The Sew Weekly

The "Final Weekly Creation of 2010" Dress

After 52 weeks of sewing, I'm allowing myself to be lazy and break with the format of The Weekly Creation. So no special photo of the dress on the dress form. Instead, here's a photograph from our own holiday party. The dress turned out okay, although it was a bit tight. I also hand-beaded some details at the neckline but didn't take a photo of that. (I told you I'm being lazy!) 

I do have to say that part of the reason I'm being lazy is because I've been spending the past week redesigning The Sew Weekly for 2011 and have a little blogging fatigued. I know I still owe an announcement about the guest authors for next year -- I may start all of that in February to give us all a break/head-start. I'm still working out the details.

Most. Anti-climatic. Post. Ever.

 

The Sew Weekly 2011: An Update

Little did I know that so many talented women would be interested in joining me in the crazy act of weekly sewing! While I had expected perhaps five responses, I have already received emails from twenty-four gals! My initial plan is to start small with three or four contributors and then grow the group gradually. That said, I would like to find a way that everyone who contacted me can feel involved in some way. 

If you threw your hat into the ring and haven't yet heard from me it's because I'm still going through all the submissions. I will have chosen the contributors by Sunday.

An Early Christmas Present

My friend Krissy gave me the most wonderful(!) book (along with some fabulous vintage hair clips and some silk) for Christmas -- Floral Frocks: A Celebration of the Floral Printed Dress from 1900 to Today by Jo Turney.

By far, my favorite type of fabric is the floral print and this book seriously brings it. This book has everything: photos of fabrics, photos of dresses and photos of fabulous everyday folk wearing said dresses. I'm absolutely in love with this book! Highly recommended for the vintage lover/sewer in your life.

Thanks, Krissy!

Searching for Ambitious Folks

In thinking about The Sew Weekly 2011, I've realized that the community is going to be a much bigger component of my sewing mission. As part of this, I'm hoping to add a few other contributors to The Sew Weekly. If you're interested, here's what I'll ask of you:

• Starting the first week of January, sew at least one garment once a week for a year*
• Write one weekly post documenting the dress (just the results, not the construction)
• Have a strong voice
• Do it for the love of sewing and blogging (in other words, there's no money involved)

While you don't have to sew all vintage, an emphasis on making use of vintage fabrics, patterns, notions is always more than encouraged. Most importantly,  you don't have to be an expert seamstress. In fact, if you're learning, that's even better! You should just feel comfortable assuming you can complete one garment a week. 

If you're interested, please contact me over here. Please provide a link to your current blog (if you have one) or any other writings (Burdastyle, Pattern Review, Etc...)

* This may be too ambitious for most folks. Obviously, I think it's doable. Another option would be to commit to once a week for a month and then I'll rotate different authors. We'll figure this out.

The "A Very Special Christmas" Dress

The Facts
Fabric: Vintage Christmas tablecloth from eBay - $22.25
Pattern: Simplicity 4474
Notions: Vintage zipper - $.05
Year: c. early 1960s
Time to complete: About 9 hours
First worn: December 2010
Wear again? Definitely for holiday parties

Total Cost - $22.30

As expected from this post, the poinsettia fabric formerly known as a tablecloth was used for a full-skirted cocktail dress and was successfully worn to our company's holiday party last night.

The theme of the holiday party was ugly sweaters and tacky ties. Because I knew I would not wear either article of clothing, I decided to play on the spirit of those things and dress to my personal theme of "overly-zealous holiday dress."

The dress was constructed from Simplicity 4474, a very straight forward dress that was the perfect silhouette. Even after splitting the fabric down the middle, I didn't have enough fabric -- I was at least 3/4 yards short. Thankfully, full skirts can be forgiving and the fabric shortage was a non-issue.

The most complicated part of construction was the bodice. I actually draped the fabric on my dress form three different ways in an effort to pick the very best placement of the design. This, by far, was my favorite version. I loved how the design on the bodice gives the illusion of a princess neckline -- that detail makes the dress a bit more formal. 

And, since it's a special dress and all, I took the effort to line the bodice with fabric from a white table-cloth I had. All in all, this dress has spent many a night on a dining room table.

This dress was a delight to wear! Now onto my next dress for the next holiday event.

The "Embellished Sack" Dress

The Facts
Fabric: Wool weave - ~$1 for 6 yards
Pattern: Butterick 4102
Notions: Braid trim ~ .50
Year: c. mid 1960s
Time to complete: About 10 hours
First worn: December 2010
Wear again? Sure

Total Cost - $1.50

There's nothing like a grey wool shift dress to make you feel really sexy. Particularly one with a high neckline. That just feels Russian factory worker from the 1960s sexy. (No offense to former Russian factory workers from the 1960s who read this blog).

I had 6 1/2 yards of this grey wool weaved fabric that I wanted to make stretch. My goal was to be able to make a simple 1960s dress, a fuller 1950s dress and a jacket. I actually had three patterns that would all fit on about 6 1/2 yards of 60" width fabric. Well, this is the first thing I ventured in creating and, because of a bunch of work, came out fairly successful. It required alterations to the dress an a bit of hand sewing. Both incredibly fun things I just love to do at 2am in the morning.

The first version of my dress was pretty true to the original pattern. I'll spare you the photo of the dress on me because there's nothing flattering about it. It didn't fit horribly, but it just was incredibly dull and unflattering.

I did take a photograph of it on my dress form, however. Here it is in all its drab glory:

The sleeves were the first things to go. As much as I love wearing vintage patterns, there are some elements that I always find to be too dating. Bell sleeves are one of those things. Because I didn't make the longer sleeve version, I thought I'd be safe. I wasn't. So off they went.

The next thing I did was take in the waistline. My biggest lesson? I really prefer an early 1960s silhouette. At this point I realized that my goal was basically to make it into Simplicity 3836. Even with these modifications, the dress just needed something else. That's where the braid came in. For it, I basically took a really long braid and tied bows about every 4 inches. I then placed them on the dress on the dress form and then pin/basted them on by hand. After that, I went over the stitches with my machine.

As a proof of concept, I'm happy with how they turned out. The dress may not be my favorite, but it's still a promising start to my future couturier career.

I'm in Sears Catalog Heaven

As a paying Ancestry.com member, I am beyond excited about the following news I received today:

Our newest collection, Historic Catalogs of Sears, Roebuck and Co., 1896-1993, is a stroll through this collective consumer history, with prices, descriptions and images from almost every spring and fall catalog (excluding Christmas Wishbooks).

That's right -- almost every single Sears catalog page has been scanned as is now available for paid members of Ancestry.com. I'm a genealogy nut so I totally justify the subscription and do indeed use it (and have been successful) for my family research. However, it's not inexpensive -- plans start at $19.95 a month, I believe, with the yearly discounts that services generally provide. They do provide a credit card-required 14-day free trial, as well.

Yay Pattern Storage Bags!

Lauren's great post about pattern preservation and organization was the kick I needed to get serious about taking better care of my patterns. So based on her recommendation, I ordered 700 modern sized comic book bags from Amazon. They're $8.61 for a one hundred bags, but they're eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime. I had mine in two days and I can proudly say that 550 of my best patterns are now very cozy and protected. The next step for me is purchasing storage containers since the drawers of my previous method (an Ikea dresser) basically collapsed under the weight of my patterns.

In related news, I was asked by Denise over at The Blue Gardenia to show my sewing space. I'll provide a link once it has been published. 

Holiday Dresses: The Fabrics

While I don't need an excuse to wear a festive dress, the holidays make it easier to go one step further and embrace the world of novelty prints. Various parties and Christmas itself call for these three fabrics which I acquired at three separate sources: Etsy, eBay and at my local reuse/recycle supply store. In total, the three fabrics cost $37. 

I haven't picked the exact pattern for each of the fabrics yet. However, I do have a good idea how each will be use. The poinsettia fabric is a border print fabric that had been sewn into a table cloth. There's enough yardage there to make a nice and full-skirted 1950s era dress. The purple and white floral fabric is a brocade and will most likely be used for my fanciest dress -- a 1960s cocktail wiggle dress.

And finally, the novelty Santa/Snowman print. I bought this one on Etsy based on the cuteness of the design and not the practicality. I figured that if I didn't end up making a dress, I certainly could make something for Penelope or for the house. I do want to try to figure out how to make it work for me, though. I have 2 3/4 yards so I'm think a full skirt to wear with a fuzzy 1950s-style sweater. Or maybe a 1940s style dress?

What do you all think I should do with that one?

The "Skip the Bathrobe" Dress

The Facts
Fabric: Polyester/Wool blend from an estate sale: $5
Pattern: Simplicity 4693
Notions: none
Year: c. 1960
Time to complete: About 4 hours
First worn: November 2010
Wear again? Certainly.

As a born and raised Californian, I'm one of those pathetic folks who can barely handle the temperature dipping below 50 degrees. It's not like San Francisco is the warmest place in the country -- it's just consistently sort of, well, bleh. While it may not have Summers like everywhere else, its winters are often manageable with a nice heavy sweater. You know, bleh.

A long preamble to say that this week's creation was definitely influenced by the cold spell we're having. Instead of making a special dress for Thanksgiving, I made something for our anniversary weekend away up in Occidental, CA. Because it's even colder there at night, I wanted a dress with (1) longish sleeves (2) thickish fabric (3) a plaid. 

Enter Simplicity 4693 (available in a 34 bust at Etsy). This is the second time I've used this pattern, though I have yet to document my first attempt. The first dress suffers from being a little too long and a little too tight in the bodice. Perhaps some alterations will eventually allow it to make it into The Sew Weekly annals -- we'll see.

For this dress, I used an estate sale polyester blend. While the fabric wasn't too heavy to make the gathering of the skirt impossible, a lighter weight fabric would have solved the fullness issue at my hips. In other words, there's a lot of extra junk in that trunk that really ain't there. 

Construction was almost completely straight-forward. The aforementioned gathering? There's a lot of it in the back. So much so that I began questioning whether I did something wrong. Alas, it is just the style. One modification to the dress: I stitched the facing at the neckline so that it looked like it was a trim. Other than that, a very easy pattern to follow.

While it's not the most slimming dress, I do rather like how it turned out. It was quite warm and (almost) compensated for me not packing a coat. It turned out that it was kind of insanely cold by the time we walked to dinner from our hotel and I actually considered wearing the hotel-provided bathrobe that was hanging in our room. Thankfully, my husband talked me out of that fashion faux pas.