Category Archives: fashion

September 20, 2010 · 4:49 pm

Girls with Glasses

Carrie over at This Mama Makes Stuff has a bit of a problem. Well, her daughter does. Okay, her daughter THINKS she does. And that’s almost as bad as ACTUALLY having a problem. You see, this little girl is about to get her first pair of glasses, and the excitement of being able to SEE doesn’t outweigh the dread of being the ONLY GIRL in her class who has to wear hideous, horrible, face-deforming GLASSES. Carrie has put out a request for photos of Girls in their Glasses so that her daughter can see that she is in the company of some pretty cool ladies. Me? I’m actually pretty much a dork. But sometimes I can look kinda cool. So here goes: Four phone-taken self portraits, though various years, various bang-lengths, and various states of makeup or lack thereof, always the same smirk:

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Filed under citizens, fashion, vintage

July 5, 2010 · 12:34 pm

Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!

July 3rd. I’ve been invited to join some friends on the 4th for a very casual evening at their house. I recently swapped my “Sailor Betty” dress so I needed to figure out what to wear! My closet may be vast, but wasn’t spitting out anything red/white/blue and casual. Somehow, a red velvet party dress didn’t seem appropriate, you know?

My regular readers may recall that back in April, I had purchased some red-white-blue striped vintage fabric that was begging to be made into a summer dress. I bought some patterns, wrote a post, and then proceeded to do nothing about it. Now, on the evening of the 3rd, I remembered the yardage of striped fabric! It was getting late, but could I whip up a dress in the morning? I went through my patterns and decided on Butterick 5214, a reissue of a 1947 pattern for a halter dress, belt, and fitted jacket. The dress pattern itself is simple, but this would be my first attempt at making chevrons from striped fabric. Had I bitten off more than I could chew? I read all of the reviews at PatternReview and knew from the outset that I’d need to add length to the skirt. I could handle that. I just hoped that the fabric store would be open on the 4th so that I could buy the correct length zipper!

Come morning,Â I started cutting out the pattern and my fabric. I was trying to be extra careful with my cuts, so the stripes would line up perfectly. It took a while, but I finally admitted that the old fabric just wasn’t printed evenly! I had to keep refolding it to get each piece cut as closely as possible. But when I actually started sewing, things were looking pretty good! I wish I’d taken a little more time with the skirt front (center seam), but I’m generally pleased overall. The fabric store was indeed open so I didn’t have to shorten a zipper from my stash, and I finished off the halter straps with a vintage button from my mother’s (and once her mother’s) button box.

VoilÃ , completed dress by 3pm (with a few interruptions for Twitter and blip.fm):

It’s a bit gappy on top and I’ll make a couple of vertical darts to take up the slack before I tack down the bottom of the bodice lining, but it was close enough to wear for an evening with friends. I didn’t have time to make the matching jacket or belt. Yet! For the time being, I paired it with a wide belt which really didn’t “work” with the look, but I had to fetch my Flag Bag and head out!

photo by @jgamet

Detail photos of side darts and button:

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Filed under fashion, friends, holidays, sewing, vintage

June 15, 2010 · 7:07 pm

Clothing Swap

In a three-pronged attack involving 1. Getting Out Of The House, 2. Meeting New People, and 3. Cleaning My Closets, I participated this weekend in a clothing swap. Outside of an informal “hmmm, I think this would look better on you” with my friends, I’d never done anything like this before. Lucky for me, the gals who organized it (mostly, I believe, members of LUPEC) do it every year, and had their proverbial act together.

Capelli Floral provided beautiful (and sizeable) studio space, clothing racks were wheeled out, tables were set up, and a system of organization (t-shirts here, slacks there, sportswear over on that table, etc.) was put into place. Organized, that is, until some latecomersâ€”myself includedâ€”took over a second room all willy-nilly.

I arrived with my yard-debris tote filled to capacity, and the excess packed into my Ginormous Suitcase. If you’ve traveled with me to Viva, you know the hideous orange one to which I am referring. And lo, it was full as well! Didn’t I just donate three trash bags full of clothing and handbags to VVA a few weeks ago? And a box full of dresses and shoes to Adams 12 School District in April? My closets apparently open into Narnia.

Knowing that any “leftovers” would be packed back up and donated to local charities, I planned to head home empty-handed. Well no, I’m no fool. But I planned to head home with a small fraction of what I’d arrived with, and at that, I succeeded. It turns out that one gal and I have similar taste in clothes, and are similarly sized, so we both wound up with a bag of each other’s things.

The photos throughout this post are of my “loot,” some of which is vintage. Not shown is one squee-worthy vintage black party dress, omitted only because I immediately put it in my Fancy Dress closet and forgot to fetch it when I was taking photos. So, um, I need a party to attend. Anyone? Anyone?

I succeeded in emptying out a chunk of space in my closet, got some new-to-me wonderful things, others picked out new-to-them goodies, and three local charities (Goodwill, SafeHouse, and Father Woody) got boxes full of the leftovers. I’d call that a win-win-win-win situation.

Many thanks to Michelle and Andee for including me in the fun!

mail order 8149

Doing a little research for 11 (eleven!) vintage aprons I’m preparing to list, and I came across this ad for mail-order sewing pattern 8149 in a copy of The Pittsburgh Press dated February 26, 1948. I love the shirring at the shoulders, the scalloped button detail on the bodice, and the asymmetrical gathers on the skirt. I could see this in a cotton print with eyelet ruffles as a very nice day dress, but also a lovely party dress if done up in a taffeta or crepe with rhinestone buttons.

Even with the unique details, it looks overall like a fairly simple dress to construct. 11 pattern pieces as best as I can tell, including the self-belt. Plus neckline facings. If I were a decent seamstress, I could work this one out. Actually, I could probably work this one out anyway, were I more inclined to do so. But it’s not as though I’m running around naked for lack of dresses in my closet!

I couldn’t find it at http://vintagepatterns.wikia.com nor in a Google search. I suspect that someone, somewhere, has a copy of it hidden in a cobwebby box in the far corner attic. And this is why we go to estate sales. :)

Well, Yellow There!

Friend and fellow Twitter-er Betty Red asked today, “Why is so hard to find cute, yellow retro lingerie!?”

My first thought was that yellow can be a difficult color to match against your skin tone and as such is often overlooked by clothing manufacturers. But for those of you who are confident in your ability to wear yellow, I present the following uncommon treats:

Click on the photo to go directly to the Etsy treasury where all of these vintage lingerie items are available for purchase.