Rebecca

Last night I dreamt about Manderley.

Rebecca from 1940 is my favourite Hitchcock movie and in my view also a very good adaption from the book by Daphne du Maurier. A young and rather insecure woman (Joan Fontaine) meets and falls in love with the glamorous widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier. Despite knowing that he mourns the loss of his prefect wife Rebecca, who has drowned a year previously, she marries him and comes with to his manor house Manderley. There she is confronted with the very scary housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) who was fanatically devoted to Rebecca. The heroine feels if anything even more insecure and increasingly uncomfortable at Manderley and when Rebecca’s body is recovered from the sea, everything comes crashing down.

This is not a grand costume movie, but just because the heroine is so very ordinary, her clothes are quite interesting anyway. And of course, the movie is well worth watching for the suspenseful plot and the excellent actors. Joan Fontaine is perfect as the ugly duckling and Laurence Olivier is dreamy. Judith Anderson is perfectly horrible and then there’s my favourite Golden era bad boy George Sanders as Rebecca’s nasty cousin.

Tabac Blond and reformulating perfumes

Tabac Blond was actually the first vintage perfume I tried and it was love at first smell. Looking at the notes it was not a perfume I expected to suit me, even if carnation and ambergris usually work well on me. Patchouli, however, usually have the dreaded “old lady” smell for me and I felt very, very unsure of the leather

Top notes: leather, linden, carnation
Heart notes: iris, vetiver, ylang ylang
Base notes: cedar, patchouli, vanilla, ambergris, musk

I’m not a smoker and I don’t like the smell of it, but tobacco does smells different from smoke. When I was a child my grandmother had an antique snuff box in silver and her brother once filled it with tobacco. Probably to tease his big sister as she was vehemently against smoking, but the tobacco stayed put and over the years it dried and the scent grow fainter. I remember opening that box and sniff at times, it smelled so nice, somehow. The first whiff of Caron’s Tabac Blond reminds me of that smell and it smells lovely. It may sound like a paradox, but it’s true. It evolves into a lovely spicy scent that is a little bit naughty- sexy, but rather quiet about it. Of the leather I detect nothing much, a mere whiff, , but when the patchouli arrives in the dry down it plays nicely and smells divine. Finally a patchouli scent I can wear! Oh, I love Tabac Blond.

Green felt hat

Here it is, the green felt hat in action. I am very pleased with it, despite all the problems I had when I made it. One thing I noticed when wearing it that the elastic did nothing to keep the hat on. It just slid on my hair- I guess it would work better if I had had my hair down. Luckily I inherited a few hat pins from my grandmother, so I used one of those to keep the hat in place. Much more becoming than elastic anyway.

An illustrated guide for making Vintage Vogue V7464, hat B, part 2

The second and last part. The first one can be seen here.

There are actually no markings on D to tell where you are supposed to attach it, but trust me, it is supposed to wrap around the gathered bit on B. The instructions said to stitch it to the inside first, but I did it the other way around, as I found it easier to place. Just stitch it down at the ends.

An illustrated guide for making Vintage Vogue V7464, hat B, part 1

Due to all the images I break this guide up in two parts. I hope you will find it helpful. Now when I know all the steps, the hat isn't so hard to sew- I just wish I had known them before I started...

It’s meant to compliment the original instructions, so you need those too to get all the information you need. I made my hat in green wool felt that probably is a bit on the thin side. I starched it heavily before I started to sew and I think it will hold up well enough, as long as I don't get it wet. I used ordinary heavy wire when I made it, but have since found my millinery wire in a box where it wasn’t supposed to be and replaced it.

Here are all the parts cut and thread traced. I really recommend you to thread trace here. It doesn’t take long and you need to be able to see the marks on both sides. Pattern piece A is the front and the curved end is the one that curves down toward the face when you wear it. And though it wasn’t clear to me when I started, the opposite, pointy, end is one part of the “bow” on the finished hat.

A review on Vintage Vogue V7464, hat B

This review is solely for hat B, not any of the other hats you get when you purchase this pattern. I have not tried to make the other hats and have no idea if the instructions for them are good or bad.

Before I started this hat I had heard a lot on how bad the instructions were for it. I decided to give it a try anyway, as it is a cool hat. Unfortunately every bad thing I have heard proved to be true. The instruction for this hat is the worst I have ever encountered. For a start, the black and white drawing seems to be of a completely different hat. You get no help for figuring the pattern out by looking at that, so don’t. There are two nice photos of the finished hat, but they are both from the front. As the hat is asymmetrical it would have helped if there had been a back view as well.

Yellow and white skirt

I’m back from my vacation and a very good vacation it was. I have spent a lot of time in my family’s summerhouse, swum in the sea, spent time with family and friends, hosted a cocktail party and generally had a good time. I have sewn a little too, but not as much as I had hoped. I did finish my green hat after much gnashing of my teeth and have started on a brown felt hat and I have made a white washable dress. I also renovated my grandmother’s skirt that I mentioned in an earlier post.