Most people who know Brandon would vote this the least likely vintage pattern that he would want made for him. I was totally joking when I asked him if he wanted me to make it for him. But when you look past the belts, pants tucked into boots, and the icky bare chest and chain (or turtle-neck, they're equally bad), what this is is a pair of coveralls. And he had been needing a new set of coveralls, it turned out.

So I made a few minor modifications to make it look less like an outfit from Saturday Night Fever and to make it more suitable for mechanic work: left the flaps off of the pockets, reduced the length of the collar tips and the flare of the legs, and left slits in the side seams so that my husband can reach into his pants pockets when he's wearing the coveralls. Also left the cuffs off of the sleeves, just finished them with a narrow hem.

It was a beast to make, actually. The denim was really stiff and there was lots of it, and I had quite a time getting the zipper in/front facing attached. The long straight seams and the sleeves were easy, of course. I used heavy duty thread, and was really impressed with my sewing machine, which handled the denim well.

Here is the finished product, put to use immediately:




The pattern was a size or two large, which I figured was a plus, since it doesn't look like it was originally meant to be worn over a full set of clothes. The only problem is that the torso still could use a few inches of length to allow the kind of reach that might be necessary in mechanic work. I'm foreseeing a ripped-out armpit in the future. He also wants me to retroactively put in a set of back pockets.

I worked on the pants for my mini-wardrobe today. It's going pretty good, although I had a few duh moments when reading the instructions. I think the Burdastyle instructions were translated out of another language (I think Burda is a German company) and some of the terms aren't translated exactly as I'm used to them. The back pocket pleats had me totally confused, and mine don't look like the ones on the model on the Burdastyle site. After I finished them, I looked at the instructions and their diagram made perfect sense. If I'd followed the instructions instead of trying to figure it out from the pleat arrows and lines on the pattern piece, I would have had no problem.

Another day, another dress

Last Saturday I finished another dress. It's funny, I had very little desire to sew dresses from October on until the weather started warming up, and suddenly that's all I want to sew. It's just the weather. I don't like cold legs, so I don't like to wear dresses in the winter.

For some time, I've been searching for the mythical "instant gratification dress". I want a dress pattern that is both quick and easy to make, but which is flattering. I made a couple of dresses in high school that were "2 hour dresses" (although believe me, they took me longer than that), and the reason they were so fast is that there was NO SHAPING and no details (pockets, collars, belts, etc). So they weren't very flattering, and I didn't wear them often. Unfortunately, I've decided that I probably won't find the kind of instant gratification pattern that I am looking for, because I like details and shaping, which add time to both cutting out and sewing.

Another feature of this mythical dress is that it is something not too dressy, that I would feel comfortable wearing on everyday occasions. A day dress. Now, if you've seen the last two dresses I've made this spring, neither of them is what you'd call a day dress.

Though it falls short of my lofty ideals for an instant gratification dress, this pattern comes as close as anything I've seen (it's the only pattern I've liked enough to actually try). It went pretty fast, but I still spent between five and six hours on it, including cutting out, but not including the changes I made to the pattern itself before I actually cut the pieces out.

The changes I made were: adding side seam pockets, lengthening it by 6 inches (the previous user of the pattern had cut it to the mini-length view), and changing the collar shape. I also omitted the top button and loop, so that the collar would spread out and turn to expose the facing a little.

In the end, I only spent a total of $0.59 on this dress, since the tan fabric came from Goodwill, and the contrast collar fabric was given to me, as were the vintage buttons and the belt. Okay, and maybe a quarter's worth of interfacing on the collar and facings.

Although the dress looks okay without a belt (better on me than my dress form), the belt does improve it a bit.

Indiana Jones / Patsy Cline Dress

While I was making this dress, I happened to do a google search for images of dresses that Patsy Cline wore (The Internet is great, instant whim-gratification!) and noticed that when she wore dresses they were often the slim-skirted style, instead of full. So I began thinking of it as the "Patsy Cline dress". I usually prefer full skirts, and so this dress was sort of an experiment for me. I prefer the look of full skirts, but then you have to buy four or five yards at a time, and so slim skirts are definitely less expensive. This dress took just under three yards, and if I'd been more careful with the layout, might have taken less.

The night before I finished the dress, when it was all starting to come together, I had Brandon pin it up the back so I could try it on (before hemming and the zipper, before the belt was made). I nearly quit right then, because it looked sort of like a potato sack. A bright blue potato sack, but still. Brandon said something about Mormon religious compound ladies. I figured since I'd come that far, though, and I loved the fabric so much, I'd at least try to finish it.

Actually hemming it (it called for a 3" deep hem) to a more flattering length helped a lot. Putting in a zipper helped some too. What really makes the dress, though, is the belt, which I modified from another pattern (from the 1970's).

I think of it as the Indiana Jones dress because I finished it right before we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie, and I decided to wear it. I always have an awful itch to wear something the moment it is finished, and I was literally cutting the last loose threads off as we got into the car. I was a little over-dressed for a matinee, but the movie was set in the 1950's, so I was decade-appropriate.

Then I wore it Brandon's cousin's wedding, which was actually the reason I was making the dress now and not later. Weddings are a great excuse to start a new dress.

We're Off to See the Wizard

Both of these pattern envelopes seem to have been designed by someone who'd seen The Wizard of Oz one too many times. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Busy Like a Bee

I have been busy the past three days getting two things ready: one, my mom's Mother's Day present, and two, Connor's baby quilt. I am going to Texline this weekend for Mother's Day, and Sam and the baby will be there (so I am told). There is nothing like a deadline to get me motivated.

The apron pattern is a sort of heirloom; my grandmother gave it to me after finding it amongst some of her stored things. You can see in the picture that a mouse has nibbled on the priceless heirloom. When she gave it to me, my mom strongly hinted that she would really like one, too.

It turns out to be a size large, a bit too big for me, but it will fit my mom better. I did take a few inches off of the shoulder straps in the hopes that it will help the fit. My mom isn't really a large, either. And given that she is just about five foot tall, the apron will be even longer on her than on me.

The quilt is finally done. It only took so long because I procrastinate. Once I got all of the pieced squares made, I sewed the top together and quilted it in about five hours split between last night and this morning/afternoon. I learned a lot doing this one (Like, had I known about strip piecing, it would have been way, way faster to strip piece the tiny border rectangles, instead of cutting out a bazillion tiny rectangles and sewing them all together individually), and since the pink baby quilt came before this one, I was able to apply a lot of what I learned with that one. The walking foot helped a lot, that's for sure, and the corners are mitered more neatly.

I hope Connor will enjoy it for several years. I'm glad that he turned out to be a boy, since I bought most of the material intending to make a sort of unisex quilt, but the orange seems to me to make it more of a boy quilt. (Lesson learned: just go ahead and wait until you know the sex of the baby. You'll have plenty of time. Unless you procrastinate. And even then, the baby won't care if it's a little late.)

What goes around comes around (if you wait long enough).

I've been seeing dresses with this same general neckline style lately (round yoke and gathered bodice) on patterns from different pattern companies (the one shown is from Kwik Sew). I've thought to myself, that's neat, maybe I should get one. But I just hate paying $10 for a pattern. And then while I was in Dallas a couple of weeks ago, I found the vintage pattern below for $1 and bought it instead.











And the nice thing is, if I make the narrow skirt instead of the full one, the pattern takes less than 3 yards. I have three yards of a great blue print just waiting for this kind of opportunity. Plus, the vintage pattern has the option for little sleeves, which is nice.

Past Projects - Number 2

This is the dress that the blue floral dress was a muslin of. I loved the fabric, which has cats on it and has great colors, but didn't want a whole dress out of it.

Changes I made from the muslin:

1. I added pockets modeled off of an apron my great-grandmother made (turns out they are too shallow to be very useful, though).

2. I lengthened the bodice by 2 inches (though 1 inch might have done fine)


3. I shortened the hem by a few inches, I can't remember how many.

4. I brought the sides of the neckline in a little, since the neckline of the muslin almost constantly revealed my bra straps (I ended up sewing little loops and buttons on the inside neckline of the muslin to keep them pulled back out of site, a trick from the Vogue Sewing book.)

Score!

I bought a big huge box of patterns at a garage sale today. I'm super excited because there are a whole range of decades represented, from the 1940's to the 1990's. Some really awesome dress patterns, some which I will be posting pics of here and there.

But the one that has me most excited is this one, for purely personal reasons. It's not even vintage:

I'm 90% positive that this is the first dress pattern I ever made (or one from a different company but the same general style), when I was around 13. It was a 4-H project, and I made it in a very dark blue tiny floral print. I loved that dress, and wore it until I outgrew it.

It was a pretty simple beginner project (although it wasn't my first sewing project ever, I think I'd done some kulottes and a wrap skirt before) except for the cord that laced up the back, which was self-fabric and HARD to turn inside out. I think the only reason I got through it was because my mom did most of that part.

If I am ever able to dig up a picture of that dress, I will post it here.

This second pattern I originally thought was a girl's pattern, not a misses pattern, because of the model's exceptionally youthful look, but no, it would fit me. Not that I plan to make it, unless I am suddenly in need of a maternity top.

Doesn't the model in the upper left look like she needs an exorcist, stat?

Past Projects - Number 1

I thought it would be nice to show some pics of the dresses I made before I had a blog. If I can, I'm going to dig up some of the REALLY old pictures from junior high and high school (4-H and home ec. projects). But we'll see. I'm not sure some of those should be seen by the general public.
This I made maybe two years? ago, when I first started dreaming about making dresses from vintage patterns. It is a muslin, made of the cheapest, lowest quality cotton I've seen. It was fifty cents a yard. The fabric is very thin. I had to make the bodice of a double layer, and a slip is absolutely necessary. I like blue, but the pattern, a sort of batik-looking violet floral, isn't really something I'm wild about.

It was a Frankenstein of these two patterns, plus sleeves I drafted from scratch:





I feel very much like a Mennonite when I wear it, although truthfully, they would never wear something with that neckline. Mostly, this is a wear-around-the-house dress, although it makes me look somewhat overdressed. Thus the sandals. I find in the summer when it is hot, a dress or skirt is more comfortable than pants, as long as I don't feel like I need to wear uncomfortable shoes, and the skirt is full enough for free movement.

Good Things in the Mail!

Look what I got in the mail today!

There is a story behind these cute patterns. See, I bought this other pattern on Ebay.

It is an unprinted pattern, probably from the forties. As you can see, it has some very unique details, and is pretty uncommon. After the auction ended, the other bidder on the pattern contacted me through E-bay and asked if she could buy it from me after I was done with it. At first I thought it was a little bit of a strange request, but it is a unique style of dress, and not something that I've seen before, and vintage patterns are hard to find in the right size.

Well, I have a lot more planned projects than I do time to make things, so I wrote her back saying it could be a long time before I was done with it, so I proposed a trade. She traded me the two patterns at the top for a tracing of the Ebay pattern. I think it worked out great, and we both got something we wanted. Sometimes the Internet is so cool.

The Marian Martin dress is next on my list of things I want to sew, after I am done with the baby quilt for my sister. It's going to take around four yards, though. Brandon's grandmother gave me 4 yards of some pretty blue floral fabric the other day, so I will probably try the pattern out in that. It will be my first unprinted pattern.

Easter Dress

I'm calling this my Easter dress, because hey, that's as good an excuse as any to make a dress. Although I made less for wearing to church and more for wearing around casually. I finished it last night and pressed Brandon into service as my photographer.

I got three yards of the butterfly fabric on impulse. That was all there was left. The pattern, it turned out, called for more, because the skirt is meant to be on the bias. I laid it out and had just enough to cut it on the straight grain(and absolutely no margin for error. The pockets are in red because I didn't have enough of the butterfly print for pockets.) As you can see, it didn't noticeably affect much.

The dress went together well, and I used a new zipper technique (out of Sew What! Skirts). You baste the zipper seam together and then use fabric glue to tack the zipper down to the wrong side of the fabric, centered over the seam. Then you stitch neatly (in theory at least) 1/4" on each side of the zipper seam on the right side of the fabric to fasten the zipper down, and rip out the basting stitches. And voila! There you have it, the easiest zipper installation method I've tried, even if it doesn't look any better than any other zipper I've done.

I used the new rolled hem foot to hem it, and while it looks okay from a distance in the picture, in real life I need to go back and redo some parts. I have pretty much mastered the rolled hem foot for straight hems, but the slight curve of this hem kept throwing me off.

I really like how this dress turned out. The bodice isn't really my favorite, but the shape of the skirt is very nice. I can't wait for some actual warm weather to wear it in. Right now it is blustery and cold out, although the sun is shining, deceitfully making it look warm.

The Pitfalls of Optimism

Last week we had some lovely weather. Sunny, not so windy that you ended up with grit in your teeth walking to the car from the house (that "in like a lion" thing is really getting old). I knew parts of the country were having awful snowstorms, but here it was nice. So in a burst of optimism, I cut out this dress: (the middle one, shown in blue, but I nixed the sleeve ruffles)

Saturday the weather was beautiful, high 60's, and I wished I had worn a dress. Sunday, the weather turned bad again, and this morning I woke up to this (this is not terrible winter weather for this part of the country, we usually get a lot more snow than we have this year):
So I guess I will be waiting a bit before I actually get to wear that dress. I haven't sewn it together anyway. I have too many baby quilts to do. Of course, next week it could be in the 70's, you never know. That's about the only thing that you can count on about the weather here in the Texas Panhandle. It will change (and it will be windy).

"My nose can go higher than yours."

"No, mine can."

"No, mine."

"No, MINE!"

At that point, it devolves from a "Nose in the Air" Contest to a screaming catfight.

This is a lovely pattern envelope. Unfortunately, one of the MAJOR pattern pieces is missing (the whole front of the dress).

Things I wish pattern companies still did...

Sometimes sewing with vintage patterns is easier to me than sewing with modern patterns. For one, most of them come one size to an envelope, which makes cutting them out a lot simpler process (so you don't accidentally cut on the wrong size line), and eliminates my worries that I might get fat and need the pattern in a larger size, so maybe I should try to preserve the larger sizes somehow so I can use them later. The only foolproof way to do this is to trace all of the pattern pieces onto tissue paper, which is a lot of trouble to go through, and so I usually don't do it, and then I feel guilty because I am throwing all those sizes away.

Also, I wish pattern companies still included a miniature picture on the back of the envelope showing all of the pattern pieces, or at least mentioned how many pattern pieces were in the pattern, so that I don't open it up and start looking at the instructions, and freak out because there are about 19 little fussy pieces. At least I could be prepared. Maybe they are afraid that someone will look at little pattern piece pictures and figure out how to draft their own without buying the pattern, but people that highly motivated not to spend money on a pattern are probably not going to buy your pattern anyway.

But what I really, truly wish most of all was that pattern companies still sold their patterns for fifty cents.

Hats Off!

When I first saw this pattern, I cracked up. The pink one looks like something a nun would wear. The striped one looks like something a Bond girl would wear while skiing down the mountainside with Russian spies in hot pursuit. And the others, I just don't know, I can't imagine anyone wearing them who was not from somewhere in the Middle East (yes, forgive me if I have inadvertently offended anyone from the Middle East, or anyone who likes these hats).

But I listed it in my Etsy shop anyway, and it sold that night. Which goes to show, there's no accounting for taste. Someone liked it, evidently.

The thought did occur to me that someone undergoing chemotherapy might use this pattern for cover-ups or something.

Sigh...

I used to work in a bank. I do not miss working in the bank(except I got to see nearly everyone in town), but I kind of miss dressing up for work in neat little jackets. I have four or five now and I never wear them. Actually, I wore a lot of other things to work, too, but I felt most pulled together and professional in a jacket. Although, to be honest, when I first started I hated the whole dressing up for work part. I had just come from a two year stint in the Peace Corps in Ecuador followed by two months of goat herding, and dress code was non-existent, so I wore jeans literally every day, or corduroy pants, and whatever sloppy tee shirt or sweater I felt like. When I first started at the bank (and the bank I worked in was small, and the dress code was pretty relaxed), I felt like a cat in a dress.


But this is such an elegant little suit, so minimalist and chic. Very Jackie O, I think. If I had much call for this sort of outfit (and it was my size, which it isn't, but it's very close) I would make it up in a heartbeat. With several different coordinating shells. I like the idea of all the SWAPs that I see being done online (Sewing With A Plan) but I just don't need that many new clothes.

Space Case

I love this 70's pattern with its futuristic, Star Trek feel. It's especially strong, of course, in the purple and the silver views.

I kind of wish it was my size. I used to have this fabric from Hancock's (which inexplicably disappeared, along with the rest of my stash, during the move to my new home), which would have been PERFECT for this dress. I intended to make it into a dress, too.

Funny how all of those old shows with clothing like this don't look "futuristic" or even contemporary to us; they just look like dated clothes from the 70s. Now that's what you call irony.

Oh dear

I have almost nothing to say about this. Unfortunately, it speaks for itself (in demented-baby babble).

Just imagine the wedgie.

Intrigue

This is probably the most artistic pattern envelope I've seen. Usually there isn't any background, much less an implied story.

I see one of two things going on here: One, they are all spies in Paris. The man in the green ascot is passing the secret information that will save the Free World on to the girl in yellow, while the woman in the striped coat (who is obviously a Russian spy because she is blonde) is eavesdropping to steal it.

Number two, and more sordidly, the man is whispering endearments to his young girlfriend as she is about to leave for a trip, while his other girlfriend waits impatiently for her rival to leave, and smiles smugly behind the brochure she's using to hide her face so as not to be recognized. She's just got a suitcase as a cover story for being there.

Added Bonus - Original Artwork

This pattern came to me with the added bonus of original artwork. Someone (my husband says probably a small boy someone) has embellished the ladies with beards and chest hair. Charming, no? It looks like a pretty dress, but unfortunately, it is a pattern missing major pieces (all of the bodice).