Challis - A History of Our Chalet's Namesake

Source: oscarmora.com viaLady on Pinterest

Hello Chalet guests, have a seat and lets talk a little bit about the history of our namesake, challis.

According to the dictionary is a lightweight plain-weave fabric of wool, cotton, etc., usually with a printed design. Which is all well and good, but doesn't really give us more information than that. So I figured I'd start with what a "lightweight plain weave" means.  Enter a text book from 1925*.

Click to embiggen.

"A plain weave" is where one weft yard passes evenly over one warp yard. This takes the least amount of material to make and is very inexpensive. The book goes on to say that challis is made from cotton and wool (rayon has not yet caught on).

Wool challis is light and soft and recommended for dresses and negligees. It will cost you (adjusted for inflation) anywhere from $13-25 dollars per yard (no wider than 39").

Cotton challis, however, is considered for inexpensive dresses and "comfortables" (lounge wear, I'm assuming).  This will run you anywhere from $2.50 to $24 a yard (also, no wider than 39").  

Now lets fast forward about 15 years, just before WWII was really under way. Chemists had been working on improving rayon, or "viscose" as it were to make it easier and more cost effective to manufacture. Somewhere around the 20's it started being called "artificial silk" and, as I looked, was not yet more than a foot note in text books but popular among households, until the 30's and the Great Depression.  But here's info according to DuPont's timeline.

About the time of the 1940's, DuPont started pushing rayon through what I can only assume are the original "infomercials".  I found an example from 1940 itself.

But rayon, and coincidentally, rayon challis, didn't catch on until the USA was fully embroiled in  WWII and rationing started.

After this country entered World War II practically no staple clothing fabrics of prewar quality were manufactured for the civilian. Some of the materials that homemakers used during peacetime in enormous quantities to clothe their families virtually disappeared from the civilian

consumer's market. No 80-square percale, no fine-count two-ply broadcloth or voile, and little gingham, chambray, muslin, nainsook, lawn, or poplin was available. These shortages were due in part to Government regulations which directed enormous quantities of textile goods to the armed forces. In order to stretch as far as possible the small amounts of fiber available, there was also a lowering of quality of textile materials made for home folks.

By the spring of 1944 the supply and variety of serviceable cotton fabrics were limited. The prewar backlog of materials of good quality was used up and the flow of these fabrics from the factories to the stores had almost ceased. In the small cities and towns, particularly those near military bases or camps, the shortage of staple materials was acute. Many of the few fabrics available, particularly the cottons, were so unattractive in design and color that they obviously would not have sold readily, if at all, in normal times. Rayons were generally more plentiful and more comparable to prewar fabrics than were the cottons, but some types of rayons were scarce. Wool and wool mixed fabrics were more plentiful than the cottons. Mixtures of wool and rayon were common, but few wool and cotton mixtures were on the market.

From early in 1944 until several months after the end of hostilities, homemakers in various parts of the United States found many of the available staple clothing fabrics so coarse and sleazy that they scarcely justified the money spent for 'hem or the time and energy used to make th jloth into garments. Many of the fabrics shrank and were faded by light and washing.

The relatively large volume of "too poor" fabrics might have been replaced by a smaller volume of materials of better quality if minimum quality standards had been set up for textile goods. Such standards under Government control would have prevented textile raw materials from being manufactured into inferior fabrics in this period of scarcity.

Before World War II considerable progress had been made in determining the physical characteristics of cotton woven goods such as broadcloth, chambray, gingham, and percale (5, 6,16,17).2

Federal specifications developed for the use of Government agencies in purchasing these goods have been in existence for several years (11, 12,13, 14). In these specifications for broadcloth and chambray differences in quality have been

designated. On the other hand, the quality of other classes of cotton and of various types of wool and rayon fabrics is not so generally known. The quality of various kinds of mixed fabrics composed of cotton, rayon, wool, and other fibers needs to be studied since they are becoming more and more common. Some of these fabrics are included in this study. Found here in Google Books, Quality of Fabrics Study in 1946

So, in essence, rayon and particularly challis, became popular because what else was there to use? Here are some vintage samples.

Source: etsy.com viaLady on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com viaLady on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com viaLady on Pinterest

Well, that concludes today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new!

Seventies Dress: The Making Of

I think I might have promised some constructions notes on this some time back, right?  Well, here goes.  I went ahead and measured all the pattern pieces and determined that, for the most part, it would fit. I just needed to make a FBA.  Even though the cowl neck portion is cut on the bias, I didn't think it would stretch enough, or that it would but look bad.  Here's how to do an FBA on this type of princess seam.

1) First, go ahead and trace 1/2 of the bodice piece.  Trying to do both halves will make you to stab yourself in the leg, so don't do it. Trust me.

2) Go ahead and hold the traced piece up to yourself, wear a cami or something that you can pin it to, mark your bust apex.

3) Tape it over some other piece of paper.

4) This is very similar to the Roobios FBA (seriously, go read it), but I didn't want a side dart, so I put all the fullness into the underbust gathers.  You will want to redraw the stitching line using a French Curve.  And also, due to paranoia, I added about .5 inches of length. Which turned out to be a very bad idea. More on that in a minute.

Ok, so moving on to construction.  This thing is a FABRIC HOG! Seriously,  Ooona sent me over four yards of this fabric and in the end I had enough left over to make my daughter a top.  The thing about these sort of slippery slinky knits is to be very careful that you don't stretch it when laying it out in any way.  I was using the ironing board to pool the excess fabric on because I could only cut one large skirt panel out at once. I didn't take photos of this part, I was busy swearing and stressing out my husband. He got over it, eventually.

In any case, I had this clever plan of using bias cut fusible interfacing, also a lesson in things Not TO DO.  You can't get the iron hot enough for it to stay put.  I did manage to use the velvet pressing board my Mother left to me (those things are expensive! If you ever find one under 100 dollars GET IT RIGHT THEN).

needle boards also like to collect thread

In any case, I managed to get the whole thing cut out and sewn up in one night, to the point where I could try it on. Then tragedy struck!

saggy boob

The dreaded Saggy Boob (said in Heidi Klum's voice)! NOOOOOOoooOOoooo!!!  I had a complete meltdown that resulted in my husband handing me a xanax and chamomile tea and telling me to go to bed.

I tackled it again after my short work week. If the left side looks better, that's because I have it pinned up here.  I ended up taking a good inch and a half in pinning it, went over it with a triple zigzag stitch and clear elastic for stability (and added it to the shoulders), then trimmed excess fabric. Carefully.  Hooray! It Worked!

To be honest, all I did for finishing the edges was turn it under twice and use a tiny zigzag.  Facings on this stuff? NOT HAPPENING. Also, finding matching thread was almost impossible, but I ended up going with dark red on the serger and a dark purple in my Mom's Viking. I really wish my Brother had been operational at this point, its a lot happier to work on knits.

Oh right, the after on dealing with Saggy Boob.

One day, I'll get new floors. *sighs*

I didn't bother to hem it, it really didn't need it in this case.  And of course, I still haven't gotten more photos of me in it.  Here's a slightly different phone photo than the one I posted before.

This are serious face, I are serious Time Lord. I have evil eyebrows, too.  

Alright then. I hope that was in some way enlightening. Also, this did show me that, other than the rounded shoulders, my doppleganger is pretty close to my proportions and reliable for early fitting.

Plan B

When I set out to try and make a couture dress before Dragon*Con I should have started months ago.  Problem being I needed supplies for which I had to save up money.  So now its August and I'm hit by several things at once.  The kids need to get ready to go back to school, I'm teaching classes starting next Friday, and several family members have to have surgery or die (ok,only my  Grandfather has died in the last two months, which has left me really sad. My mother-in-law, however, has lost two family members to cancer since January).  Which in and of itself is stressful.

And now my air conditioning breaks in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record (people are dying in this heat). More specifically, the fan under the house that blows the air through the central system is dead.  I heard it go KACHUNK under the house when I got up.  Of course the boys looked at me like I was hearing things but then I realized it was getting HOT in the house and there was nothing coming out of the vents.  I went out with the flashlight to flip the breaker on the A/C unit and its running.  Finally my husband is convinced enough to check under the house. Yup. Fan broke.  Shit. All this resulted in my having a complete sobbing break down which ended with me having chocolate cake and Xanax for lunch after my husband prevented me from putting my hand through a glass window when trying to pry its swollen wood frame open.    He's a good man, really.  I'm a long term planner and he kind of lives in the moment. Eventually it balances everything out.

So tomorrow we go to the bank and see about refinancing the house, which we've been talking about doing for a while.  All things considered, its a modest house for the area but our interest rate was gotten 8 years ago when our credit sucked but they were handing out no-money-down loans anyway. I had done my research and got a house with a fixed interest rate that we could afford on a single income. This has saved our ass on more than one occasion from losing the place. But you probably don't want to hear about all that. This is a sewing blog.  I want to keep it that way.  Long story short, I have to go deal with banks and insurance companies tomorrow and if all else fails we get a window unit with our Home Depot card and use that until we can save up for getting the system fixed.

What this means is there is no way in a Hot Georgia Summer I'm going to get this couture dress done in time for Dragon*Con.  Its just not going to happen. Sometimes you just have to re-evaluate priorities.  So, that being said, I'm looking at doing a vintage 70's dress I've had in my stash for a while.





The view on the left.  While the pattern calls for a woven I'm going to do this in a burnout knit.  Since its from after the Big Four standardized their measurements and its my usually starting size of 18, the only major modification is the bust and turning the darts into gathers instead.  Though dealing with that amount of slippery fabric is always a PITA but I think I'll deal.  Now I just gotta figure out the shoes.

I also have some comic book fabric I want to use for another wrap dress.

And on that note, I want to bake bread but the thought of turning on the oven is making me wince. Hell, I don't even want to turn on the lights.

**Looking at the forecast the next few days should be in the mid 80's during the day dipping into the 60's at night (that's 30 high/18 low Celsius which is better than the 40/25 C we were getting. UG)  , albeit with a lot of humidity. So that's a tiny bit of a relief.

The Winners Announcement!!

Hello! Are you excited? I'm excited. I REALLY wanted to take video of my kids rolling dice for the winners but that idea turned out to be... not good. You may not know this, but my other title is "Cat Herder" and  as you can imagine its often barely controlled chaos. So, to make sure this got done today I decided to go the random number generator route.  Also, PicMonkey helped make it fancy (if you haven't checked them out, you should).  Also, a couple posts had non-contestant comments. They were omitted and my list will be up last.

All the winners please email me your mailing address to ladykatza (at) gmail (dot) com. I will do my very best to get everything shipped out before we leave on July 7th.  Ok, on with the show!

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!!  The winners are as follows:

For the "New Look Giveaway" First Giveaway it is:

Puddle Boots!

Number seven was listed as "Unknown" but a little sleuthing I believe they are actually PuddleBoots.

For the "That's So Seventies" Second Giveaway it is:

Njeri!

NJERI, COME ON DOWN!

For the "Little Darling" Third Giveaway it is:

Carrie B!

There were only two entries to this, which surprised me.  Great odds for the contestants though. CARRIE B, COME ON DOWN!

For the "Mad About You" Fourth Giveaway it is:

Carolyn!

CAROLYN!! COME ON DOWN!

For "The Slenderette!" Fifth and Final Giveaway it is:

Vickikatemakes!

VICKIKATEMAKES! COME ON DOWN!


*Wild applause for all the winners*  Congratulations.  Please PLEASE send me your mailing info ASAP. Now, as promised, here is a screen capture of my list.

click to embiggen

Retro Romper - DONE!

1930's Bib Overalls

I started on this project for Felicity over a year ago, which seems to be a theme with me and kid projects.  Part of the reason it stayed on ice for so long is due to the fact that it was drafted for an eight year old a good 10 inches taller than mine, and a good number of inches wider. Felicity is 4'3.5" tall and 65 pounds, so her chest is just now about 25.5 inches.  The back of this pattern says size eight is 26 inches in the chest. It could easily fit 28 inches at 5 feet. I'm hoping this was done mostly due to the fact that this pattern is from a time when almost all the clothes were sewn at home and were meant to last a while.

Finished Romper on hanger.

Other Issues: 
-Side Button Plackets. I had never done one of these before and the instructions, like most instructions of the period, were very cryptic. There's still a few edges I need to hand overcast.  As it was, most of it had to be done by hand. I don't have photos cause I think I started this Pre-DSLR.

Bottom of inside placket needs overcast. 

 - Front midriff came undone at first. I didn't really take a photo of this part, but the midriff band is two pieces top stitched together with the top and bottom sandwiched between. I didn't catch the top front of the bib portion at first, which lent to the crotch being almost to her knees at first.  Then she grew two inches and it was just halfway, so I undid the stitches, resewed the whole thing and now the crotch is somewhere in acceptable limits.

Serged and then hap-hazardously blind hemmed.

 - Legs made for a giant! I had to hem up the pants a good six inches.  I didn't want to whack all that length off because I have a sneaky hunch there's a growth spurt coming. I will probably be redoing this hem after the first wearing. Seriously, that's a shoddy job. (Have I mentioned I HATE HEMMING THINGS??) At this point I just wanted to Get It Done.

fitting darts

 - Huge back width. I ended up taking it in with darts, but I did toy with shirring it for a bit. However, that would have ended up being very uncomfortable later.  I did put the buttons on the inside because there will be more than one buttonhole in the straps.

- You'll also see that I didn't finish some of the seams at all. I have a double row of stitching for strength and the fabric really doesn't ravel at all.  So that's actually a good thing.

Another Placket Shot

The few times I've tried it on Felicity she's had this overwhelming need to poke her tummy out as far as possible which makes her look like Mario might have in "The Yellow Submarine".  However, she seems to LOVE it.  The print is so 70's it hurts and the fabric is a somewhat stretchy denim.  We're suppose to be planting more flowers this weekend, so there will most likely be action shots involving shovels and kids covered in dirt.  Hooray for easy care fabric!

I also have a ponte knit skirt I finished sometime back, and the pattern you see taped together underneath is Ichigogirl's perfect shrug pattern.  I have just enough of this Anna Sui sweater knit to make a shrug.  It goes with the rest of my color pallet, and just happens to be called phantasmagoria. How could I NOT buy some, even at the price tag that hurt.

Anna Sui sweater knit

Let me know what's going on in your world! I'll blog about my skirt and the Sewing Expo scores soon.

Boxes for Hats

(Image from Here)

Its no secret that I love hats. All you need to do is look at my profile picture. And then there's this photo and this photo. In fact, anytime I go on vacation I always have an outfit or two that benefits from a hat. Vacations for us always mean outside in the sunshine near the ocean. Sunshine means I must have a hat to keep my fair complexion. And in the winter its to keep my head warm. In fact my last winter hat was stolen. STOLEN! How rude can you get? I think my new one will be from this lovely Etsy seller.

But then there's the packing conundrum. How do I transport my hats?! My conclusion is that I need some hat boxes. Or hat suitcases as the case may be. Cause right now its tends to be a routine of putting the hats in last and then my fussing over "Don't let them get crushed!". And my very patient husband sighs and says "Yes Dear" and then I apologize for being overly fretful(I have a wonderful husband, he puts up with all my idiosyncrasies).

I don't know how many of you reading this have any sort of love for hats and fascinators. If you do, however, then you know that well made ones are far from inexpensive. After a couple of attempts to make them myself, or even take a blank and decorate I have decided its just not something I do. I will gladly pay others to do that sort of work because they love it. And to protect them while traveling I must procure the proper transportation equipment.

And since I have such an interest in this, stay tuned for a "Hat Etiquette" post in the near future!