The Sew Weekly

The "I Need a Break" Dress

After all the drama that was the "You Say Potato" Dress, I still didn't have anything to wear to work this week. So, last night at 8:30, I headed to my pattern library with clear requirements in mind:

• No sleeves
• Least amount of pattern pieces possible
• No weird collars
• Basically, the easiest thing I could make.

Well, those requirements were all met in Simplicity 4429, which apparently, if you judge from its availability online, was pretty popular in its day. Start to finish it took about three hours to complete. It would have taken less time if I didn't decide to work with a plaid. A plaid! What's wrong with me? Oh, and two of the neck facing pieces were missing from the envelope so I had to create them from scratch.

Fabric: Fabric is a woven plaid from Alameda Antique Fair, $8 (total for 3 yards)
Pattern: Simplicity 4429
Notions: None
Time to complete: About 3 hours.
Year: c. 1962
First worn: January 2010
Wear again? Sure. 

Oddly, I went to one potato sack to another, but this dress is meant to be paired with a belt, so the fit of this dress is acceptable. Take the belt off and it's shapeless. Still, for three hours I am happy with the results and have happily paired it with a blazer I had in my closet.

The "You Say Potato" Dress

If I was a clever blogger, I'd say that last week's Project Runway inspired me to take on the potato sack challenge. What could *I* do with pieces of burlap and just how fierce could I make it? Well, I wasn't exactly working with burlap, but the tweed dress I attempted does look a bit starchy.

Cue the sad trombone.

Fabric: Main fabric is about 2  yards of a brown tweed found at an estate sale for $2. Leaves are made from black felt, and black trim is from Joann's.
Pattern: Du Barry 6095, about $2.50 from eBay
Total cost of supplies: About $7.00 
Notions: One 12" zipper (from the stash of zippers bought at this garage sale.)
Time to complete: About 20 hours.
Year:c. 1945
First worn: Not worn yet.
Wear again? The better question is whether I'll ever wear it. It doesn't look horrendous in the photo, but it just doesn't suit my body.

There were just so many Project Runway sound bites swimming through my mind as I created this dress - particularly "make it work." But instead of Tim Gunn's calming voice, it was my own voice screaming "I'M CONCERNED, MENA! "I'M CONCERNED! MAKE IT WORK, DAMNIT!" I can't pinpoint the exact problem that made this project such a disaster/undertaking. Working with the tweed wasn't easy and the hang of the dress required a much more lightweight fabric. The bodice -- even being a 34 -- ended up being too loose and I had to take it in. When I did that, the buttons were then too far to one side. Hence the second row of buttons. Oh god, don't get me started about my crooked little buttons. The skirt was supposed to be gathered completely at top, but, given the fabric, was just too bulky. So I trimmed about 4 inches off the the width and chose to gather partially on the left and right sides. That in turn, made the pockets look ridiculous (yes, it had pockets), so I removed them. 

If you watched Runway last week, this would have been the dress that Ping would have draped over her crazy little body. Although you thankfully can't see my butt, I look like I'm packing 40G (yes, I got to "G" when I was breastfeeding my daughter) breasts in this thing. 

I do like my little leaf embellishment -- similar to the one I made for my holiday party dress fascinator. 

Lessons learned: 

• Tweed is for structured garments that aren't supposed to flow.
• I need to take a little break from the unprinted patterns.
• Perseverance is a good thing and helps you learn what not to do next time.

Fashion on the Ration

 Over at Cargo Cult Craft, Susannah is attempting to "spend one year shopping and sewing within the British wartime clothing ration imposed in 1941." She's calling it Fashion on the Ration. From a recent post, "A Wardrobe Full of Friends," she shares a little bit of history about the introduction of rationing upon wartime London. 

Clothes rationing was orchestrated in secret and introduced suddenly in June 1941 to prevent a run on the shops. It took retailers as well as customers by surprise — I don’t envy the staff who must have been drafted in to work over the long weekend in the scramble to reorganize — but almost immediately it became apparent that the coupon system, by limiting the quantity of clothes people purchased, would increase consumer demand for quality. Rationing was announced on a Sunday, Monday was a bank holiday and by Tuesday Debenhams had rallied sufficiently to insert [an] ad in the Times.

Best of luck, Susannah! It will be very interesting to see this project progress.

Dating Fabric & History

Much of my love of sewing vintage is derived from imagining the history behind the fabrics, patterns and notions I use for my garments. Very rarely will I use a pattern and not imagine who used it before me, what they created and whatever happened to them. I absolutely love finding handwritten markings on the patterns or torn out pictures from catalogs tucked into the envelopes. 

That's the personal side I love. There's also the historical context that's also incredibly interesting to discover. When you find a piece of vintage fabric in a bin at an estate sale or a shop, there's not much to go by with regard to date and history. Educated guesses will help narrow down the era but unless you're a textile historian, you're pretty much guesstimating. 

End of long preamble. 

All that in mind, you can imagine my excitement as I read this blog post and came upon this photo of Twiggy from a December 1967 issue of Bazaar. The fabric of Twiggy's dress is the exact same fabric I picked up two weekends ago at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse. While I'd probably be more excited if I saw a photo of an everyday woman wearing the fabric, this dating helps me give my clothes context. If I weighed 91 pounds (Twiggy's weight in 1967) and 31-22-32 (her measurements), I'd probably endeavor to create a replica dress. But given that my thigh is probably the only thing that would fit in that waistline, I'll stick to some 1967 sundress in a hearty 38 bust.

Holiday Party Dress & Fascinator

An update to last week's weekly creation: From Friday night, here I am in the holiday party dress. Overall, I think the dress was a hit. Despite copious amounts of drink and food, all seams stayed intact and, more importantly, it certainly gave me an opportunity to talk about sewing with other party goers. So many folks, it seems, want to sew more. I definitely encouraged them to give it a try (especially the women who already have sewing machines) and just see what they can do.

See the fascinator in my hair? In the spirit of the feed sacks of the 30s and 40s I partially made it from something that food comes in.

Any guesses?

The netting is from the red mesh bag that clementines / Cuties / tangerines (whatever they're called) come in. I first got the idea from this gal and decided to make it with some variations. The leaves were sewn directly onto red corduroy and then stitched together on a piece of felt with a clip. If anyone is interested I can write up a more detailed tutorial

I'd love to figure out more ways to upcycle items that we consume daily. Any suggestions?

And I'm sure a number of you have a Cutie bag at home -- anyone up to making your own fascinator?

This Week's Vintage Finds

Well, actually, last weekend's finds. My friend and I headed to the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, "an ecological treasure trove of art & craft materials, educational supplies, vintage furniture, home décor, paper goods, fabric, and much more." We got there about five minutes before they opened and there were already people gathering outside in line! It's fair to say that the best fabric got grabbed up in the first five minutes. The fabric pieces above are my finds. I paid about $75 for about 30-35 yards of fabric. If all goes well, I should be able to get at least 10 garments from these pieces. I bought a few other fabrics but these were boring old solids I'll be using for lining and other unglamorous usage.

I also picked up a good amount of buttons and belt buckles, including some made from bakelite. Those all weren't awesome bargains but were definite finds.

Stuff to love, elsewhere: 1/20/10

• Repurpose vintage clip-on earrings into a necklace. Via Craft.
• These shortbread button cookies would be great to serve at a sew-a-thon.
• Casey crotchets some adorable snoods. Learning to crotchet is definitely on my to-do list for the year.

Holiday Party Dress

Yes, this is a holiday party dress. Why? Because our company throws our holiday party in January, not December, and I'll be wearing this on creation on Friday.

Fabric: Main fabric is a black cotton blend with stitched white flowers from Stone Mountain & Daughter $15, sash made from red linen fabric found at garage sale for about $1, lining is black lining from stash.
Pattern: McCall's 5177
Notions: One 12" zipper (from the stash of zippers bought at this garage sale.)
Time to complete: About 8 hours.
Year: c. 1959
First worn: January 2010
Wear again? Definitely. I can put a more casual belt on for a less formal look.

I acquired this pattern at the December Alameda Antique Fair. For about $20, I purchased eleven 1950s patterns -- a great deal. Made even better were the fifteen or so 50s era patterns the seller gave me for free because they didn't have envelopes! Coincidently, Erin featured this pattern on A Dress A Day a couple weeks ago.

It was a wonderful pattern to work with -- the bodice, from the instructions, seemed intimidating to construct at first. However, once I got my mind around what was going on, it was a total snap. The only thing that made this dress a pain was the size -- a 34 bust. I'm not capable of resizing a pattern yet so I simply adjust the seam allowance based on my shape. That led to less material to work with and general frustration on my part. If this was my size -- a 36/38 bust -- it would have been super easy.

Stuff to love, elsewhere: 1/15/10

• Andi shows off a 1940s playsuit. I just so happened to buy a pattern like this the other day.
• Craft Hope for Haiti. Donate your homemade wares or shop to support earthquake relief in Haiti.
• Susannah makes the blitz blouse.
• A handy little guide on how to be aware of fraudulent vintage label swapping.

Keeping Track of Your Patterns

Every vintage pattern collector has their own way of storing their patterns. The hardcore and diligent seamstress will usually copy off the pattern and then store the originals in a safe spot. The lazy and careless (I'm sadly in this camp) use the originals and often misplace pattern pieces throughout the home.  I'm trying to be better and have been meaning to buy tracing paper to get started on preserving the originals.

Whatever way you store, you're likely to need a system for accessing the patterns. This post is intended for those just starting their collection -- the old pros can just ignore this as a bit of a duh fact.

Here are my tips to make pattern organizing easier:

• Put those patterns in numerical order! The numbers are there for a reason. If you have patterns spanning decades, they'll sometimes repeat. That's no big deal. 
• Categorize by maker. I don't bother categorizing by decade since the numbers often correspond to time period and they'll automatically group in some chronological order. 
• Take photos of each and every pattern. This is most important. Instead of doing any real categorization in the filing of the patterns, I do it all digitally. In iPhoto I have my patterns grouped by time period and type of garment. There's often overlap in the filing (a 1960s dress that has more 1950s traits). When I'm looking at contenders for a project, I'll flag them and then compare next to each other. The super-organized will take photos of the back of the envelope. When you've found the pattern you want to tackle, it's just a matter of noting the number and pulling it out of storage.
• Have an online version of your pattern album. I keep a copy of my patterns on Flickr (they're available just to me so I won't bore my friends). That way if I'm at a fabric store and want to browse the images for inspiration, they're available to me on my iPhone. I choose not to sync them to my phone because I don't want to use that much space.
• Keep a database of your patterns. I'm in the process of using Bento to create a database of my patterns so I can easily access the yardage required, notions, sizes, etc... it's a lot of work and is something that I'm not really rushing to get to. 

Anyone have any other good tips for pattern organizing?