Seriously, how are the 80s vintage?

Have you all been enjoying #vpjuly on Instagram? I've loved seeing everyone's makes and vintage inspiration.  Today I have another make towards my vintage pattern pledge, however, it's a bit different from my usual style. As a child of the 80s, looking at childhood photos means exposure to a lot of bad clothes and even worse hair styles.  So 1980s patterns have never appealed to me much.  Nor is the idea of thinking of myself as Vintage!  Although I may just have to get over this.  

A month or two back, I was on a weekend away in Bristol and spotted this pattern in a charity shop.  Despite being from the 80s, it actually appealed to me, reminding me slightly of the True Bias Southport dress which I have been considering trying for a while as I wanted an easy to pull on casual summer dress.  As the loose fitting, elasticated waist dress is not usually a style that I go for, I appreciated giving it a go with a pattern that only cost me 50p.

I went rooting around in my stash for a suitable fabric and found bits of a lovely chambray which I think may have come from my Grandma's stash and some scraps of a red and white striped shirt.  I thought these would work as a perfect, semi nautical combo.  I made some adjustments to the pattern for a number of reasons.  The skirt is slightly narrower than the pattern pieces as I didn't have enough fabric to cut the full width, I still think it's plenty full enough.  The pattern calls for piping round the neck and arm but I just used binding as I thought piping at the neck and arms would be a bit weird. I did make piping for the pockets though, gotta love a bit of piping.  The tiny amounts of the red and white fabric that I was working with meant that many of the bindings and the belt are pieced together.

I kinda ignored the instructions and made it up as I went along so I can't really comment on what they are like.  They did call for a 1/4" elastic at the waist but I used 1" elastic as I wanted the waist to be more emphasised.  Since this isn't a fitted style, I only had to make one fit adjustment, which was to take it in under the arms by a good 6cm.

Hmm I must stand up straighter!

While it was lovely to work with and feels lovely to wear, this fabric creases like crazy.  I ironed this about a million times but its still so creased.  I guess that's part of the style.  I've never worked with chambray before so I have no idea if this is normal or not.

Overall this is a cute, wearable casual summer dress but don't love it, I guess I still need some work to be converted to the 80s, although thinking about it, one of my favourite makes from last year was this 80s top so maybe there is hope for me after all.  Oh well, I've already planned my next vintage make and it's another 70s one so hopefully my favourite vintage pattern decade won't let me down. 

Another birthday dress

I'm aware that I'm slightly milking my birthday this year but hey that's what birthdays are for. As we both turn 30 this summer, my cousin and I decided to have a joint party. So obviously I needed a(nother) new dress! 

I had the perfect combo available from my stash too. A couple of years ago my dad brought me some gorgeous turquoise raw silk back from a holiday to India. I had been afraid to use it on something that I didn't think was special enough or on a pattern I hadn't tested (muslins are not my thing). Enter the bhl Anna dress that I have made a couple of times before and so know what adjustments need to be made. 

Like a number of people I had found that the back gaped on my original version so I followed Sonja's tutorial for adjusting the back, it worked like a charm. 

The silk was slightly rough in texture so did not slide around at all when cutting or seeing. It was a dream to sew up and it pressed well however it wrinkles like crazy so I am actually going to have to pull out my iron when I want to wear this dress. I lined the whole thing in a turquoise rayon from my stash. I'd bought it from fabricsforsale to make a top but when it arrived I found the colour a bit too strong to want to wear and also when I prewashed it, the colour leaked badly so into the stash it went for just such a project as this-perfect! 

For some reason I kept putting off making this dress, sometimes I get wierd blocks about stuff so it ended up being a bit of a rush to get it finished. Not ideal when there was much hand sewing to be done! I hand stitched the lining to the zip and hand sewed the entire hem! I cannot tell you how much I hate hand stitching my clothes (which is wierd as I enjoy it on quilts etc). Needless to say the lining was machine hemmed. 

I'm so pleased with the final result and had so many compliments on it at my party!  I felt so comfortable in it and I can see it getting many more wears for the rounds of weddings and birthday parties that my friends are having. Apparently this dress has magical powers too, I can go on looking elegant in it even when very much the worse for wear! 

Me-made-may Day 23-31

Wow! May is a wrap, how did that happen?  This month has had crazy weather variation, we started with some lovely sun and as I write this, I feel like that was the beginning of summer and we have now jumped straight to autumn already :(  Please come back summer.  Anyway, on to my final round up.

Day 23: vintage tartan dress

Day 24: new maxi skirt!  I had a coat on over this and almost froze while taking this photo.

Day 25: It was so cold this day that I wore my refashioned jumper skirt and blingy refashioned jumper. Being dressed neck to knee in jumpers still didn't protect me from the cold and I managed to forget a photo! 

Day 26: I wore a feather plantain t-shirt for a slobby uni day. You're getting my attempt at a selfie here, clearly my modelling/photography career is a way off

Day 27: I was going on a night out with some friends in this day so made a little bit of an effort and wore my shirt dress with some sandals. Apparently I should make even a little effort on more days as I got so many compliments on my outfit. 

Day 28: my maxi skirt again with lace belcarra blouse 

Day 29: being the little mermaid at the V&A in my Jade skirt and vintage tie top. For anyone in the London area, I really recommend the 'Undressed' exhibition.

Day 30:  a bonus bank holiday day, which was much colder than we would have liked for the BBQ I was attending! I wore my Renfrew/lady skater mash up dress. 

Day 31: for the final day I wore my floral pencil skirt and Mathilde blouse.  I love this outfit but the skirt is such a terrible fit that I really need to try and find another pencil skirt pattern to attempt a different one.

This May has been the third where I've participated in me-made-May, this year was by far the easiest.  Clearly my handmade items are fitting better into my wardrobe (also I now have enough of them for colleagues/friends not to think I own no clothes).  Thanks so much Zoe for hosting again this year, I find this challenge so useful in helping me to examine my wardrobe and what it is that I want to wear.   However, interestingly this year is also the first that I haven't come out of May with a list of things to sew bigger than I started with which is refreshing.  I guess I've arrived at some kind of homoeostasis.   

Anyway, on to June which is definitely my favourite month, as its my birthday!  Here's to birthday month!

Going back in time

Today's post is about a pattern I'm very fond of, partly for the style and partly because this is the pattern I used to make my first ever item of clothing, about 5/6 years ago.  It's Style 1241, a 6 gored maxi skirt.  I originally made it with zero sewing knowledge so as you can imagine there were a lot of flaws.  The pattern, while detailed, does assume quite a bit of pre-existing sewing knowledge and I remember spending significant amounts of time on the phone to my mother asking what various things meant.  However, I loved it and wore it until it actually fell apart.  The original skirt was in colours very similar to these and when I spotted this stretch cotton on Goldhawk road I had to have it.

This pattern eats fabric, I used about 3.5m, although the fabric was fairly narrow.  However, I think it's worth it as I love gored skirts, they're so flattering.  I didn't make any adjustments when sewing it up except that the waist band piece is damaged and clearly at some point has had a chunk removed from the middle so I had to create a new waistband piece.  As I still had part of it, I was given the width of the piece an simply had to measure the skirt pieces and add a few cm for the overlap, not exactly rocket science.  I remember the waistband being an issue on my first version clearly this is why and my understanding of how to fix it was sketchy back in the day.  This time, I got it nailed first time!  It's amazing what a difference practice makes!

I may wear this skirt pretty much every day for the rest of the summer now.  Anyone following my me-made-may photos, prepare to be very bored!  Also at this rate there is a danger of my entire wardrobe becoming 1970s themed.

My lovely sister took these photos for me in my local park, thanks Nini. I love this park and the band stand. I saw a couple getting married there last summer and it was so pretty, like the perfect place (on a sunny day) to get married and to take blog photos.

It has just occurred to me that we are now not even at the end of May and I have almost achieved my vintage pattern pledge.  This makes me happy as I love my vintage patterns and being able to fit vintage makes into my wardrobe.  I'm sure I'll properly outstrip my pledge this year as I currently have plans for several more makes and they're not all from 70s patterns either!  How're you getting on with yours?

Me made May Day 9-22

As I mentioned in my last post, the last few weeks have been a bit rough so I decided to be kind to myself and not worry about what's happening on the blog or about my Me Made May photos.  Therefore you're getting the photos that I remembered to take over the last few weeks.  I have been fully participating though and actually this is the first year I have not really struggled any morning to pick myself an outfit that is at least partially me made.  

Day 9: lace belcarra blouse and strawberry circle skirt (unblogged) 

Day 10: pleather circle skirt and blingy refashioned jumper.

Day 11: 70s tartan dress for my mummy's birthday dinner. I made a cake that almost matched my dress!

Day 12: floral pencil skirt and RTW top to see the Vogue exhibition! 

Day 13: Angelica top and ultimate trousers. I really need some more of these tops in my life-I got so many compliments on it and I wear it loads. I couldn't be bothered with a photo today. 

Day 14: jeans and a Dolores top. This was a terrible day so I again opted out of the photo taking.

Day 15: Pleather skirt and vintage top.  This outfit never fails to get me compliments and I love it, however again was not in the mood for photos.

My mend this week was a summer loose knit jumper which had developed a serious hole.

Before:

After:

And its ready to wear again

Day 16: Going with the 'any photo is better than none' attitude!  Wearing my Sallie jumpsuit to go and watch the Great British Sewing Bee at the meet up hosted by Cocowawa and Sewitwithlove.

Day 17: New Orla top (that I will blog about shortly) and jumper refashion

Day 18: Stripey lady skater

Day 19: I was full of the cold and was working from home and all I really wanted to do was stay in my pyjamas but as I did have to leave the house I wore jeans, a black Dolores top (unblogged) and my owl jumper.  No photo though.

Day 20: Strawberry circle skirt and owl jumper

Day 21: This is where my me made wardrobe failed me.  I was on a friends hen do and I needed a night time party dress and I have not made any of these.  Thinking about it most of my handmade dresses are fairly casual day time ones like my lady skater dresses.

Day 22: Birdie Renfrew top (unblogged)

This weeks mend was sewing a button back on my winter coat.  I wore it to a wedding at the beginning of April and it got caught on my bag and the only way to detangle it was to snip off the button.  I'd say less than 2 months to sew it back on is pretty good going. However it really was too banal a mend to photograph so no picture.

Good luck with the final stretch of Me-made-May everyone.

What to make when the brain isn't working too well

The last few weeks have been difficult ones in my world and while I want to sew my brain is not engaging well enough to produce vaguely decent results.  After a very unsuccessful attempt at a BHL Zeena dress, I realised that I needed something a bit less demanding to fulfil my distraction attempts.  So I turned to pinterest which as ever provided the answer, in the shape of this pattern weight tutorial from Tea Rose Home.  

The is a free PDF which consists of a triangle which can be used alone as template to create the mini weights (and they are very mini, each side only measures 4cm) or 4 triangles can be cut out to create the larger weights.

The instructions are really easy to follow and they come together pretty quickly.  I made all of these in a couple of hours.  They're filled with brown basmati rice, because I had a bag in the cupboard and can never be bothered to cook it as it takes forever.

One thing I would say is that you should use a fairly stiff fabric for these, like a cotton.  I used a slightly drapier fabric to make one of the mini weights and it was a pain to sew and doesn't hold the shape as well.

The ones with the pencils on are my favourite, this is a gorgeous liberty poplin from their latest collection.  Most of this fabric has been cut out to make myself a birthday dress but I'm a bit nervous about sewing it at the moment in case I screw it up and at £32.50 a metre, it's the most expensive fabric I've ever bought and I would be really gutted to make a mistake.

Look there's a mummy and baby!  I can't wait to use these when cutting out my next pattern, rather than my phone/cans/television remote/whatever is lying around that I usually use.

I have a sense of satisfaction from making these, maybe I should check out some other things I've saved to my craft board.  What do you make when your brain can't cope with the big things? 

Me made May 16 days 1-8

Two posts in one week!  It must be May!  I'm going to start this week's round up with a refashion, partly to save those of you who follow me on Instagram from total boredom and partly because I love it. 

I started with this jumper; a men's Asos  lambswool jumper.  It had a couple of moth (or something) holes and was too big. 

I started by pinning to bring the arm holes up to what might approximate my shoulders and pinning in the sides. I also put in bust darts which for future reference is a mistake in a fabric like this. 

I wanted a copped jumper so removed the ribbing, took a chunk off the length and then reattached the ribbing.  I found that serging the ribbing back on resulted in a very wavy join so I then topstitched the seam.  It's not really visible as the fabric absorbs the stitches but makes the whole jumper sit more pleasingly.

 I also wanted to try out the hi-low thing which is everywhere and I've never been a big fan of but thought might work well for this jumper.

The next step was to darn and embellish. I knew I wanted a bit of excitement on my jumper. One of my friends has a great jumper with similar gems on the front and I shamelessly ripped it off. The gems were from simply sequins and at £10.95 for a bag, they added considerably to the cost of my refashion. However I still have loads left for other projects.

You can just about see the darning in the above photo.  I feel like it's seriously overshadowed by the bling and this was exactly what I wanted.

You're not getting to see this jumper on as obviously the second I finished adjusting a lambswool sweater, the weather upped its game and I didn't fancy wearing it in the 20+ degree weather we've been experiencing.  I'm totally not complaining, even if I do have to wait a while to wear my new jumper. 

So on to the daily round up:

Day 1: lady skater dress. I've not made one of these for a while and I think it may be time for another! 

Day 2: feather plantain t-shirt (unblogged)

Day 3: Ultimate trousers and thrifted top

Day 4: refashioned jumper skirt, Angelica top

Day 5: Sleeveless maxi lady skater (unblogged) This is the point at which I started to fail at the photos.  Seriously it took 5 days!  I'm sure this will pop up again this month though as wearing it made me remember how much I love maxi dresses.

Day 6: My Jade skirt and a Dolores top, complete with photo bombers who are apparently better at posing for photos than I am.

Day 7: Carolyn pyjamas
I was super hungover this day so did not fancy getting a photo but I enjoyed having my lovely pyjamas to feel sorry for myself in!

Day 8: ultimate shorts (unblogged) and vintage tie top

Right, thats my week-see you all again next week.  I'm loving seeing everyones round ups.