An unusual vintage make

I'm squeezing in another vintage make before the end of the year.  I've been really enjoying making clothes from vintage patterns this year and this is now my eighth vintage make of 2016.  I've far outstripped my pledge.

I bought the pattern in a charity shop earlier in the year and the price of 75p is still attached.  However, I've forgotten where I picked it up.  It's an unusual pattern, the Wikia entry tells me its from the early 1960s. This means that in addition to sewing up 8 of my vintage patterns, I have also covered three decades with these patterns.  This was my only pattern from the 60s, one was from the 80s and the rest were from my beloved 70s.

The pattern is meant for knit fabrics and is the oldest knit fabric pattern that I've ever seen.  However.I found some of the construction details a little odd, as it uses darts and facings and suggests a zipper closure in the back.  This maybe because I've previously only used more modern knit patterns.  I was wondering if it was because knit fabrics were relatively new back in the early 60s so the patterns were still adapting to the qualities of the fabric?  Let me know if you know better.

I used this cotton jersey from girl charlee and made up view B, with the fabulous cowl collar.  And I've only just realised that I've made up a very similar dress to the pattern art version, although I've got squares rather than flowers.  I mainly followed the instructions, although I omitted the zipper as the dress was roomy enough and had enough stretch to pull over my head.  There are no instructions about using zigzag stitches or adapting to the knit fabric in any way.  I don't know if this is because they assumed we knew to do this or because people didn't adapt to knits in the same way in the 1960s.  Anyway I treated it a bit like a woven, since I figured it wasn't going to be stretching much and so just used straight stitches.  I've worn this a lot since I made it and so far no stitches have popped out so hopefully this was an ok decision.

The dress is a little big on top, although it fits great on the bottom.  I guess that's the curse of one size patterns (and lazy people who avoid making adjustments where possible) but it's not too much of an issue and I quite like the slightly blousey effect when it's worn with a belt, which I always plan on doing as the total lack of waist is not a look I go for.

I love the collar on this dress. My favourite 70s patterns all have big collar details, maybe that's what drew me to this 1960s pattern.  I think this may be my favourite vintage pattern make of the year!

Super funky coat sewing

Any of you who follow me on Instagram may have seen this photo that I posted as part #vpjuly as my next vintage project.  

This year I have been using my vintage patterns way more than before, I managed to complete my target for my Vintage pattern pledge back in July, so this is a bonus Vintage item and I'm happy to say its a good one!  When I took the photo, it was still very much just an idea. But then Melissa put out a call for bloggers for her Sew Long Summer blog tour and gave me the motivation I needed to take on a more challenging make than I've attempted before.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I love Style 1970s patterns. This one was an eBay find a couple of months back.  As well as sewing from more vintage patterns, I have also bought quite a few this year.  I now need to sew even more vintage styles to justify all that spending!

I found the fabrics on Walthamstow market on a visit organised by Kerry and I thought they'd make a perfect coat. Marie bought some of the outer fabric too and I'm excited to see what she makes with it. Luckily these fabrics were really not expensive so the fact that I don't really do muslining would be less problematic, if it all went wrong.  The fabrics are some kind of synthetic and I think the geometric one is an ex Zara fabric, it has lots of metallic threads in it and frayed like crazy, I keep finding metallic thread bits in odd corners of my house now!  As the poly content of the main fabrics was not going to keep me warm, I bought a thin wool/cashmere remnant on Goldhawk rd to use as interlining. I know it's an Autumn/Spring coat but it's also the UK and we have very odd seasons, also I am always freezing so need all the help I can get.

Like most patterns of this age it's a single size pattern which has pros and cons.  It means I don't need to trace off the pattern pieces which I hate to do and have no compunction about cutting out the pattern pieces.  On the other hand I can't grade between sizes which means a bit more work when adjusting the pattern pieces.  I didn't have to make too many adjustments, I added extra at the hips and when sewing up I used a 1cm seam allowance on the sleeves and around the arm holes as I always need a bit more room for ease of movement.  At some point I will learn to make the adjustments need to properly allow myself better arm movement as this is a problem I regularly have.

I was taking a jacket making course along side making this coat which was very helpful as the instructions made my head hurt.  Vintage patterns have many fewer instructions and they are often not very well explained, I guess at the time everyone would have learnt at school or been taught by a family member and so would have known how to do many of the things which are not explained in any detail in the instructions.  For example at one point they instruct you to 'make bound button holes'!  Now aside from the fact that I would have needed much more hand holding than this to be able to create a bound button hole, there was not a chance in hell of me actually making them for this coat.  This was another area where the jacket making course was invaluable, they told us about this place in Soho that will create professional buttonholes for you in 5 minutes on industrial machines!  I took my coat along to DM buttons and had them do my buttonholes.  They informed me that I'd marked my buttonholes on the men's side, oops!

The poly content of the fabrics made them a total nightmare to work with in some ways.  They do not press at all well, to the point where I think I'm going to have to stitch down my lapels!  The outer fabric has no give in it at all, actually a wool would have been more forgiving, hopefully the next version will be a bit easier to manipulate when sewing.  The lining fabric had quite a lot of stretch to it which made sewing them together particularly painful, especially at all the handstitched hems.  The addition of the interlining also caused some problems and there is some buckling in places on the coat that I think has to do with the multiple layers pulling in slightly different areas.  The buttons were vintage wooden ones that I had in my stash, I have no idea where they came from originally but I think they work well for this coat.

This is a fun coat which I'm excited to wear once the weather breaks.  However, for the time being it's going to sit in the cupboard as London weather appears to have mistaken September for the new summer and getting these photos was actually painful!  Not that I'm complaining about the extra sunshine!

As part of the blog tour, some lovely pattern companies have offered us all some discount codes:

Zierstoff Patterns-20% off   Code-zierstoffpatterns20  Ends-17/09/16

Blue Dot Patterns-25% off patterns.  Code-SewLongSummer  Ends-17/09/16

On the Cutting Floor-50% off patterns.  Code-SEWLONG  Ends 17/09/16

Also taking part in todays tours are:
Sewing by Ti
Musings of a seamstress
Tales of a tester
At Margareta's house
Sewing a la carte
Birds of a kettle
Check out the fabulous things that they have made.  The full line up for the week can be found on Melissa's blog.  I'm off to enjoy the final summer sunshine, what ever the blog tour is called, I'm so not ready to say sew long yet!

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?

I don't need a time machine, I'm recreating the 70s right here

I really have caught the 70s bug and despite, in my last 70s dress post, criticising original 70s garments for being made of synthetics I've now gone fabric authentic and created my own polyester 70s number.

That being said my polyester fabrics feel lovely. The black one is a yummy ponte from girl charlee and the tartan was donation from a friend of my mums. I've had the vision of a princess seamed dress using this tartan ever since I received it. I was tempted to buy the By hand London Sabrina dress after seeing this gorgeous version by Ooobop but in the end decided to use a pattern from my stash.

The pattern is Style 4588 which I used once before here. I made a few modifications; I added the same amount of length as last time, this pattern is really meant to be a tennis dress and apparently if you were playing tennis in the 1970s it was acceptable to flash your (matching) knickers! I didn't fancy the flutter sleeves which came with the pattern so used the sleeve pieces that came with a different vintage pattern in my stash, with a bit of rough and ready adjustment to for a slightly different sleeve head. I figured the ponte was going to be quite forgiving and it turns out I was right.  I didn't think the flutter sleeves would work with the slightly rock chick fabric combo. Although I'm not convinced that the puff sleeves work with that vibe either but this would probably bother me more if more rock chick credentials had ever been greater than zero!

 The first time I went out to get photos of this dress, it was so windy that the skirt blew around constantly and this was the best photo that we could get.  Instead we went to look at books on a barge with a band on top.  Add a coffee and that's a winning day out in my book.

What's your favourite style decade?  While I love styles from many different decades, the 70s are clearly winning in my wardrobe at the moment.

Maxing out the 70s vibes

Hi All.  I'm on a bit of a 70s roll at the moment, it's one of my preferred decades for style, although I'm not a fan of the browns and oranges and synthetic fabrics that original 70s clothes were often made from.  So while I tend not to buy 70s clothes when I find them in charity/vintage shops, I have a lot 70s patterns and I'm currently working my way through them.

I've had this pattern on my to-make list for a while. The collar and the unusual V shaped side panels appealed to me. When I was thinking about doing some holiday sewing, I realised that I had the perfect fabric for it in my stash; a slightly psychedelic, rose print viscose that my mother had bought for me in Paris a few years ago.  I hadn't managed to find a use for it yet as the print is very bold and the fabric was super slinky I thought would be difficult to use.

Great combo, no?

As ever, I didn't make a muslin and I was scared of the dress being too small, so I added 1.5cm all over to pattern pieces.  While this was necessary at the hips, and in fact I could do with a touch more ease across the hips when I'm sitting down, the finished dress is a bit too big in the bodice.  It's still very wearable and the extra room made it nice and cool in the holiday sunshine but it's something for me to note for my next version.

In this photo you can just about see my 'tan' on my arms, of which I am inordinately happy with, but I still look stupidly pale beside your average person.  Damn you, pale Irish skin!

With the exception of the collar, the dress was a straightforward make.  Even the side panels, which I thought would be a nightmare, went in easily.  However, getting that collar in was a nightmare, I must have ripped it out at least three times.  It's still very far from perfect but at least the gap at the bottom looks (semi) deliberate now.  There were no instructions to interface the collar but I did as the fabric was super drapey and would have just flopped over without it.  Like a lot of vintage patterns this one provided no instructions about how to insert a zip, nor which kind of zip to use and in fact in this pattern the part where they tell you to put it in is so brief, you'd blink and miss it!  I used an invisible zipper, which gives a nice clean finish.

While the fabric didn't really pose many problems when I was sewing it together, however, it creases like crazy, as evidenced by this back shot.

You can just about see the side panel detail in this shot.  I think these side panels would look great in a contrasting fabric to make a feature of them and I have some plans brewing for another version of this dress with contrasting panels.

There were arm facings included in the pattern but firstly I'm not a fan of arm facings as I feel like they flick out too easily and secondly I didn't have enough of the fabric to cut them so I decided to make some bias binding from some orange cotton that I had in my stash.  It happened to match the orange roses on fabric perfectly which I found pleasing.  My binding could have done with being stretched a little more round the arm hole, although it sits flatter against my skin than it does against Rosie the mannequin!

This was a really lovely dress for floating around in the sun and the viscose felt lovely and cool against the skin.  I now really want to wear it again and I would love the UK weather to oblige (anyone bored of listening to me whinge about how miserable the weather is yet?)  There has been some distinctly spring like weather this week so you never know, I might get a chance to wear it again soon.

This is another make towards my vintage pattern pledge.  I'm doing pretty well towards my goal already, although, at this rate, there's a distinct chance that all my makes will be from the 70s!  I must see if I can use some of my patterns from other decades, I'm feeling very inspired by all the other makes on the Pinterest board.  How are you getting on with your vintage pattern pledges?    

Vintage summer

Hello and happy Easter/Spring/something! It's been a while since I posted as I've been off enjoying some well deserved sunshine after a manic month or so of work. Today I have a very summery dress to show you. 

Last year I bought this 1976 Style pattern and used it to make a halter top as I didn't feel like a dress like this would be useful in the British climate, however when my lovely boyfriend booked us a holiday in Caribbean (!!!) I suddenly had an excuse for a dress like this.

The halter top didn't really get worn as the bodice was too loose and I was worried about potential flashing!  However at least making that version meant that I knew what alterations I needed to make for my holiday dress.  I shaved off a good 6cm around the bust, grading out to the pattern sizing at the waist. I also added some length to the bodice. 

On the same thrifting trip as I found the sheets for my Vintage Shirt Dress, I found this duvet cover for £2.99.  The second I saw it, I thought it would be great for a 'floating around in the sun' type dress.  Match made in heaven for my vintage halter dress, no? I lined it with some white cotton that I had in my stash.

Turns out this is the perfect floating around in the sun dress. However when I was actually in the sun I was having too much fun to get decent pictures so you're going to have to put up with shots of the dress modelled by my mannequin Rosie. 

Not only is this a sunny weather win, it's my first make for my vintage pattern pledge! I love the 70s and have quite a few 70s patterns that I want to make up. However, apparently they were very into the midi skirt in the 70s but I am not! I much prefer my skirts firmly above the knee or floor length, so I chopped a good 10cm off the bottom of this (although some of this excess length was caused by my lengthening the bodice). 

The pattern suggests a hook and eye closure for the halter but I wanted something a bit more secure and decorative and so used this cute button from my stash. Actually to be extra safe I'm going to add an extra hidden button to the halter as it did slip a little while wearing it.

Sunny selfie!

It's become quite hard to believe that this time last week I was floating around in the 30 degree sunshine.  The U.K. Weather is turning it in to a distant memory, which is problematic as my brain is firmly in the summer sewing camp so there may be some weather inappropriate wear in future posts! 

Fall essentials sewalong, how did I do?

Hello all.  I've actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about this post as once I started reviewing where I got to with creating my fall essentials, I got to thinking about the reasons for my successes, failures and excuses.  It's been a really interesting process and I think will be very helpful for forward planning.  So while this is a round up post, there are also some planning thoughts. So for those who don't know; the fall essentials sew along is the brainchild of Sarah and was running this year from the 12th September to the 14th November.

While I had a comprehensive list of makes I was realistic about not being able to get everything done and some things being longer term goals. Anyway what did I manage?  And where do I go from here?

Fashionable foundations

Pleather circle skirt: Done and I wear this a lot! The added bonus with this is that I never fail to get a complement on it when I wear it.

Culottes: not even in the priority pile yet. I have however almost finished a pair of black trousers which will be very useful. 

Chic chemises

I made my first Dolores top and a second one promptly followed and a third will shortly happen. This top is a win in my book!

I didn't make any of the other tops that I'd considered but have a couple of others as WIPs. Watch this space. I decided against an Agatha cardigan but I cast on an Aiken jumper when I was on holiday, although progress on this has slightly stalled as I've made a start on some knitted Christmas gifts. I'm ok with this, I know that I knit really slowly and that it's not realistic to expect my knitwear to be hand knitted at this point, it's something I do as a personal challenge and for the enjoyment of the process.

I am always desperate to make good tops as I feel it's a real gap in my wardrobe but this situation is slowly starting to improve.

Fabulous frocks

I managed my Renfrew/lady skater mash up dress and it may be love. I want one in a less synthetic fabric now.

I did not manage my vintage Style 3361 pattern, I still really want to make it but it's going to require a fair amount of fitting work and I'm feeling lazy. 

I started my Lou Lou dress as I thought it would make a lovely dress to take on holiday but I came a cropper somewhere in the process which was super demoralising. I was also really annoyed as it would have been perfect to float around in the Spanish sunshine in. 

Baby it's cold outside

I have a real tale of woe to tell about my chunky scarf. I made it and it was a thing of beauty and lovely and snuggly and warm and the first day I wore it I left it on a train. I honestly could have cried! I have some left over wool and I think I going to try making another one of these as I was really so in love with it.  Although I have to get over the psychological hurdles of having wasted such a lot of money on version number one and the time it's going to take me to recreate!

The weather has been really mild here in London so far this autumn so the mittens never became a priority for me to make but as temperatures have decreased this week, they have swiftly moved to the top of my list.

My vintage coat is still very early on in its development stage. I've made some paper pattern alterations and tissue fitted it to my mannequin but I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to make a muslin which I never do and so am procrastinating doing that. I want to do this properly so this may be one of those projects that drags on for a long time.  This is no bad thing as I should learn to pay more attention to details and this process should be a good learning curve.

My general thoughts on moving on to winter sewing are; take time over the coat. I have some wonderful Donegal tweed for the coat that I don't want to ruin by rushing things, even if it means that I won't get much wear out of it until next winter.  Keep sewing everyday items which I want to wear and help me develop skills.  I wear these most and get real pleasure from wearing them and as they get constant use it makes me be thoughtful about fit and hat I can do to improve these items.  This being said I went on a night out last night wearing a RTW dress and it made me swear to myself that I am going to make some posh frocks for myself that work for me in the same way as my everyday clothes.  Watch this space for a sparkly Christmas dress!

Did you take part in the fall essentials sewalong? How did you get on?  What's on your winter sewing list?

A super summery vintage shirt refashion

Hello everyone.  Have you guys been following the Refashioners series hosted by Portia.  If not, stop reading and get over there now as it's awesome!  I have been totally inspired by all these talented ladies and since I love a good refashion and it was one of my Goals for 2015 to do more, I jumped on board.

Like Marie, my refashion is also a refashion and vintage pledge mash-up.  I recently obtained this gorgeous 1976 halter dress pattern.

However, much as I desperately want a dress like this in my life, I don't currently have time to make it, nor does the Great British summer seem to want to commit to the kind of sun that I would need to wear it.  On the other hand I have been having slightly weird obsessive dreams about a stripey halter top, which my wardrobe has never needed before but apparently my subconscious is screaming 'you need this in you life now!'

When I discovered this lovely men's large stripey shirt in my stash, my subconscious could not be contained and so the current refashion was born.  I have no idea how this shirt made it into my stash, it was too trendy/unworn to have belonged to my Dad and too large to have belonged to my boyfriend but it didn't have a price tag on it which means it probably wasn't one of my charity shop finds-mystery!  Thanks to the unknown donor though, it was perfect for my needs, a gorgeous crisp cotton shirt is perfect for a woman's summer top!  Men beware, keep an eye on your wardrobes, we're coming for them!

I cut the bodice pieces of the dress out as usual, just extending the halter pieces by 4cm to accommodate for long torso. In hindsight I should also have lengthened the bodice pieces as the waist seam sits higher than I would like. It felt a little wrong cutting into this shirt which is not a feeling I've had before when refashioning but I guess this shirt felt like something special and I was temporarily ruining it.  I cut the midriff piece across the placket as I still wanted to retain some of the details of the original shirt and I thought it would be a nice feature for the middle of the top.  I was at this point that I discovered that even a men's large shirt does not have enough fabric for a fully lined halter top and had to head back into the stash.  Luckily I had some scraps of another shirt in there, which were left over from a shirt I had 'rescued' last time my boyfriend tried to give some clothes to the charity shop.  They were perfect for the lining pieces, even though my boyfriend is slim and his shirt really don't have the quantity of fabric that larger ones do.

For the bottom of the top I used the skirt pieces as  a guide but I  knew I didn't want a straight peplum top that doing this would have given me so I started to play around with the lengths of the different pieces I had left.  When trying on the top I thought the different lengths looked good and so I headed to the internet who confirmed for me that asymmetrical hems are a 'thing'! So it was time to start working out how to make this a design feature.  What do you think?  Can I pull it off as a design feature or does it just look like I was too lazy to hem it properly?

The pattern suggests using a hook and eye to close the halter but I created a couple of button holes and reused the buttons from the shirt. 

And ta da!  One (and a half) men's shirts into a vintage summery halter top.  Suitable for wearing in the glorious sunshine of the south of France which is where I've been on holiday for the last few days.  Although before you get too jealous, the last day was the only day warm and sunny enough for me to wear this top, we managed to get the only 2 days of rain that they've had in 3 months!  How about you, are you taking part in the refashioners?

A tartan mini dress: Simplicity 6652

Hello my lovelies. I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend full of lots of chocolate and cake and fun times!  I spent the weekend in Solihull with my boyfriend's family which had the added bonus of a little trip to the Birmingham rag market and Barry's!  I have been declared a failed stash buster!  However, I was fairly restrained, I only bought 4 metres of jersey and 1 of quilting cotton.  

On my trip to York in January, my friend and I hit some charity shops and discovered a couple of vintage patterns which I snapped up. Actually one shop (sadly I can't remember which one) had an amazing vintage floor with some great vintage clothes and sewing and knitting patterns. Ironically none of the patterns in there took my fancy but in the Oxfam shop down the street I found 2, which made me happy.  The first was Simplicity 6652, a pattern from 1966. It was in really good condition (as it turns out, totally unused) and in my size, score! I'll probably chat more about the other at a later date.

I've wanted a tartan mini dress for ages and this pattern has so few pieces that it seemed like a good way to go.  I chose to make the sleeveless version, thinking that it would be a good piece to layer over a top when it's still chilly and by itself when spring arrives!

It's labelled 'simple to sew', as it turns out this is a misnomer! In some ways few patterns pieces means easy to sew however I had so many fitting issues that it was super complicated.  To start with I made some planned changes to the pattern: the front of the dress had two pattern pieces, I am not a fan of seam lines down the front of dresses or skirts and definitely not ones where I have to pattern match so I removed the seam allowance and cut the front piece (and facing) on the fold. 

Broad back adjustment, this is something I've recently worked out I need to do in quite a few patterns so you'll be seeing a fair few of them in these parts. I sewed the dress pieces together and inserted zip, so far so good, however when I tried it on, it looked like this:

You can't tell everything that was wrong from this photo but you can see it was miles too long. Although it fit well over the hips, it was huge on top and the shoulders extended too far.

I made the bust darts bigger, took a lot (I think like 25cm overall) off the sides, grading out to the hips.  Cut back the shoulders and increased arm hole size.  I also lowered the neck line, I don't consider myself to have an elephant neck but the original neckline was strangling me.  At one stage the dress looked like one of those pre-surgery plastic surgery patients with lines all over it to show where I needed to make alterations! I ended by finishing the neck and arm holes with bias binding, no way was I about to start drafting facings after all the alterations I'd made.

I now like the final result. There are loads of flaws as a result of all my hacking but the busy tartan print helps to hide them. It's worn here over my Bronte top.

I made quite a lot of effort to pattern match which all the alterations totally messed with, however it did work down the back. Look at those matching lines:

I now like the shape of this dress but will have to transfer all the changes to the pattern pieces before making another version and I currently do not even remotely have the motivation to do this so it may be a while before version 2 pops up.  However, this is my first make as part of my vintage pattern pledge, whoop for one down, just 3 more to go!

Thanks to my photographer and porter for these shots:

I was so happy to put all these clothes on again afterwards, it was COLD in Solihull this weekend!