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With so many folks visiting The Sew Weekly from Etsy, I figured it was a good time to reach out to Etsy shop owners who sell vintage patterns and other sewing supplies. Any folks who are interested in sponsoring giveaways, please contact me for more details.
If you're visiting The Sew Weekly from The Storque (Etsy's Homemade Blog), welcome! I hope that it inspires any intimidated folks out their to give garment sewing a chance. It's not as hard as it seems! To check out everything I've sewn, you can start here or click on the thumbnails.
If you're a regular of this blog, here's the article they ran about The Sew Weekly. Spoilers: I talk about sewing!
The Facts
Fabric: Ikea fabric from Alameda Antique Fair - $3
Pattern: Qwik Sew 470 - $0.20
Year: c. 1970s
Notions: None
Time to complete: 3 hours
First worn: October 2010
Wear again? Yes. Have worn twice already.
Total Cost: ~$3.20
A few years back Ikea was promoting the twenty-fifth anniversary of their KLIPPAN sofa. For a moment, I thought, "wow, the Klippan is a classic!" Then I realized that, no, twenty-five years ago was actually 1979 and that's not really that vintage or cool. I guess I'm frozen in 1985 or something when twenty-five years ago actually seemed a really long time ago. Anyway, there is a point to this long preamble.
An item is only eligible for sale at the Alameda Antique if its at least twenty years old. While that might seem like an adequate enough restriction to maintain vintage an antique standards, keep this in mind: An Alf poster is eligible under that criteria. Now, I highly doubt that this (that had an Ikea copyright) fabric is even five years old, but that doesn't mean it's not cute and dress-worthy. I gladly paid my $3 not because I thought it was antique, but because it was a good deal.
The dress pattern itself is a Kwik Sew pattern from the early to mid 1970s. It was supposed to be made from knit, but I had no problem making it out of a not very stretch cotton. In fact, I was able to omit the zipper and still get it over my head.
This was another dress that I made for my trip to Hawaii a couple weeks ago. While it was perfect for that climate, in San Francisco I've had to layer with a vintage crocheted sweater I purchased at the Candlestick Park Antique Fair.
Because I know that -- in between begging for candy and hanging out with her friends -- my opportunities to get a good picture of Penelope on Halloween are limited, we decided to have a little Elizabeth Bennet dress rehearsal1 and photo shoot2 today.
Here's a little background on her Halloween costume. She's Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (the A&E version).
The dress pattern is Girls' Regency Dress from Sense & Sensibility Patterns that I purchased and printed at home for $9.95. I found the fabric for the dress and the sashes at my local upcycling/recycling craft center for under $1. If time permits, I plan on making a little pelisse out of the golden material. My original plan was to make the dress out of the golden material, but then I found the white linen.
While you can't see in this photograph, the white fabric is embroidered with white flowers. It's a nice heavyish linen was is probably home-decor weight. Regardless of whether it was meant to upholster a couch, it should keep Penelope fairly warm on Halloween. The fabric is just so dainty and beautiful!
It's been forever since I've documented my vintage finds. Well, it's been forever since I've actually had any true vintage finds. Because of its tendency to (1) make me depressed (2) make me interact with jerks, I've avoided the estate sale scene for a good number of months. Krissy actually encouraged me to check out a sale on Friday and, while I had to deal with the usual sort of estate sale annoyances*, I found two great pieces of fabric for a steal of $7 total.
I'm particularly in love with the bright floral print. Five yards of this fabric for $4. Based on my dating fabric formula, I'm fairly certain that this fabric was from 1962 or 1963.
*I've written about all the things that annoy me about estate sales over here. One thing I've left out is the dreariness of the vulture culture. Estate sales are held usually when someone passes away and there's something incredibly morbid about picking through the belongings of a recently-deceased person. While it may make me sad, most of the people who go to estate sales have gotten over this morose fact ages ago. On Friday, while we were all lining up outside in the rain, people were starting to get very pushy and anxious to get into the sale. In fact when one of the elderly neighbors of the deceased "jumped the line," she was actually yelled at to go to the back. I may be fooling myself in thinking that I'm any better than any of the other vultures, however.
The Facts
Fabric: Unknown (to me) fabric from Fabric Outlet - 2 yards for ~$.99
Pattern: Simplicity 8630 ~$.20
Year: c. 1969
Notions: None
Time to complete: ~6 hours
First worn: October 2010
Wear again? Yes!
Total Cost: ~$1.20
There is absolutely no way I could make a sailor necktied, late 1960s, drop waisted dress and not reference Ms. Barbra Streisand. And despite having "Don't Rain on My Parade" stuck in my head during the six hours of construction, making this dress was a fairly uncomplicated and enjoyable process.
I've been on a late 1960s kick lately -- the majority of my Hawaii dresses were made from 60s patterns -- and I've even grown to appreciate the properties of polyester. While I would have previously run screaming from any polyester print, I actually have gone through my stash and revisited all those pieces of fabric that have been perpetually in the "get rid of this" pile. While this fabric is not necessarily polyester, it's some weird Monsantian fiber that I can't figure out. Or maybe it's just a cotton than needs to be laundered.
Regardless, I love my Barbra dress.
As you can tell from the pattern illustration, I took some liberties with the necktie. While I love how it looks on the envelope, I could not make it work with my frame. I needed to belt the dress because it was just a little too frumpy with my big hips and chest. Because of the need to belt, a long tie was just too busy.
This is yet another dress in which I cheated and skipped inserting a zipper. I'm still waiting for that trick to backfire on me, but for the most part, the fit is fine and I just have to struggle a little bit to get it over my head.
There's just something about this dress that makes me so happy.
The Facts
Fabric: Hawaiian Print Cotton from Alameda Antique Fair - 3 yards for ~$1
Pattern: Advance 3909 from Vintage Fashion Expo - $8
Year: c. 1945
Notions: 4 buttons - $.005
Time to complete: ~5 hours
First worn: October 2010
Wear again? Yes. But only on an island.
Total Cost: ~$9
Attending a conference, I spent three days in Hawaii last week. Of course, for three days I made five dresses. To be fair to my obsessiveness, there were day *and* night events, so I found time to wear everything. I also, without embarrassment, made sure to utilize big Hawaiian prints and patterns.
My most shamelessly Hawaiian outfit is this skirt and top combo from an Advance pattern from the mid 1940s. While it isn't completely obvious in the photo, it has a nice little peplum that saved it from looking completely boxy. The print was pure Hawaii and, I feared, that I would be confused for a hotel employee. Thankfully, no one asked me where the buffet was or if I could book them a helicopter trip.
Construction of this outfit was completely straightforward. The only issue is that a 34" bust usually means a very Mena-unfriendly tiny tiny waist. Thankfully, this was my morning outfit and by the time I ate lunch it was time for a costume change.
Unfortunately, I didn't take any good photos on the trip so here's just a quick shot taken with my phone.
My daughter LOVES The Sound of Music. Ever since she first got a glimpse of it on the television back in Christmas 2008, she's been dancing and singing to the music. She knows all the words to Do-Re-Mi and will even sing some lines to I Have Confidence (if that isn't a mark of a real fan, I don't know what is). Pen is an old soul -- with a mother like me it's hard not to be -- and will even sit through the entire movie. So when it came to plan her birthday for this year, The Sound of Music easily won over all other contenders.
Penelope's birthday parties are big events, but we choose to keep them very DIY. Her first birthday was themed Old Cuba because, well, she didn't have any preference and she likes to dance to bouncy latin music (and I'm part Cuban). Last year was It's a Small World -- her favorite Disneyland attraction. This year, she was much more involved in the planning of the party and even "helped" me work on the decorations.
Since last Thursday, I have sewn:
And I've been getting ready for Penelope's 3rd birthday party on Sunday! All will be revealed next week.
The Facts
Fabric: White cotton, blue cotton and blue floral cotton from SCRAP - ~$1.50
Pattern: McCall's 5021 (shirt) Hollywood Patterns 864 (skirt) - $5.00 from Alameda
Year: c. 1976 c.1941
Notions: none
Time to complete: ~10 hours
First worn: October 2010
Wear again? Yes.
Total Cost: ~$6.50
The minute that you say to yourself "wow, this is going really fast, I'm going to have this sewn in no time," things will go horribly wrong. That was my experience with this outfit. The easier a pattern looks, the more likely I'll make a mistake. It's just a fact.
You'd think that since I just made this shirt last week, it would have been a breeze. It would have been, actually, if I didn't have so many mishaps with the fabrics prior to sewing. My original plan was an all-white shirt with hand embroidery and I had cut the yoke in white cotton to reflect that. I transfered the embroidery pattern and started cross-stitched the design. The more I did, the more I didn't like my results. I then decided that I was going to machine embroider a design so I cut another yoke from the white fabric. As I was pressing the fabric, I scorched it! I cut another yoke out and ended up marking it up with an indelible pencil. Stupid me thought I could actually just erase a pencil mark from white fabric. When I went to cut out my forth yoke, I realized I didn't have enough fabric left over. That is when the blue fabric came into play. Thankfully, I machine-embroidered the design without issue.
The sewing of the shirt was, actually, quite easy.
And then the skirt. I've been wanting to sew this skirt forever. I've had this pattern in my collection since last October but for some reason never got to sewing it. Even though I don't *love* this fabric, I thought it would be a nice look. Unfortunately, the pattern is too busy to really see the way the tiers are put together.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I originally sewed the bottom tier upside down. I realized this fun fact after I had stitched and serged the entire thing. So out came the seam ripper and a couple more hours of my time. The pattern originally calls for a waistband. My frustration over the construction of the entire skirt made me throw up my hands in the air and go with an elastic waistband. Oh heavens, an elastic waistband! I figured that I could always wear a belt and cover that sad little detail.
So in all, this entire outfit should have taken between 4-5 hours to create. Instead, I spent a long ten hours fixing stupid mistakes that I should have caught or avoided. And, after all that work, I ended up with an outfit that I'm not crazy about. Oh well. I live and learn and understand just how important it is to measure twice and cut once.
