Buy Nothing New: Thrifty French Maid Costume

What do you do when you decide at the last minute you need a costume and nothing in your wardrobe fits the bill? In the spirit of Buy Nothing New Month, buying something new was out. I also don't like buying things that will get limited wearing. I could have gone to Savers to see what I could get second hand that could be reworked into a costume. However, thrifty sort that I am, I decided to see what I could do with what I already had to hand. This led to the Thrifty French Maid Costume.

The finished costume: Front, Side and Back views

 I used completely reclaimed material from my refashion/reuse stash including:

• An old pair of black/dark grey satin pajamas I gave up on wearing as the polyester was too sweaty
• An old white work shirt
• Some offcuts of white netting from making curtains
• A zipper reclaimed from a previous garment

The pajamas and shirt were disassembled into their separate pieces. I was going to make the dress from the black satin of the pajamas, the apron from the shirt, and a petticoat from the netting. The basic dress design was a fitted bodice, pleated short skirt, short puffed sleeves, and a zip at the back. I'll confess there was not a lot of preparation and planning that went into this project, so there was a fair bit of "design on the fly" and "winging it". It's also why there aren't any "before" or "in progress" photos. It was serious last minute sewing. However, I have drawn up a little diagram of how the dress pieces came out of the pajama pieces. The black line is the pajama piece and the red line is the dress piece.


I laid out the pieces of fabric I had to work with and started to plan pattern pieces. I used the bodice from a dress pattern that I'd recently fitted as a base and re-worked it to suit the shape I wanted. No time to do a muslin, I went straight to cutting out pieces, leaving a generous seam allowance where possible. I did a quick self-fit as I went along. For the skirt I cut eight slightly trapezoidal panels and sewed them into a circle. I then stitched the netting fabric to the top of inside of the skirt panels, then added some extra tiers to the lower edge of the netting to give it some "floof". To attach the skirt to the bodice, I put in box pleats placed to hide the seams of the individual skirt pieces. The zipper was inserted so it went down centre back of the bodice and into the skirt (so I could get it over my hips/shoulders). The small puff sleeves were made from the pajama sleeves buy cutting the sleeves in half and attaching the lower half to the upper half to create a wider circle to be gathered in to the bodice armscyth and create the puffed look. To do the gathering quickly, I used a trick I'd read recently and turned the sewing machine tension right up to 10. It effectively gathers the fabric as you sew, then you can just fudge the fabric along the stitching line to make it fit. On the ends of the sleeves I sewed a channel and inserted some thin elastic.

The "petticoat" layer under the skirt

I decided at that point that the dress really needed some kind of trim. I cut a bunch of long strips around 2" wide from the white shirt, pressing them half to create a smooth edge. I applied this around the bottom of the skirt and the bottom of the sleeves. I then used the white satin piping from the pajamas to edge the neckline.

The apron was fairly simple. A square for the top and a trapezoid for the bottom, plus a waist tie. I made a bunch of white strips from the shirt (as above), then gathered them using the sewing machine method above, to create a ruffled edge for the apron. I then soaked it in starch and pressed it to get that crisp feel.

 I also needed a little pleated head piece. I ended up using the shirt cuffs, which were nice and sturdy. I removed the buttons and cut off the bit with the button hole and stitched the two cuffs together to create a longer piece. I then pleated it and sewed it into what was the shirt collar band. It wasn't quite right until I folded the sides of the pleated cuffs down to the band to create a curved shape. Stitched those bits down and made the band taper thinner towards the ends. Tried it on and it stayed in place with bobby pins, so worked nicely.

And voila! The costume was made complete by the essential pair of black seamed stockings and a pair of black and white heels from my wardrobe. Not bad if I do say so myself.

A pair of pajamas, an old shirt, some curtain offcuts + 10 hours sewing = One thrifty (and sexy) french maid costume.

Buy Nothing New Month: Make Do and Mend

One of the easiest ways to avoid having to buy new things is to look after and maintain the things you already have. You'd think that would be a statement of the obvious, but in the current throw-away consumer culture, people seem unwilling to consider making simple repairs to extend the life of an item.

The "Make-do and Mend" slogan  arose during World War II, where all kinds of resources were being redirected to the war effort and civilians had to learn to make-do with strictly rationed items of clothing, food, and other items. An interesting post on Make-do and Mend and rationing can be found over at the Coletterie blog here.

Some Make-do and Mend media from WWII, though I would recommend getting your bloke to take off his pants first before attempting to mend them.

There were a couple of notable books on how to make-do and mend, both in the UK and in the USA. Make And Mend For Victory was from the USA and published in 1942. The lovely Susannah from Cargo Cult Craft has put this on her website as a two part downloadable pdf. Make Do And Mend was from the UK and published around the same time. Reproduction copies can be bought from Amazon and similar places.

This is a darning mushroom

This weekend I decided to tackle my mending pile, which contained a couple of socks with holes, a pair of knickers with an unravelled side seam, a pair of pj bottoms with a rip, a dressing gown sash that had come apart, and a carry bag where the handles had almost pulled off. I was fortunate in growing up with a mother who sewed and often mended our clothes and household furnishings. I found out that not everyone had this experience growing up when I discovered that most people have no idea what a "sock mushroom" is. So let's start with my socks.

What I grew up calling a "sock mushroom", is more accurately called a "darning mushroom". It's a mushroom shaped item that you use to stretch the rounded toe or heel of a sock over so you can darn it. My mum had a plastic one where the "stem" could be unscrewed and you could store needles and pins inside. I'm more low tech and use a light bulb. It does the job quite adequately.

I'm not going to go into detail on how to darn socks. There are a variety of tutorials on eHow.com. Basically it involves sewing some base threads and weaving a patch over the offending hole in the sock. It really doesn't take long to do once you get the hang of it. It's something I often do in front of the TV in the ad breaks.

The grey pair I did with black thread so you can see the darned patch more easily. When darned with matching colour thread, it really isn't very noticeable, as you can see in the black pair, where I've circles the darned patch so you can actually find it!

The other items in my mending pile I repaired using the wonders of modern technology - the sewing machine and the overlocker (or "serger" if you're American). The overlocker is great for sewing up seams and finishing edges at the same time. I fixed the side seam of my knickers in about 5 seconds flat.

The pajama bottoms had torn where the fabric was getting a bit worn and thin. I'd previously stitched it up with the overlocker, but it had torn along the stitching line. So this time I decided to do a more stable repair and use a tight zig-zag stitch over the tear. It means the repair is more visible, but these are just pajamas so I'm not concerned about that.



The carry bag was a straight forward fix. It was a freebie with another purchase and a really good sized bag for carry larger items. Unfortunately, my partner had taken to using it to carry heavy tools and it had been picked up by only one handle, which caused it to rip away from the body of the bag. The repair simply involved finding some matching thread and resewing the handle back on along the original stitch lines. To prevent future repairs, I added some reinforcement stitching at the top. 

The dressing gown sash was a slightly more fiddly repair. It had mostly come undone at the join, but the fabric had also frayed. So the seam was completely unpicked, the frayed edges trimmed and joined with the overlocker, then flipped inside out and top-stitched in matching thread to close the seam.

On the whole, maybe an hours work on a Sunday to clear my mending pile and get six items back in use and avoid having to buy replacements. Next time you go to throw something out, think about whether it could be repaired and put back into service. It will save another item going to landfill and save your hip pocket from shelling out for a replacement.

Buy Nothing New Month - October 2011

I've submitted my pledge to Buy Nothing New for the month of October 2011. As you probably have gathered from this blog and my sustainable living blog over at Greening Our Life, not buying new things is a regular part of how I live. However, even though I think I'll find it easy to go without buying anything new for a month, I'm keen to encourage other people to give it go.

What exactly do you mean by Buy Nothing New?
Buy Nothing New month means that for one month (October 2011), with the exception of essentials* (food, drink, medications, hygiene products) you can beg, borrow, barter, swap or buy secondhand whatever you need. You just buy nothing new.
*I'm still out on whether I'd count buying supplies to make/repair things as "new". E.g. buying a new zipper to replace a broken one on a skirt, buying matching thread to fix a seam etc.. As much as possible I'm going to try and use things from my stash.

Why have a Buy Nothing New month?

Buy Nothing New is not about going without, nor is it Buy Nothing New Never.

It’s about taking October to reassess what we really need, think about where the stuff we buy comes from (finite resources), where it goes (landfill), and what our alternatives are.

It is about conscientious consumption and by not spending on stuff we don’t need, increasing our savings for the things we do need.

Pledge to Buy Nothing New during October and challenge over consumption.  

http://www.buynothingnew.com.au/why/

One of my biggest complaints about modern society is how much people are obsessed with having "stuff", especially cheap stuff. I cringe every time I go past yet another discount store selling crap mass produced from unsustainable materials using underpaid and undervalued labour.

A large part of my love of vintage clothing is that it came from a time when people valued quality of materials and workmanship. I have several beautiful suit jackets from the late 1940s that are far finer in the quality of the materials (pure worsted wool) and the workmanship. The tailoring is neat and well finished. No sloppy stitching and weak seams. They've lasted far better than anything I've ever bought new from a modern department store, including brands that are supposedly good quality.

Vintage to me also harks back to a time of "make do and mend". Clothes and other items were well cared for so they would last longer and mended when necessary to keep them usable. Modern society is very much a disposable society. Fashion moves so fast that clothes are considered out of date within months and the rapid turnover and desire for ever cheaper fashion has driven manufacturers towards the lowest cost materials and labour. While it may be great for some that they can get jeans for $10 from Kmart, the hidden costs are those born by those who labour in poor conditions, who are made sick from industrial pollution from the materials manufacturing process, and countries that exploit their own people to gain Western investment.

Things to think about

• How many times have you bought a piece of clothing only to have it languish in the back of the wardrobe unworn? 
• How many times have you succumbed to buying clothes because they were "such a bargain" only to have them fall to bits within a year? 
• How many times have you thrown out a piece of clothing because it lost a button, broke a zip, had a stain, or had a seam pop?

I know in my lifetime I've been guilty of all of the above at some point. However, a few years ago I decided to make a conscious effort to put more thought into the clothes I buy. I look for quality rather than the cheapest option. I look for ethically and sustainably produced clothing. I look for locally made clothing. I'm prepared to pay more for better quality materials, good working conditions, and a fair wage for labour. I select clothing with consideration for how much use I will get from it. I am less inclined to buy clothing for a "one off" event. I take care when laundering my clothes to make sure I get longer wear from them. I alter and mend my clothes to keep them in my wardrobe for longer. Any clothes I no longer wear are donated to charity if they are in reasonable condition, or go into my refashion/fabric scraps box to be recycled into other things. Rarely does anything go into the rubbish.

Over the years I've acquired some of my favourite wardrobe pieces from non-new sources such as:

• Vintage clothing from places like the Love Vintage fair, The Way We Wear fair, Circa Vintage and countless others.
• Second-hand stores like Salvos, Brotherhood of St Lawrence, Savers and countless others
• Second-hand online traders like eBay, Etsy, and Gumtree
• Clothes swaps, either just with friends or organised swaps like National Swap Day
• Making my own clothes
• Refashioning/altering clothing that was originally bought new to give it a new life

In a city like Melbourne, we really are spoilt for choice when it comes to second-hand or vintage clothing sources. Not only is buying second-hand more sustainable, it's also often less expensive which is great for the budget conscious.

As we go through October, I'll be posting what things I've sourced from non-new sources, as well as sharing some of my favourite ways to buy nothing new.

I encourage everyone to give Buy Nothing New month a go. It's just one month. When you go to buy something new, take a moment to pause and think:

• Do I really need this?
• Does it need to be new?
• Is there another option to get this second-hand?