Vogue 1072

This weekend is the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor's Island. It's great fun, with the idea to dress up like it's the 1920s, listen to jazz and picnic. You can see pictures from past years (and by now probably also this year) on flickr. This week there's also an article in the NYT about the guy who founded the concert.
Since I've finally had time to sit down and sew, so I wanted to make up an outfit to wear to the party. Most folks dress up in flapper gear- fringe, glitter, lots of lace and so on, but I was thinking more in terms of what would a "normal" woman of the 1920s wear to a picnic. I ended up choosing a pattern that is a 1940s Vogue re-issue but felt vaguely 1920s-ish to me with the longer skirt and dropped hemline on the blouse. Vogue 1072 has a top with two sleeve lengths, pleats at the neckline, and a button front.

For this outfit I chose a silk/cotton from Mood, as that's one of my favorite fabrics to sew with. I wanted something light enough that I wouldn't wilt too badly if the day ended up being 95F. Thankfully it stayed mostly in the upper 70s, perfect temperatures!
It was accessorized with a little straw hat that had a sort-of cloche shape to it and my favorite ecco sandals. And of course there's a pocket in the skirt to hold my cellphone!

The skirt pattern from V1072 is a yoked straight skirt, which I decided to pass on and instead use different pattern. In the end I went with a skirt that is cut more on the bias since I wanted a little bit of a flare to the shape. It was lined in a plain cotton voile. The voile kept the outer skirt from wrinkling too badly while I sat on our picnic blanket. It felt important to me to wear a longer skirt that fell below my knee- if you look at photos from the 1920s, it was still pretty uncommon for women to wear above-knee-length dresses. Of course most of the folks at the party had on super short skirts- cute, but they didn't feel as vintage as the longer dresses.

The blouse was unlined, but came through the day OK, even though I did drop a bit of chocolate ice cream on the front. Ooops. Here is the inside of the blouse after a day of wear:

The blouse and skirt both have a hand stitched hem:

It was great fun checking out all the outfits that people were wearing; there were folks in perfect 1920s get up to people in sort of retro inspired outfits to just nice modern dresses.
I went with two friends and we had a nice time walking around the island after we'd had enough Jazz Age partying.