A Free French Turban Pattern from 1932

 Hello my dears. I woke up this morning with the strongest urge to play in my vast (scary, like found one day dead, crushed under a stack of magazines, VAST) collection of vintage French magazines.

While enjoying a particularly lovely edition of C'est La Mode from 1932, I found a charming little turban-making lesson that I had previously overlooked.

The lesson is of course in French, but being of a mood to share, I translated the instructions for you over my morning coffee, (oh, freshly-roasted Costa Rica beans from Acme Coffee in Seaside, how I adore thee!) cleaned up the illustrations for you, and voila!

We have a pattern/ tutorial for a lovely French turban that you can make out of square scraps of slightly stretchy fabrics.

I would recommend using matte jersey, or perhaps even a stretch silk charmeuse blend. You might try it with woven fabrics, or even ribbon, but you'll want to braid the body more loosely, I imagine. The pattern doesn't include any suggested yardage so I would say you'll need at least half a yard of fabric to be safe, and about 1/2 yard of matching grosgrain ribbon for the band.

Anyhow, I'm off to get a haircut, do some shopping, and enjoy the rest of my hopefully relaxing weekend.

Happy sewing!

La Mode Française from January, 1932

Hello my lovely readers. Today for you I have just a couple of pretty things. I was looking through an old edition of La Mode Française ("French Fashion") and found a lovely little feature on jewelry.

La Mode Française French fashion magazine from 1932.

The title, Bijoux Moderne, translates as "modern jewelry." The article speaks about the impossibility for most budgets to allow beautiful jewelry for every ensemble in your closet. It suggests that when she is constrained by lack of cash, the clever woman can make her own instead.

You can see from the motifs pictured below what kinds of beads and and styles were popular in 1932. I have seen a lot of vintage jewelry in my time (it was one of my mother's particular specialties) and even now pieces like these are expensive to buy.

Judging by the designs above though, they wouldn't be that hard to reproduce. One can often find lots of loose vintage beads for sale on Etsy and Ebay - wouldn't it be fun to make your own reproduction piece?

Below are some lovely beads for sale on Etsy that are similar to those illustrated.

You can find these here.

You can find these here.

You can find these here.

You can find these here.

You can find these here.

How about you, have you ever tried making your own jewelry?