Category Archives: vintage

May 19, 2009 · 8:58 am

Check Out My Awesome Rack

I’m a big fan of collecting vintage…well, just about anything. As is my Very Bestest Friend In The Whole Wide World, who is currently in town. (Whoop!, right there off the bat). When we’re in each other’s cities, we go to as many thrift and antique stores as we can reasonably handle. It’s a bit of a drag for whomever of us is the visitor, because our purchases are limited by luggage space, but perhaps that just makes us more thoughtful buyers.

This is my turn to be limited only by what will fit in my car, and I didn’t go crazy. A breezy, gingham summer dress. Gold-seamed stockings. A stylish Arrow men’s summer shirt and some more dress patterns for the store. And this wonderful, red-and-white, makes-me-smile, Schrafft’s candy rack. Perfect for holding up my stock of bracelets for both storage and the occasional booth show. I could even lock the ends with a small chain if I wanted, to prevent theft when/if the rack is ever unattended. It is now easier for me to see, at a glance, which color combos I’m out of stock on. And heck, it just looks cool.

Here’s a photo of my awesome rack ;)

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Filed under friends, jewelry, shopping, vacation, vintage

April 6, 2009 · 10:09 am

The Skirt

Finally, the skirt that I promised to blog about. This skirt is near and dear to me because it combines so many things that I like: Vintage illustration, thrifting, handcrafting, fashion, recycling, and BALL FRINGE.

You see, this skirt started life as a vintage kiddie curtain-and-valance set. Wonderful old Mother Goose illustrations, and, if I haven’t mentioned, BALL FRINGE. Oh man, do I ever love ball fringe. (Some day I will have a skirt that is tier upon tier of ball fringe, hopefully with a matching box-cut sleeveless top, but this is not that day.)

I saw the curtains in a thrift store, and immediately knew that I would make it into a skirt. Because I am some sort of thrift store goddess, I got the set for $2.48 (plus tax). Step Two would be finding a pattern to match what I was seeing in my head. A simple, high-waist pencil skirt. I went to JoAnn. Butterick had nothing. Simplicity had nothing. New Look, Burda, Vogue, McCall’s… nobody had what I was looking for. And my own drafting skills… well, they get me by for Halloween costumes, but this was going to require better than that. So I sat on it for a while, but I knew that I wanted to make this skirt to wear to the Hooch n’ Smooch event at Viva, and time was ticking away.

Enter: Another trip to the thrift store.

Thrift stores always have sewing patterns, and more often than not, they are a disorganized mess of the worst that fashion had to offer… in the ’80s. And that’s saying something. I usually give the pile a cursory glance, to see if there are any promising yellowing envelopes sticking out, and then I continue on my way. But this one day, at this one thrift store, the stash of patterns was small enough to consider flipping through each and every one. I wasn’t even looking with the skirt in mind, but rather just to see if anything seemed workable for any project. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Without merit. Ugly. And then… skirt! Here’s a skirt pattern, in my size! Three options, one of which is JUST what I am looking for! There were no prices marked, but I took a risk. At the counter, the cashier informed be that all sewing patterns are 49¢. Was I okay with that?

Glee!

Ahem, um, yes. That’s fine. Thank you.

I got it home, and cleaned off the dining room sewing table. I knew that the pattern would already be cut out, but hoped that if it was cut smaller than my size, I could at least estimate up to… holy chit. This pattern is untouched. Nobody has ever cut it, and as best as I can tell, nobody has ever even unfolded it. There’s still an advertisement in it for new, upcoming Spring (1987) patterns. LA LA LA LA LA!

I got busy with my seam ripper, opening up the curtain panel everywhere I had to, and nowhere that I didn’t. I laid out the pattern pieces so that I could salvage most of one of the original curtain seams, thus NOT having to cut the ball fringe in one place. I wound up using just about the entire curtain for the skirt, and a bit of the valance for the waistband. The waistband which turned out to be FAR easier than putting in the zipper, and shouldn’t have slowed me down to a procrastinating crawl. And then I was done! Well, except for the last hook-and eye… hook-and-eye… I have about 300 (okay, 48 and yes I did count) assorted hook-and-eye sets in my sewing basket, and none are the right size. Damn damn damn. A trip to JoAnn and back home, and now I have the hook-and-eye and WHERE the hell are my sewing needles? Oh, come ON. I am NOT going back to JoAnn AGAIN. And then I remembered the emergency sewing kit I kept in my desk at the office, and that my desk at the office was still packed into a box in the basement, and lo and behold, I have a needle.

The end result is a one-of-a-kind, semi-vintage skirt that cost me approximately $4 (curtain, zipper, hook-and-eye, thread) and is, like anything I sew for myself, only a little too big in the waist.

(They’re difficult to see, but the flowerpots full of smiling daisies are my favorite bits.)

ADDITION: Dur, I forgot to post the pattern! It’s Butterick 4706, ca. 1986, and it looks like this:
dresspattern121

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Filed under blogging, cute and fuzzy bunny, fashion, sewing, vintage, Viva Las Vegas

March 17, 2009 · 10:43 am

Snap-front Shirts

Two is a coincidence, three is a collection. -Me

Well alrighty then, kiddies, gather ’round and let me tell you ’bout a little girl who never wanted to dress like a cowboy until some time late in high school when she HAD to have herself a pair of cowboy boots. And by “have herself,” I mean “beg for a pair for Christmas.” I still remember ’em: Dan Post boots, in black leather. Nothing fancy, which, even then, I was disappointed by. But still, good boots of my very own. And for that, I was pleased. They were joined shortly thereafter by a pair of Larry Mahan lizard-skin boots, very graciously donated to me by my friend Winston, a real, live Texan. They were too small for him, and too big for me. My heels would bleed from rubbing around inside those boots, and the lizard was cracking, and the soles were separating, and I was in no financial position to do anything about it.

Actually, even before the boots, I had a t-shirt on which was printed an old photo of a line of cowgirls, real buckaroo rodeo gals, from maybe the early ’30s. Wonderful, broad-brimmed hats.

I’m not sure at what point I decided that I wanted to be Dale Evans. I loved Nudie‘s work, and I’d wanted majorette boots since I was a tiny little thing, so I guess it was a natural progression. I bought my first leather-and-concho belt in Kansas in 1995 or ’96, and my first fancified snap-front shirt in… shoot. I don’t remember. It’s been a while.

Click on the photo to take a look at the collection.

Aprons

To make up for the previous long-winded posts, here’s a very brief one.

I collect a lot of things. Today’s post shows you, my sewing- and cooking-interested readers, my collection of aprons. As an added bonus to a frequently-overlapping segment of my readers, most of them are vintage. Click on the image to be magically transported to the flickr set that describes them all.

Pinstriped Handbag

I love pinstriping. More than handbags, less than shoes. Actually, maybe more than shoes. No, that’s crazy-talk. But I do love me some pinstripin’ madness.

This past summer, I was nosing around West Side Sinners, a local “kustom kulture” boutique, with my pal Megan. We shop there from time to time, but on this day, we’re there to watch a hairstyling demo by Lauren Rennells, the author of Vintage Hairstyling: Retro Styling with Modern Techniques as well as Bobby Pin Blog. Smart girls that we are, we get there with plenty of time to meander through the racks of goodies. Erin, the owner of the store, has stocked a selection of pinstriped handbags and I am ogling all of them, but one in particular is whining at me to take it home. A black leather vintage bag by Lady Audley, it’s striped on both sides in four colors, and it is just fabulous. Erin is asking a very reasonable $60 for the bag… reasonable for everyone but me, that is. I grew up amid the financial stress of a two kids/one parent household, and I’ve never earned enough myself to forget what it’s like to have the power company shut you off. Again. So, even when I was gainfully employed, I’ve always had these unofficial price caps in my head. They shift, so I couldn’t tell you what they are specifically, but I can tell you that I’ve never paid $60 for a handbag before.

But…

Damn, this bag is gorgeous. And Megan is supporting my decision to buy this bag, should I choose to do so. (This is how Megan operates. She won’t tell you outright to buy something, but she is subtly encouraging, if she approves.) Okay, now Megan is being a bit less subtle. “It’s perfect for you. And those colors… it will go with so much! $60 really isn’t expensive, to normal people. You should get it.” Everything she says is true.

So I buy the bag.

I only have to reconfigure slightly what I carry around with me in order to fit stuff in. I start using it immediately. (Erin, if you stumble upon this post, the price sticker left icky goo residue on the bottom of the bag. Maybe you can try a different brand? Or tie on hangtags, instead? Also, are you hiring?)

Not too long after, I’m at my local Starbucks, when the cashier notices my bag. “I like your purse. My dad’s best friend is a pinstriper. They’ve known each other for years.” Oh yeah? Does he live around here? What’s his name, maybe I’ve seen his work at a car show. “He’s local. His name’s Rody.” Heh-heh. Um, this is actually his work. Rody striped this purse. “Really?! Hey, he never striped anything for me! I’m going to ask him to do something about that.”

I’d like to note, I have used this handbag every single day since I bought it. Megan was right, it goes with (almost) everything. In fact, I should call Erin and see if she can book Rody to do one of my own bags, so I can have the “brown” segment of my wardrobe covered, as well. Having those two, I could get rid of a whole lot of purses! (Yeah, right.)