Continuing work on my Jacobean jacket.  The pattern is picked, the godets sewn in.  Now it's time to embellish the body of the jacket before sewing it together.  My goal is to put enough embroidery on the yellow twill to give it a historic look and make the black and white linen look less jarringly different.  The Elizabethan aesthetic (which is my inspiration for this project) is unabashedly cluttered, but still harmonious. 

I like going to thrift stores and Vintage shops just to walk around.  Secondhand shops are my happy place!  Often, I am shopping for ideas, styles or techniques that I can use in my own work.  Here's a dress I found in September 2019.  The designer is Calvin Klein, and it's a bit fancier than the ready to wear stuff you might find at the mall.  There are lots of nice details, which I took pictures of because I didn't buy the dress. 

I am still working on my embroidered jacket from the Dawn Anderson pattern (Jacobean Jacket - 501).  There are five godets in it, and the instructions for making them seemed a little tricky to me, so I went my own way. 

In this post, I'll explain what a godet is and puzzle over where the word comes from, then show you how I inserted them.  Because my jacket is yellow but the godets are white with black embroidery, the photos are clear and easy to follow! 

In 2015, I made what I called my Highlighter Dress, because of its color scheme, like highlighter on white paper. I liked it and wore it frequently, despite its ill-fitting sleeve.  The front of the armscye was not easy enough to allow my arm to move forward, and the sleeve cap was too shallow, creating creases. 

In November 2018, I used Marie Kondo's book as my guide while I cleaned my room and de-stashed my fabrics.  The highlighter dress was by then too small in the chest and too high-waisted for me; I felt like a little girl outgrowing her clothes!  It went to the Goodwill thrift store, and I hoped its next owner would enjoy it. 

Then, in January 2020, I went to Red Fox Vintage to noodle about and look at things, and imagine my delight to see my highlighter dress in the wild!  Some vender had bought it from Goodwill, marked the price up, and was reselling it!  What fun! 

My uncle was a US Marine.  Like many Marines, he came out of his service with a fanatical sense of order and cleanliness.  Boy, do they ever bang that into their heads in the Corps!  Anyway, from him I learned the term "Irish pennant"--a stray thread or scrap of fabric in his uniform.  The term comes from the British navy, first recorded use in 1829 to refer to any untidy or loose end of rope, or out-of-place line.  Its use in the US Marines for untidy threads on a uniform developed later. 

My question today is whether the term is offensive.  Its history was almost certainly derogatory: a pennant is a flag; to say that an untidy mess is an Irish flag is to suggest the Irish are untidy messes.  An obvious dig.  But an offensive origin story doesn't make something offensive forever.

Years ago, someone gave me a few yards of barkcloth, which I've been holding onto, waiting for the right project.  When I first rubbed off the vintage dress from Red Fox Vintage, I knew I wanted to make it up in that barkcloth in the end.  So I have!  This post is mostly about barkcloth, a little about sewing, and then pictures of the finished garment. 

Remember this pattern in cotton?  Now I'm making it in rayon!  A rayon challis, to be precise.  Since my previous makes were cotton voile, which has a crispness to it, the shirt will look different in rayon challis, which is light and drapey. 

As for the views, I always make View 3, the one with the notched collar.  I think the other two look more dated.  But View 2 might be really pretty in charmeuse....

Challis (say "SHALL-ee") is a soft woven fabric ideal for blouses, dresses, and scarves.  Its name means "soft".  It's a recent invention, dating back only to the 1830's, when it was made of wool/silk.  Nowadays, I see it most often in rayon (often in bright, busy prints), but occasionally in wool.  I have never seen a cotton or polyester challis.