm feeling a little warm and fuzzy with love for my local scene and this subculture. This doesn't always seem to apply to the culture in other countries, but in Sweden the EBM/industrial/synthpop scene as I know it is a very kind environment. There are assholes everywhere, of course, it's insular and probably very closed, perhaps even hostile to outsiders, but once you're in it is a very tolerant and well-meaning place to be.

The dress turned out all right - not great, but good enough to wear. I really don't understand how people can look at a garrison cap with the signalist pin in it and think stewardess, though - they really aren't that common in stewardess uniforms. If you ever have some time to kill, or  just really feel that you need to brush up on your knowledge of flight attendant uniforms, this is the place to go. Pretty hideous, much of it, but fun nonetheless, and I must admire the dedication of this guy.

Meme nicked off of[livejournal.com profile] kvlt_kitty .

The rules are that for 8 days you have to post something that made you happy that day. Disregarding the chain mail bit.

I really thought about this yesterday, but I reformatted my computer the day before yesterday and so I'm late. Anyway, yesterdays little bit of not-too-intimate-to-share-on-LJ happiness in my life was a short passus in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age where Dr. X operates a sort of microscope device with an ancient Nintendo hand control - you know, that old NES one with the cross-shaped button:

"Eventually they were looking at the severed portion of John Percival Hackworth on a meter-wide sheet of mediatronic paper that one of the assistants had, with great ceremony, unfurled across a low, black lacquer table. They sought something that was bulky by nanotech standards, so the magnification was not very high - even so, the surface of Hackworth's skin looke like a table heaped with crumpled newspapers. If Dr. X shared Hackworth's queasiness, he didn't show it. He appeared to be sitting with his hands folded in the lap of his embroidered silk robe, but Hackworth leaned forward a bit and saw his yellowed, inch-long fingernails overhanging the black Swiss cross of an old Nintendo pad. The fingers moved, the image on the mediatron zoomed forward."

That made me smile.

Todays bit of happy is of the retail therapy variety - we whiled the afternoon away at a vintage clothing fair, and I spent too much money. Oh, well. Bought 1. a huge, cheap cocktail ring with a big chunk of facetted plastic in the right shade of chartreuse set in black, 2. a rather expensive, but pretty celadon green, knit wool sweater with black edges, circa 50's but in mint condition apart from four rather ugly buttons, probably not original, which I promptly substituted with black scottie dog buttons, and 3. this baby:



The stamps on the back and the three crowns on the front tells us that it's Swedish, silver, probably a military badge of some sort and made in 1946, some googling makes me guess that this is an M/39 Air Force Signalist mark. I thought 90 SEK was a bit expensive until I had a closer look at the stamps and saw the cat's paw - not expensive for silver, and it's such a handsome little badge either way. As I've stated before, I like it when symbols of the function in question are incorporated in the design.
There is a small electric plant here in Stockholm, built in 1905 by Art Nouveau architect Ferdinand Boberg, that has stylized borders of sandstone light bulbs as part of the decor. I think that is a pretty fantastic example of this mindset. The "flashes" on this little badge are great, and it will look amazing with this dress when I finish it, I suspect.
pimpinett: (Default)
( Oct. 29th, 2008 03:16 pm)
Edit: found another photo that is nice, but not very clear either - it's taken at the masquerade in indoor lighting, so the colours are pretty much gone and the sharpness is less than stellar.



The two others are here. )
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Apparently there's another Halloween party tomorrow - a bit of Halloween overload, I say, but I suppose it'll be fun, and A wants to go. It's just that awesome local band Agent Side Grinder (seriously good, go have a listen) are playing at an awesomely geeky local industrial club, too, and I'm not going to miss that either, so it seems we'll end up doing both. How to dress for that combination? I don't have a serious costume yet, and even if the Fru Draake thing was finished I'd save it for next Friday, so I'm going for safe and boring and wearing my vintage SKBR uniform. It hasn't been out and about in years, it deserves a night on the town.

SKBR stands for Svenska Kvinnliga Bilkårers Riksförbund, which is a women's civil defense organization started by a group of women who were trained as chauffeurs by a more general female civil defense organization at the beginning of WWII. They had no financial backing during the first years, but still managed to do quite a lot of social work; transporting Home Guard troops, evacuating children, driving refugee transports and ambulances. The organization received backing from the state first after the war, and continued to grow with the increased demand of competent drivers and mechanics for the army in the 50's.

My uniform is 50's, judging from the logotype with three triangles featured on one sleeve, which was created in the 50's; not much later, going by the cut of the garments. It's almost complete, consisting of a belted tunic, calf-length skirt with an inverted box pleat at center front and jodhpurs, all in grey wool, but it lacked a cap when I bought it. I later found the right vintage cap for it. I'll be wearing the tunic, cap and skirt tomorrow, not the jodhpurs, sadly; they are very hot - that great, curvy classic fit, you know - but sadly I have neither riding boots nor high lace-up combat boots to wear with them, so that'll have to wait until I do. I don't like the way they look with jodhpur boots, although I know that's a classic way of wearing them, too (besides, I don't have any of those either).

I made a grey shirt with the usual tailored puff sleeves and inverted pleat breast pockets with buttoned flaps a while back - I feel sure that there must be a shorter way of putting that. In Swedish I'd write bälgficka, which pretty much includes all that information in a single word. Anyway, will be wearing that with the skirt, possibly a black tie, the cap and the tunic. I'll try to keep my hands off the black eyeliner and go for minimal make-up and fresh-faced instead; once again, I can't think of an English word that quite covers all the implications of äppelkäck, but it'll have to do. Also a period updo, and probably not seam-backs - I just can't imagine that any sensible girl would waste expensive and fragile nylons on a frumpy uniform. I love it and in my eyes it's sexy as all that, but the skirt is the worst length possible, and the zippers pinch, and I just don't think that's how the original wearer thought of it.

So. Rant over, will try really hard to produce photos, I want some.


pimpinett: (Default)
( Sep. 19th, 2008 12:47 pm)
I got the main fabrics for the dress yesterday - the pink dupioni, which is eye-wateringly bright in large amounts, and pink cotton to flat line with. There was a dupioni in the same red as the warp in the pink fabric, which I assumed would work as a contrast, until I looked at them next to one another. It doesn't work. At all. The hot pink brings out a strange, rusty tomato shade in even cool, true reds and it looks awful.

So bright red is off the list at the moment and I'm considering burgundy instead, but I am rather stumped at the moment. Will bring a pink sample and hunt for contrasting fabric tomorrow and next week. Bummer.

Also got some silver cord for the Panzer dress - have added some of it to the shoulder straps, and I'm thinking of putting the rest together with a small silver tassel I had lying around to make a sort of... yeah, whatever that cord and tassel thing draping between the collar and/or lapels and the shoulder strap is called on uniforms.*

Finally found a source (in Swedish) that gives clear and reasonably comprehensive information about the various three crown buttons, by the way; as far as I've gathered, the grey metal ones are M/1939, the gold and silver coloured ones are M/1960, a furlough uniform. The gold colour is the standard, with the silver ones used only by a few regiments, which would explain why they are harder to find, of course. I'm guessing that the grey plastic version is from one of the 1950's or 1960's uniforms, too - M/1959 or M/1968. Nice to get that sorted out.

*Aiguillette or possibly lanyard, it turns out; ägiljett in Swedish. The Swedish uniform regulation is very useful for this kind of stuff, apparently. And I did make an aiguillette sort of thing with the rest of the cord.

pimpinett: (Default)
( Sep. 1st, 2008 12:11 am)
As I suspected, there isn't quite enough of the piping to go around. I bought everything Mattson's had, which was almost two meters less than I needed, so I crossed out some details where I wanted it and hoped that it would cover the rest. It doesn't, though, so I will have to skip putting it in the sleeves, which feels a bit Spartan. But I asked Mattson's to see if they could order more of the stuff, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that, and if they get hold of it I can take out the sleeves and put the piping in later on.



Sleeves are useful without piping too, after all, but I can't see the point of having decorative pocket flaps and shoulder straps without piping, and I don't want to skip those details. Don't want to forgo piping on the cap either, the cap is important.

There will be no kick pleat and no slit - the fabric is stretchy enough that I can make it fairly narrow around the knees without having trouble walking. I dislike working with very stretchy fabrics, not to mention knits and jerseys (horror!) so I approach them with much skepticism and fusible interfacing. Not the best method, probably, but these dresses usually turn out alright. I just have to fight down the impulse to put spiral steel or at least rigilene along the princess seams, stretch be damned..
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pimpinett: (Default)
( Aug. 30th, 2008 08:55 pm)
We went to the movies and saw Blade Runner: Final Cut last weekend, and my head is still spinning with shoulder pads - goodness, what shoulder pads! Am going to see it again with a very young friend who hadn't even heard of it, so clearly needs to take the chance of seeing it on the big screen. I'm happy that I did, it was a completely different experience than watching an old, worn VHS copy on a small TV. There were so many little details that I had missed, and the restored sound was good, too.

And oh, the shoulder pads...

The silver-coloured three crowns buttons have found a project at last, by the way - I'm completely disregarding all the things I actually need in favour of another little mock uniform dress. The fabric is a woven polyamide/lycra that I have used for a couple of similar dresses before, fairly stiff and sturdy but quite stretchy, up to about 40%. Black with silver piping, buttoned down the front with a single row, comparatively narrow collar and lapels, pockets with buttoned flaps on the half-length sleeves, buttoned shoulder straps and big 40's style shoulder pads. I will make them myself, modern shoulder pads are too soft and flat. The 40's pads I'm trying to emulate are built high, often 2-3 cm or more, but not extremely wide, they are tightly curved over the shoulder and stuffed hard.



I had only seven of those buttons and needed at least eleven for the project, so I went to the two remaining military antiques shops in town (after a detour to the Army Museum half a block from where there used to be a third one, where I poked and prodded another set of great shoulder pads in a female WWII Blue Star uniform) and asked for them. Found only two expensive ones at my first stop, but hit the jackpot at my second - seven large ones, two small ones, plus oodles of the also very pretty grey M/39 version of the same button, two sizes, in metal and plastic. I bought in the region of 40 buttons there and I'll go back for more. Was asked to show off the dress I'm using them for, too, when it's finished. I think I should, maybe.



I know that many sewers tend to collect tons of fabric. I've never been that bad a case of fabric hoarding, but I can't resist good buttons. They do take up less storage space than fabric, there is that to say for it..
The K came from the same place as most of the buttons, by the way. I have been thinking about the metal numbers and letters featured on some uniforms lately, and since K is my first name initial and they only had this one little letter lying around, it was obviously meant to be.


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