The Sew Weekly

Santa Monica, 1946

Prepping for vacation, I've got playsuits and bathing suits on the brain! It's fitting that I post this photograph of my grandparents from Santa Monica, CA in 1946. They lived in Los Angeles when it was still Orange Groves and farms and this is one of the few photos (only?) I've ever seen of them at the beach.

  

  (Click on photo for a bigger size)

I tend to believe that this was a playsuit rather than a bathing suit since my grandfather doesn't looked that prepared for their outing and I believe my grandmother had two-piece bathing suits around this time (she still had them when I was growing up).

Become a Fan Like The Sew Weekly

Taking advantage of TypePad's integration* of Facebook's "Like" button, you can now, well, "like" The Sew Weekly. Just click that little "like" button right above this blog's navigation bar. What will that do? If you're a Facebook user, you'll be able to see updates from this blog in your feed as well as giving me a better idea about who reads this blog. Additionally, I'd like to celebrate follower milestones with giveaways and such and this will be a good way to keep track of readers. 

To get us started, after I get my 100th follower/friend/liker/fan, I'll host a giveaway. You'll just have to be one of those followers to be eligible to win (I'll pick randomly).

 * This means that I don't have to create a Facebook page for The Sew Weekly. Instead the blog itself becomes the "page."

The "Maria Returns from the Abbey" Dress

The Facts
Fabric: Boucle from Stone Mountain & Daughter - $15 for ~3 yards
Pattern: Vogue 9944  - $1 from Alameda Antique Fair
Notions: Vintage zipper - $.005
Year: c. 1960
Time to complete: About 10 hours
First worn: April 2010
Wear again? Perhaps.

Total Cost: $16

My daughter is currently obsessed with The Sound of Music. It's the only thing she wants to listen to in the car ("I don't want to hear Edelweiss!!") and I recently bought the DVD ("There's a movie???") for her viewing enjoyment. I never thought I'd watch this movie as much I have in the past month.  That's okay, though, because I like the movie as well. 

However, there's on thing that drives me absolutely batty: the costume direction/design. It baffles my mind that they'd spend all the money to shoot on location and use helicopters and stuff but couldn't bother to actually try to have period-accurate costumes. 

This wasn't the 1830s we're talking about. The 1930s were only thirty years prior to the filming of the movie, for goodness sake! You know someone on the set had to be around in the thirties and must have been thinking "Um, does anyone else notice that the Baroness kind of looks like she just walked off the set of Peyton Place?" The baroness, is, by far, the greatest offender. While her dresses are just wrong, it's probably her hair that makes me angriest.

The point of this story? Every time I'd see the dress Maria's wearing when she returns to the Von Trapp compound, I was reminded of an unfinished dress of mine that was collecting dust in my closet. Not as offensively anachronistic as the Baroness' wardrobe, Maria's dress doesn't necessarily scream "1960s", but the design is quite similar to Vogue 4499 from the early 1960s.

 
 

 I started working on Vogue 4499 last winter, right when I began sewing. Working with the fabric (boucle) proved to be way too frustrating and when I had all but sewn the zipper and hem, I realized that the dress was way too small. Instead of the trash, the dress went into the closet and I assumed I would never finish it. Fast forward to this past Tuesday night when I needed a new dress for Wednesday work and I had about 2% motivation to sew. 

Thanks to regular exercise, the dress fit! Sure, it's a bit snug but I could get it on and over my birthing hips and butt. I'm still not crazy about the fabric, but it was wearable to work. I could even imagine wearing it again if I lost a couple more pounds. I have a crazy little desire to be comfortable in my clothes and this dress is just a little too constricting.

That all said, I think I would be happier if I made the dress in a different fabric, perhaps a stretchy knit or rayon. I'd also want to do the piping as the illustration shows since that is the cutest detail.

Shopping at Re-Mix Vintage

Now that I don't buy new clothes (and very rarely buy vintage), my one splurge is shoes. And by splurge I mean I actually buy a pair of shoes once in a while rather than constantly wear the same shoes I bought at Ross three years ago. I figure that, like clothing, I should make the investment and wear well-crafted and unique shoes and try to avoid being cheap and sending my money straight into a big corporation's pockets.

That's a long way of saying that I had to stop by Re-Mix Vintage when I was in Los Angeles visiting my grandparents. Ever since Fleur posted about Re-Mix, I've been searching online for deals. I have a pair of Picasso wedges in black that I purchased on Amazon for about $70 -- much more than I ever spend on shoes. They're incredibly comfortable and I wear them constantly.

I headed to the Los Angeles shop and bought a pair of Gilda wedges that I originally let slip past me on Amazon. Talk about comfortable! I wore them (brand new) to Disneyland and walked the entire day without a blister. I love these shoes! They were on sale at $89. I also picked up a pair of Gloria peep-toe wedges in burgundy suede (exactly like these but, being the last pair in the store, were $98.)

P.S if you're a size 6, there's two pairs of red Greta lace-up wedges at Amazon for only $49.35!

The "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" Playsuit

The Facts
Fabric: Dotted Swiss from Fabric.com - $10 for ~2.5 yards
Pattern: Simplicity 2444 c. 1948 - $7.00 from Etsy
Notions: Vintage buttons - $1
Year: c. 1948
Time to complete: About 6 hours
First worn: April 2010
Wear again? Yes.

Total Cost: $18

With a bit of travel ahead, I've already started working on my vacation wardrobe. And, of course, what better says vacation than a playsuit? For those who are unaware of the concept, a playsuit it basically a one-piece garment that most often resembles a top and shorts. Often these playsuits are paired with overskirts that allow a transition into more formal attire.

I've been on a playsuit pattern buying spree lately -- this one being from 1948. I'm not a shorts person. I NEVER wear shorts. Considering I also NEVER used to tuck in my shirts, I decided to give the concept of the shorts playsuit a try. 

As far as the ease of construction, I was terrified about making the shorts portion. Little did I know that I would have the most trouble with the yoke and sleeves. The shorts were, in fact, a breeze to construct. I just couldn't get my head around what was going on with the yoke and the fabric was just too lightweight to really have any fine control over.

But even with those troubles, I'm very happy with how this little romper turned out. Does this mean that I'm a shorts convert? Well, they're loose enough that they really should be considered culottes. So I guess that means I'm a culottes convert.

Here I am wearing the playsuit at Disneyland this past weekend. 

 

Light on Posting

I made a last minute decision to visit my grandparents so posting is pretty much non-existent this week. I'll get the weekly creation up by Saturday, hopefully. Have a great week!

The "C'eci N'est Pas Une Dress" Sweater

The Facts
Fabric: Green knit from SCRAP - $1 for ~3 yards
Pattern: Butterick 8360 c. 1939 - $0.60
Notions: Vintage covered button kit - $.005
Year: c. 1939
Time to complete: About 12 hours
First worn: April 2010
Wear again?;Yes.

About two weeks ago I spotted this adorable, but pricey, dress on Etsy. Of course, my first reaction was to go through my pattern stash and find a contender for a new sewing project inspired by this little mauve number.

I was delighted to find -- Butterick 8560 -- an almost perfect match! This pattern had been part of a lot from Alameda. It was the first set of patterns I bought after I decided I was going to sew all my clothes (last September). At the time, $45 for a box of about 50 patterns seemed like way too much money to spend, but looking back it was one of my best hauls. Fifteen of the patterns alone were from the 30s and 40s!  

Anyone who sews a lot eventually discovers that there are only so many patterns you can by before you've attained most of the basic silhouettes. At this point it becomes more about playing with fabrics and embellishments and techniques. Lately, I've been at that point. So when I found a book* at an estate sale about decorative smocking and gathering, I was ready to take on the challenge of doing some more intricate sewing by hand. 

I knew I wanted to make the bodice of the dress, but, not having a lot of tops and separates, I wasn't convinced that I needed to make the dress itself. So I simply cut a band for the bottom of the "sweater" from the skirt pieces and constructed it as I would have done a shirt. Luckily since the fabric is a knit, I didn't have to worry about using a zipper or some sort of fastener -- the bottom stretches just fine to go over my head.

The time to complete this dress (12 hours) represents me trying to figure out how to do the decorative gathering just right. Initially I tried to do something that would be an exact reproduction of the embellishments on the mauve dress. That didn't work so I simply went to the easiest gather I could find in the book. Once that all was complete, the sweater was pretty straight-forward to put together.

 

This Weekend's Vintage Finds: 4/12/2010

I was preoccupied last week and never got to post my finds from Alameda. Usually an awesome experience, last Sunday's fair was pretty disappointing because it happened to fall on Easter Sunday (a freezing cold day, I will add). I, as a heathen, was willing to make the journey if only for a couple hours of shopping. Only a handful of the sellers were there and they were all spread out -- making walking to each table a bit of a trek. I did find a few patterns to make the overall lackluster fair worth the drive.

Then, on Friday, Krissy and I headed to an estate sale in Pacifica. I have to say that the rude older men who flock to estate sales are really making me hate the experience. Despite the fact that I'm usually holding my daughter, they have no problem pushing, ignoring or stepping on me to get to things that they like. They're a lot nicer when they're vendors, but when were all in the trenches together it's kill or be killed. When these first-world antiquing hardships are one of my biggest problems, I shouldn't complain.

I bought all of the above for about $15  (at both Alameda and the estate sale) so I really shouldn't be complaining. 

Vintage Pattern Lot - Sew Weekly Discount!

I've listed a lot of six great 50s and 60s patterns over at my Etsy shop. They're a recent acquire and are larger than I usually list -- four of the six are 34 bust. They're $25 for all six and if you're a Sew Weekly reader (in the United States), I'll ship them to you for free. Just send me a message before you're ready to buy and I'll change the shipping.

 
 

The "Don't Call Me Mommie Dearest" Outfit

The Facts
Fabric: Dotted Swiss from JoAnn's for $13.75 (2 1/2 yards) & Eyelet from Joann's for $8.00 (1 1/2 yards)
Pattern: Simplicity 1297 for ~$1 from eBay
Notions: Vintage zipper for $0.05
Year: c. 1944
Time to complete: About 4 hours
First worn: April 2010
Wear again? Yes, worn on Easter and today at work. Definitely a keeper.

Most people who know me very well would guess that it was a lifelong dream of mine to dress up in matching dresses with my daughter. Truth is, I really don't have that much of a desire to do that -- in fact, I find it a bit creepy. I can't help but think of Joan Crawford and her daughter Christina posing in front of their fireplace in their matching Dirndls (incidentally also from 1944). Anyone who has read or seen Mommie Dearest knows that certainly isn't a mother-daughter dynamic that should be replicated. 

That said, leftover fabric from my own Easter dress beckoned to me when it came time to make Penelope's dress. The pattern I used for my dress is actually part of a mother-daughter pattern set from Simplicity. Here's the child's version. I didn't use that pattern because I had no intention to create a replica dress. Instead I just used my old Simplicity 3854 standby.

My own dress was a breeze to complete. The pattern pieces to the dress are minimal -- one front, one back, the sides, straps and the band (I omitted the bows and the skirt band). There were no darts or gathers and no facing to do since the band and the straps fold over on themselves. 

I wasn't diligent in trying the dress on while constructing it and didn't realize the bodice was too big until I was almost done (I just needed to insert the zipper). So I had to take in the sides and adjust the band. The next time I make this dress, I'll just be sure to make larger seam allowances.

The bolero was also incredibly easy. Although the pattern called for lining, I wanted to go for a semi see-through look with the eyelet. 

I played with using the bows and the second band but just couldn't get into the buttons and bows cutesyness of it all. Perhaps if I was using a different, less feminine fabric, the bows and band would add to the look.