1940′s Hat Restyle
I’ve been waiting to show you this project for a long time and I finally got my hair to work out long enough (thanks to a sideways clipped bang extension) to take a decent photo of my finished hat (above) so that I could complete the post. I’m not entirely sure what you would call this style of hat exactly. I know that it resembles a “halo hat”, but a true halo hat has a band almost like a huge beret, so that’s not it. I’m going to go with “1940’s large brim hat”. I became inspired to try this out when I was at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago and saw a hat partially sticking out from under one of the racks. It was covered in dust and looked like it had been kicked all around the store before it ran and hid under some hanging sweaters.
With only part of it showing, it looked a lot like one of the 1940’s large brim hats that I see in old movies or in photos from that era like those in the images above. It also reminded me of the turquoise and black velvet version of one of these hats that I bought several years ago which you can gaze upon below. I have a small collection of hats, but only one brown one, and that’s a pill box. I thought a brown hat in this style (because the hat I saw was brown felt) would be a perfect addition to the pile. When I picked it up and saw that it was $2.50, its fate was sealed and into the cart it went.
The biggest mystery of a hat to me is how they shape the form. I can decorate a hat 20 ways to Sunday, but the actual construction secrets have always eluded me. Being able to start with an already constructed base and transforming it into what I want ended up being so easy that anyone can do it! The hat I used here was a J. Lo style floppy wool hat.
Below is a gallery with photos of the restyling process that are accompanied by instructions, which will help you form the basic “frame” of the hat. What you do to customize the hat is up to you and really, the sky is the limit. I covered mine with brown velvet (which was the leftover hem from an old pair of IKEA drapes) and made a band with a side scrunch (which was a leftover strip of wool from and old suit that I tore apart many moons ago.) I would estimate that the entire thing cost me under $4, and that was just because of the spray adhesive I used when covering it.
Finding Vintage Shoe Solutions
A Couple Weeks ago Casey, of Elegant Musings fame, wrote a piece about where to find vintage or vintage reproduction shoes. After reading the article, I was going to post a comment, which quickly turned into a paragraph. I decided to wait to comment and to think about it a little more, deciding in the end to write this post instead of clogging up her comments section with my thoughts. What follows is my comment-turned-blog-post consisting of my personal thoughts about finding shoes to match your vintage outfits.
I’ll start by saying that some people have a skewed view of what “vintage” shoes look like. With the surge in women dressing in a mid-century pin-up style, the line between what vintage really looks like and what a modern idea of sexy is have become very blurred. Authentic 1940′s shoes do not look like they just spent a night on stage at the Pink Squirrel Lounge. If you care about authenticity, you can’t slap a bow onto some stripper heels and call it vintage. Now, if you don’t care about being realistic, then by all means… wear whatever shoes you want. If you DO care, there are companies out there that produce faithful reproductions of vintage styles, you don’t have to settle for someone else’s rather loose interpretation.
In my personal experience, I’ve found that one of the best and most overlooked places to find vintage looking shoes is at estate sales. I’m not really sure if I’m the only one who has noticed it or not, but “old lady shoes” look a WHOLE lot like shoes from the 1940′s. For example, both pairs above are from my personal closet. The pair on the left is a 1980′s pair of shoes from the estate sale of an elderly woman. The pair on the right are authentic 1940′s and were purchased at a thrift store. I’ve probably come across 45 pairs like the tan wedges in my thrifting days, but only one pair like the green. In the same manner as those above, the two pairs below are very similar, but were made over half a century apart. The pair on the left is from my own closet and were probably made after the year 2000; as where the gold pair on the right are from the archives of the Met Museum and were made in 1942. While not exact replicas, both of these newer pairs of shoes are close enough in appearance to their antique counterparts to “pass” for vintage when putting an outfit together. The most important thing is to get your SHAPE right, you can modify everything else if need be, as long as you have the right “frame” to start with. If you aren’t looking for anything too fancy, there are old standbys that have changed very little over the decades: slip on deck shoes, penny loafers, white Keds, saddle shoes and of course espadrilles!
It is important to familiarize yourself with REAL vintage shoes before you set out hunting. I recommend browsing the Met Museum’s archives, searching for period images that feature shoes and old fashion magazines are a great source for shoe pictures as well. I’ve compiled a pretty good collection of images of period shoes on my Stylish Steppin’ board on Pinterest; if you have some free time to browse, feel free to stop by. Once you are completely familiar with the shapes and details that you are looking for, it won’t take you any time at all to spot them in the “wild”. I put together a little collage below of shoes shown in photos of Rita Hayworth to illustrate my point about “old lady shoes”. Notice that many of them bare a strong resemblance to something you might have seen shuffling around a retirement home.
One of the biggest mistakes that I see with “vintage repro” shoes is that the heels are too thin and tall and that they don’t have enough coverage. The very high, thin heels with strappy, “barely there” fronts didn’t become popular until the 1950′s. It’s really fairly easy to find 1950′s and early 60′s styled shoes. Authentic examples are still pretty common in thrift stores and I see them online a lot. The basic shapes of that time period continued to be produced into the 80′s, making them still plentiful and fairly cheap today. These two authentic 50′s sets below were purchased from thrift stores for under $3 a pair.
If you are looking for something even older than the 40′s, I would suggest that you don’t wear anything produced prior to the mid 30′s. They seem to be so rare and fragile that I’m not sure that the majority of pieces would last more than a day or so. I’ve read where other experts don’t even suggest wearing anything predating WWII because of their value, I’m not that strict with it, but you don’t want a beautiful pair of shoes to fall apart on you; so be wise in chosing which ones are fit to wear and which ones are better off left on the shelf to look at. I have two pairs in my personal stash from the 30′s that are very stable and can be worn, but as I said, I wouldn’t suggest it for most examples. The brown pair below are from the late 30′s to early 40′s and the black booties are from the 30′s. Both of these were found at thrift stores a couple of years ago, so don’t lose hope, they are out there! It is easy to spot real vintage booties; most pairs of low-ankle booties that are produced now have stiletto heels, which the originals DON’T have. Another dead give away of an old shoe is the soles, look for leather and nails.
The twenties are actually more easily reproduced than you would think. While authentic examples are almost non-existent outside of museums, the basic shape was heavily reproduced in the late 1980′s and throughout the 1990′s. This shoe below is from the 1920′s and is part of the Met Museum’s collections. In the 20′s and early 30′s there were basically two variations of this, the plain ankle strap (below) and the T-strap. I love a nice t-strap myself. The 20′s saw more variety in decoration than in shapes really. You can find this shape of shoes, made in the 90′s, just about anywhere. All you need are some rhinestones, maybe some fabric paint or a curved needle and you could jazz them up to be pure jazz age with very little effort.
The Edwardian period saw the skirts rise enough to get a peek at the shoes and therefore they became a bit fancier across the board. As with the 20′s shoes, you can find a very simple pair of booties produced in the 90′s just about anywhere, and with a little effort they can be decorated to be more representative of the period. The green suede booties below came from a thrift store and are my own shoes; the white pair is from 1914 and belong to the Met. Buckles were the common closure of Edwardian shoes, but I think that in most cases you could get by with a laced version. One important thing to look for is the relatively low and flared heel style, another is a squared off toe which, from my research, seemed to be the norm at this point and had not been rounded off as of yet.
Of course we all know the Victorian button boot and there have been many companies over the years who have made them. Costuming warehouses make “real” versions that will set you back a couple hundred dollars, or you can buy a repro when you can find them. They become popular in cycles it seems, they were popular when Victoriana made a resurgence during my high school years and now they are popular again with the rise of “steampunk”. I WORE OUT my cream colored pair from my school days, but I found this nice leather pair at a thrift store for about $5. The buttons are real, although they are not the method of closure; they zip on the inside ankles; it is very well hidden when the boots are on and they look very realistic. They aso have leather soles and leather wrapped heels which add to the realism. You shouldn’t have too hard of a time finding a reproduction pair made in the last 30 years that are in decent shape for under $50.
If you are creeped out by wearing someone else’s old shoes, there are some companies that make new versions of old styles as I mentioned at the beginning. Below I’ve chosen a few pairs to share, starting with Re-Mix vintage shoes, this is by far my favorite company and they make seemingly true replica’s of historic shoes. While they aren’t cheap exactly, their prices aren’t so high that they are completely unattainable either. Buying one of their repro pairs is going to be far less expensive than buying most original pairs. In my Etsy shop I sell things cheaply because I acquire them cheaply and I want to be able to sleep at night, but for the most part, most sellers are shilling shoes from the 40′s for $200 and up regardless of what sort of condition they are in. Re-Mix’s shoes are a safer bet if you are new to the hunt, because you get an identical look and you know they are in NEW condition. Miz Mooz, Miss L. Fire, Seychelles & Chie Mihara complete the selections. On the other hand, if you don’t mind used, by all means go forth into the thrifty world and harvest! To me, part of the fun is the hunt itself, not just having the shoes. I also enjoy taking a very plain pair from 20 years ago and altering them to be a fabulous replica from days passed. After writing this post, I decided that I should finally go ahead and part with some of my vintage shoes that aren’t perfect fits for me. It was hard to do, but there is no reason for me to keep shoes that I likely will never wear. They belong where they can be worn and shown off, so I listed several pairs in my Etsy shop, even a couple of the pairs featured here in this post. If you’d like to check them out, feel free to head over and browse.
Thrifting: Winter 2012
I haven’t been writing my regular thrifting posts as I used to, so I have a few months worth to catch up on with this entry. I figured that I had better not wait any longer before I became overwhelmed trying to remember what everything cost me. Items that I have bought for the shop are not included in this (or any) of my thrifting posts. Yesterday morning we went to a nice estate sale. I was after a couple of mid-century modern Dansk pans, but the guy who’s wife sent him to sit in the freezing car at 5am so that he could be the first on the entrance list got to them WAY ahead me! We still found some pretty interesting things though. The best part was the house itself; it had 1950′s appliances in the kitchen and a section at the back of the library that was a step down into an area of loose gravel flooring. Often times the house can be more worth waiting in line than the contents that are for sale. I was overjoyed to not only be able to get this shelving unit above before any other thrifter did, but to get it for only $10! Each shelf is slightly larger than the dimensions of a piece of paper and they start out at the bottom being 3 or 4 inches apart and slowly graduate to wider separations at the top. There are 28 shelves not counting the bottom. It is all handmade and meant to be recessed into a wall. All I need is a little paint and to put a back on this and it will be the PERFECT edition to my craft room at the house… especially when paired with my vintage pattern case below!
I’ve had pretty good luck finding awesome and inexpensive craft room items. Take this aqua blue 1967 Singer 347 sewing machine made in Great Britain for example; it still works great and is used as my back-up machine. I bought it at a little local flea market for $24 and it cleaned up brilliantly!
If you are interested in seeing some of the other great finds I’ve made, I’ve provided a gallery below.
Thrifting: Summer In NY 2011
I always have great luck at the thrift stores in Western New York. Every time we go there on vacation the dogs barely have a place left to sit on the way home because the car is so full! I went a little overboard on the books this time, but it’s really not my fault! The cottage is about 2 miles from a used and rare book store that was having a going out of business sale and everything was $2.50 unless the original price was $5 or less, then it was $1! You know how I am with my books, so I sort of lost it and went a little crazy! LOL I think I might have spent a total of $80. Loving Husband bought some books; I bought some books… everyone bought some books. In addition to everything that has been shown in the gallery, I also have 2 BIG bags of vintage clothes to be listed in the shop.
Thrifting: Summer 2011 Auction Finds
I usually don’t buy jewelry other than a vintage pin here and there. However, we were at an auction and they were selling boxes full of old jewelry for $2 each. How could I say no? I bought two of the boxes. After I picked out the pieces that I wanted to keep for myself, I am left with a HUGE bag that I intend to sell as a lot in my Etsy shop. I don’t do jewelry making very often, but they might be useful to someone who does. A few of the pieces need a little bit of repair, but I have the stones that came out of them and will put them back in after vacation when I have more time. I’m going to figure the total cost of the pieces below at the $4 that I paid for both boxes. The vintage sunglasses were part of another box that I won for $7.
Another great auction buy for $7 was a box full of vintage fabric and linens. I’m only keeping (and showing you) half of what came in the box, the other half will be listed in the shop eventually. We also picked up a bunch of pretty cool misc items for just a few bucks. Where have you ever seen a chair for $3? One item that we loved but that isn’t pictured below is a small farmhouse style kitchen table that we were able to get for $4.
DIY Earring Hangers
Last weekend at an estate sale I purchased these two plaster wall shelves/frames. I’m not sure what these would have been used for originally because the wire mesh inside the frame is actually embedded into the plaster so it’s been there since they were made. I paid $3 each for them. Normally I wouldn’t pay that much for something that would sit a while waiting for a purpose, but I knew right away what I was going to do with these!
I’ve see so many people lately making earring hanger boards with old frames that I don’t really know WHO did the project first. I’ve even seen them in retail stores. I normally try to give credit where credit is due, but there is no way for me to know where this idea originated. Luckily for me, all of the parts were already in place and I didn’t have to do anything except to apply a little spray paint (Krylon royal red) that I had left over from a project that I did over 2 years ago. I’m going to say this cost me the $6 to buy the frames and not include the left over paint, but if you are buying new, it used about 1/3 of a can.
Have A Victory Garden Booklet
Last Fall I happened across a pair of WWII Victory Garden publications at a local estate sale, so of course I snatched them up! We love historic (and there for usually more natural) methods of cleaning, cooking, gardening, etc. making these a welcome addition to our home! I think I paid $6 for both booklets, which is more than I would normally pay, but they were in really good shape and I rarely see items like these anywhere. I think maybe these booklets and others like them were very common and so no one thought to save them or figured that they weren’t wanted anymore? I remember Loving Husband telling me that his Grandma Bertie had left him her ration stamps when she passed. He put them in a box in the attic with the rest of his keepsake belongings and went off to college. Then he came home to find that his older brother had thrown them away with everything else LH had owned in order to make room for his own belongings. The victory garden movement was HUGE in the United States and Britain during WWII. They were everywhere and almost 1/2 of the vegetables consumed in the US were home grown from what I understand. We have always been interested in Victory Garden style growing; Heirloom varieties, organic food production and historic farming methods. Now that it has become sort of popular, it makes it much easier to find information and products to assist you.
I’ve decided to share the Have a Victory Garden booklet with the world via a series of 5 PDF files consisting of approximately 15 pages each. If this book is well received, I will start with the next booklet, which tells you what to do with some of your harvest: Health-For-Victory- Home Canning Special Feature published in 1943. Below is a sample of the inside of the booklet.
Vintage Handkerchief Pillowcases
I find cool handkerchiefs at estate sales all the time. They are usually priced around $1, so if they are pretty enough I scoop them up. Other than using them for their intended purpose, I think most people draw a bit of a blank as to what to do with them. I thought that they would make cute throw pillows, but they are a bit small for that; they are usually one foot square. I’ve been wracking my brain for cheap ways to add a few small touches of London to our bedroom, but any British themed fabric is outrageously priced, even a lot of the tea towels are far too expensive to cut up and use for pillows. As I was looking on Etsy for something cheap to use, I found a couple of London souvenir handkerchiefs! They were approx $5 each including the shipping, so I ordered them from their respective sellers. I loved the tone-on-tone white designs. They were quickly shipped and arrived safely. I already had my pillow design in mind and was able to start construction a couple of hours after the mail came.
Everything that you will need for this project is shown above. Halfway through the project, I discovered that my red ribbon had a pen mark on it, so I switched over to the white crocheted lace trim that you will see later. Any type of trim that you would like to use is okay, I was just using what I already had laying around. Whichever you decide on, you will need a little over a yard and a half of it. For my pillow I cut two 16X16 squares out of some heavy weight red matte satin. You could go larger or smaller, depending on what size pillow form you are going to stuff it with. You’ll need a measuring tape, scissors, your color choice of thread, a needle, a sewing machine (unless you are going to hand sew all of it), something to mark with and a 7 inch matching zipper. Of course, you also need your handkerchief!
Once you have your squares cut for the front and back of the pillow, take the front piece and arrange the handkerchief in the center of it, securing it with pins. I did a really fast whip stitch all the way around the edge of it to keep it in place. The next step is to apply the trim around this. You could do a simple right angle fold at each corner if you’d like, but I did 4 small gathers to create a ruffle. I also hand stitched this trim onto the pillow, making sure that it was secure. If you want to, you could use the machine for this; I just prefer to put my trims on by hand. Once this step is completed, it should start to look almost like one of those old-fashioned souvenir pillows, which is the look that we are going for!
Match your complete front up to your cut back piece making sure they are FACING each other. Pin them together so that they don’t slip. Now, head off to your machine! Sew up the sides, leaving an 8 inch opening at the bottom. Turn the pillow case you just made inside out and sew the zipper into the bottom opening that you left. I hand stitched mine and reinforced the ends because you know how hard it is to stuff a pillow into that small opening and we don’t want it ripping back open.
Once all of this is done, load pillow into the case, zip it up and fluff! The whole project took me about an hour because of the hand stitching; if I had used the machine I think it would have been closer to 20 minutes. I already had all of my pieces except for the handkerchief just lying around as leftovers from other projects, so my only cost was those hankies. Even if you bought everything new, I think you could come in under $10. I made two, one for each hanky. They just have plain red backs, but you could do a double sided version or whatever you’d like, really the sky is the limit on variations.
Shield Wall Art Revamp
These are two medium sized fiberglass molded shields by a company called Finesse’ Originals. They were filthy and the paint was chipping off of them like crazy. We acquired them from a garage sale last summer for the combined sum of $8 if I remember correctly. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them at that time, I figured maybe I would wash them and put them in Loving Husband’s Man Room. I was also a little iffy about paying so much for them, but they are decent sized and I had never seen anything like them. We brought them home and sprayed them down, but since they were still greasy dirty, we put them in the garage. They have lived in our garage for almost a year now. I remembered we had them, so I went out there and got them, sat down next to the shower, turned it on and started scrubbing them with a toothbrush. They eventually did come clean, but much of the already separated and chipping paint was lost in the process.
While they were drying, I decided to look them up online to see if I could find out more about the company and to get an approximate date that they were made. I found that the company was active in the 60?s and 70?s, as I had suspected and that they were known for these sort of over the top fiberglass wall art pieces. While I didn’t find any that were at all similar to mine or any that were a coordinating set, I did find a few of their pieces on Ebay. I was completely shocked to see them listed in a range from $300 to $2,600 each! I couldn’t believe it! While I doubted mine were worth that much because of paint loss, I was relieved to see that at least I hadn’t overpaid for them.
I thought about leaving them entirely beaten up and just hanging them on the wall in that state, but I didn’t like the heavy and “dirty” look that I was getting from all of the black background showing through. A little bit of dark showing would have been okay, but there was too much. I thought about painting them completely all one color like you see with so many accent pieces that are in fashion now, but I felt like some of the details would be lost. I wanted more color pops and more of the metallic shine. Once they were dry, I went digging through my paint reserves. I came up with a small can of Rustoleum American Accents silver metallic (not shown), a small can of Olympic admiral blue, a tube of Liduitex Basics cadmium red and a bottle of Plaid Folk Art warm white. The tube was left over from college; the blue can was bought as oops paint for $1 and the bottle was bought for 50 cents on clearance. The silver was bought at full price, but was left over from another project as was the paint brush. I used under $1 worth of paint, so I’m figuring the grand total cost for this project to be around $9.
I repainted the red parts red, the white parts white and any of the gold or silver parts that had chipped away I painted silver, blending into the gold where needed. I also painted the black background with the navy blue paint. I didn’t paint heavily so that things wouldn’t look cartoonish, but I allowed the background and brush strokes to show. It gives them an aged appearance without looking like they had been used as oil pans (like they did when we got them). We hung them staggered on the wall to the right of the larger window in the bedroom. They are so different and unique; we are very happy with them and how they turned out!
Thrifting: OOoooOO! Shiny!
It was another great week at the estate sales! I have some really AWESOME stuff to share with you, most of it new (to me), but some of it is old stuff that I just never got around to posting.
Can you guess what’s in This box?
This is one of my greatest finds to date! We bought a set of 1921 Grosvenor silver plate by Community Plate. The flash makes the patina wear show as scratches, but all the pieces are in excellent condition. We bought them from a lovely couple that actually only live about 3/4 of a mile away and who were having a garage/antique sale last weekend. Out of the four antique plate sets they had, I felt this was not only the best condition-wise, but also the prettiest. I love the deco drape feel to the pattern and I also LOVE that it has a space on the handles made for monogramming! I’ve always wanted a set of antique silver, but they are always WAY out of our price range. We paid… guess, guess…. $40 for this set! It has 6 dinner forks, 6 salad/dessert forks, 6 French knives, 6 individual saber blade butter knives, 6 fruit/orange spoons, 14 teaspoons, 1 sugar spoon, 1 olive/relish spoon, 1 pickle fork, 1 master butter knife, 2 gravy ladles, 1 serving spoon, 1 large berry spoon, and of course the Naken’s of Chicago tarnish proof silverware chest. Another great thing about this set is that you can find a piece here or there pretty frequently online and the replacement sites seem to have a decent (although pricey) supply as well. There are so many pieces that were made for this pattern, it’s crazy. Have a look here to see them all! Not only are there a million place setting pieces and serving ware pieces, but there is also matching silver plate hollow-ware (bottom of the page linked to above). I always have a difficult time matching silverware to dishes. Now if I so choose, that doesn’t have to be so hard because there is also a Grosvenor china set by Community China in beautiful blue and white with gold accents. Is there anything else? Yes! Grosvenor pattern etched crystal by Community Crystal. LOL Now I have a specific pattern to be on the lookout for when we are thrifting across the country!
