Bewitching Sportaville & Marignan skirt

I have discovered my super-power at last. I can make my bottom half disappear in a field. 
This picture has been dubbed the Floral Predator, and it's a fair description. 

The skirt is a restored Sportaville 1950s find, and the amazing fabric is a scenic print by the French firm Marignan.

The backdrop is our local bluebell woods. Apparently Tim Burton has a house around the corner.

Dearest little dears. 

That vanishing trick is down to this amazing print. I was searching Ebay for projects when it caught my eye, the sumptuous print is on a soft cotton barkcloth. I counted 7 colours, and I bet it cost a fortune when it was new.

Sportaville were a British maker of quality separates from the 1940s through to the late 70s Sadly all that remained of this one was the three panels of fabric, and a scrap of waistband with the original label attached.

The three former Sportaville skirt panels hanging in the back garden, each is 34" wide by 26" long.

The Sportaville label on the restored skirt .

Re-making can be harder than making from scratch. I stabilised the top edge with bias binding, which stopped it fraying and going off grain but made it bulkier to pleat. After trying 4 different pleats all of which looked awful, I looked on Etsy and found a similar barkcloth skirt with stitched down pleats, which I copied. I have left the it un-hemmed as it was only 26" long, and it still had the original over-cast stitching to stop it fraying.

But how do I know this fabric is by Marignan? Well I have bought this print before, several years ago, again on Ebay.

Scenic print fabric by Marignan

Waterfall close up 

Grand Teint Meuble Marignan - 'Grand teint' apparently refers to the quality of the ink

This print is so dreamy. The indigo and lavender on pale yellow have a kind of other-worldly look. It's a metre plus of furnishing fabric, enough for a cushion or something but I think I will frame it and put in my stairwell. I now assume this is 1950s too.

Sportaville and companies like them owe their reputation to using this kind of high grade fabric, but Marignan and companies who supply them are often a bit hidden. I am so used to seeing novelty print skirts all over the inter-web, but looking at these two prints makes me really appreciate the sheer quality of the stuff that was being used, essentially to make a fashion product. It was as they say, a very different age.

A bit of perfection

Mersea Island is one of my favourite local beauty spots. It's a proper island, but only just, separated from the mainland Essex by a very tiny strip of water called The Strood. It has marshlands and wildlife, houseboats, good sea food, shops including a butcher, two delis, a cafe and charity shops. So basically, it's a bit perfect.

With all the sky and open spaces Mersea is a suitable place to appreciate weather, and we were promised "blood rain" and "Sahara dust" today, according to the Telegraph (echoed a bit too seriously by Radio 4).

I didn't see any blood or any rain, or combination thereof, but check out the Sahara dust in these pictures!

I've got the skirt, now I need the matching houseboat.

Ok, sand, plus some Sahara dust. It was a bit murky I grant, but really not much more than usual.

This skirt was my bank holiday project. It's made from a 1950s panel, one of those do-it-yourself kits which were quite popular then. It was over 2.2 yards long and around 34" wide. It has lots of body which is good for crisp pleats. I think the print is of Hong Kong or another exotic island, so very appropriate to the setting.

These long panels are so simple to make up. You put in a seam in the back, pleat it up (or gather it if it's soft fabric) add a zip and hem it. The end. Even so, it took a day and a half as I hemmed it twice by hand. The first was narrow and it just looked messy, so I took it out and added some wide bias binding to the edge and that added some weight.

I used 2" from the blue border for the waistband. Pleats wise, once I put in the seam, I folded it and marked the centre front and the two sides. I put in 2" box pleat at the front, then added knife pleats, making sure there were the same number of pleats to each side.

Close up of the skirt print.

I have done very little sewing so far this year just lots of dreaming, and some mending. So a simple skirt is the perfect way to start the year off, a year which will be mostly full of separates. There will be blouses, there will be skirts and my first trousers.

And a jacket. The jacket will not be simple at all. Firstly, I have never made one. Second, I am hoping to copy this one:

It is the ideal jacket for me. It's has a nipped in waist and it's short. But it's also at least 3" too small. I decided to copy the pattern, and looking at how the jacket is made I will first add 3" extra width to the front which has 6 pieces, and if that isn't enough I can add more to the back which has only two.

I have copied the pieces onto Swedish Tracing Paper, pinning it piece by piece onto a cardboard cutting surface, with the paper underneath and using dots which were then joined together. If you ever need to copy something, get one of these boards and about a thousand pins. It was tedious but the Swedish Tracing stuff made it easier. It's really easy to draw on and doesn't slip around as much as paper. It's soft and it can be sewn together like fabric, for fitting. But it is hard to get hold of so I use it sparingly.

The jacket front has three panels, a centre one, the one with the sleeves, and a curved piece which goes under the arm and joins to the back pieces.

I transferred the pattern onto normal paper (so I could keep the originals) then I slashed them and added 0.5" to each piece (in red) which will make up 3" across the two sides.

And now I have a muslin of the jacket bodice cut and pinned and placed on my dummy. 

A side view. The vertical seams end where they should.

My dummy is a such a lady she insists on being fully clothed. Actually I am too lazy to take this dress off her at the moment and it's good to have an added layer when you fit a jacket, that's my excuse anyway.

With the original over the top you can see the added width (without a seam allowance).
Next I need to sew it up, try it on and tweek it. It has so many panels fitting should be easy-ish.

As I am making the whole thing up as I go, it may come to nothing, but I am going to learn a lot at any rate.

And to finish, we have Mersea Island's cake shop and second hand shop, which are next door to each other. They should have a connecting door so you can go in through the Cake Hole and out through the Poop Deck. Absolutely perfect.

Linking to Sewingadicta Share in Style, freestyle edition.