August 4, 2012 · 11:24 pm

Promaballoona, Vintage Edition

Vintage Grad Dress

Now, it is a sad truth that there was no way in hell I was going to have time to make a whole prom dress for Promaballoona, Oona’s fantabulous birthday bash this year. And, well, I hate to say it, but it’s not as if I really need another prom dress.

But, it is equally true (and considerably less sad) that there was NO WAY IN HELL I was going to be left out. Especially not when I just happen to have a vintage handmade prom dress handy. You saw the pre-digital-camera shots from my original grad  here—now you get the full expose.

Confession: I have written about this dress before. But. a) I didn’t have it on hand to take closeup and detail photos, and two) many of you weren’t reading back then and, inexplicably, may not have obsessively gone over every single post in my archive. So I’m going to indulge my inner brat Oona and write about it again. This time with brand-new, modeled shots courtesy of my glamorous back deck, and even some detail bits.

Full view. Yes, I should’ve ironed. I did not. Hush.

Now, as you have no doubt seen (and if you haven’t, go! I’ll wait.), I wore this dress, which my mother made, back in 1998, to my grade twelve graduation ceremony and subsequent dance and dinner. 1998 may not seem old enough to some of you to qualify as vintage, and indeed, you are probably right (except possibly by my daughters’ standards.) But this dress wasn’t made in 1998. My mother made it in 1970, for her Grade 12 graduation. (And while that still may not count as vintage for some of you, well, this is my blog and I’m counting it.) In particular, she received some kind of 4H credit for completing it. (Sadly, my efforts to acquire photographic evidence of my mother wearing it were in vain. Neither she nor my grandmother were able to lay hands on my mom’s grad photos in the time-frame I gave them. When I have the leisure to dig through their houses myself I will try and hunt one up and force you all to read about this dress yet another time. 😉 )

Inside

The fabric is a peach polyester brocade. My mother is no more of a peach fan than anyone else, but the fabric was on sale, and this was a Factor in its selection. Unlike the Teal Bombshell dress (which is a similar vintage), this one is fully lined, but, I must say, from the construction I suspect that the lining was my mother’s addition rather than an integral part of the instructions. She constructed the lining exactly as the pattern, and attached the facings overtop of that, with the inner edges (very nicely finished, I will add) free. The neck and armhole facings are separate and overlap at the shoulders, which I think we all agree is unfortunate, although probably easier to sew.

Trims

She went the extra mile for the trim—lace and ribbon—along the bottom of the bodice, which I think really finishes off the dress.

Zipper and facings

The zipper is a simple, centred application. The lining and facings have been stitched to the zipper tape by hand along the CB on the inside. There is interfacing in the facings, but it doesn’t seem to have been caught in the fold-over finishing of the facings. Not sure if that was intentional or not; it might also have originally been caught but frayed itself loose over the years.

Hems

Aren’t those pretty hems? Seam binding, hand-hemmed on the fashion fabric, a machine stitch on the lining.

Original 1970 accessories

These are my mom’s original accessories—long evening gloves, sequinned handbag, pearls, and wrist corsage, although the corsage, I fear, has not really enjoyed its time in the box. My corsage was real flowers—it didn’t even survive the first night, although it was very pretty while it lasted.

My accessories (then)

I wore the evening gloves and carried the handbag, but for whatever reason supplied my own pearls (although I do think my mom’s are nicer). And my own shoes, not that you can see them. And my own Big Meaningless Trophy. 😉

My accessories (now)

(It was the Art Award, if I recall correctly…)

Back view

A few more pics, just because.

Vanity

There are not many things more enjoyable than a good prom dress.

And further vanity

Happy Birthday, Oona!

Oh, rats. I forgot the booze.

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D’Oh

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Skirt front. Aaaargh.

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August 4, 2012 · 2:20 pm
August 3, 2012 · 10:52 pm

Funnygrrl’s Dress—The Meetup

Funnygrrl & I

My fellow Cow Town citizen, Funnygrrl, who blogs at Falling Through Your Clothes, and I first met up (after a LOT of missed opportunities) last spring, for a very exciting fabric-shop and coffee date, where she gave me a bit of rather pretty fabric and I talked her into buying a rather expensive serger.

Now, my fairly intense enabling aside, Funnygrrl first presented two pieces of fabric, both lovely linens with an identical embroidered border motif—one in black with white embroidery, one in white with black. I would take one, she would take the other, and at some point in the future we would have lovely “twin” dresses to remember each other by.

Meeting

Well, as they say, The Future Is Now. A little while back, as the panic of my impending move descended, I realized if I wanted to have the twin dress meetup, as fantasized, before hundreds of kilometres come to separate us, I had better get stitching. So I put on my big girl panties and started cutting Simplicity 5549. By some miracle, Funnygrrl’s head was in the same place, and when I emailed her to let her know I was cutting fabric, we wound up being able to schedule a quick coffee to catch up and photograph our dresses together, as nature intended. Now, I actually have a whole post written up about the dress itself, but when I tried to glom the meetup onto it, it was just getting long, so I’ll post that one tomorrow. Or maybe after the Promaballoona dust settles.

I am an angelic presence, apparently. My camera really did not like the lighting in there.

Funnygrrl and I met up at a local indoor garden (actually the top floor of a mall) called the Devonian Gardens, where us pale, sun-starved northerners can go to pretend we’re somewhere, well, other than the cold and frozen north (which isn’t cold and frozen at this time of year, although it was chilly and rainy, hence my tights.) I was all excited by the name, and while the garden itself is beautiful, I must confess to a teeny, tiny bit of disappointment that none of my favourite transitional fossils were making an appearance.* But other than that it was lovely, especially since it was pretty grey and chilly outside.

Big Wall Of Green. Funnygrrl’s camera handles my dress somewhat better than mine.

Very big. Very green. Very wall.

Fun in the (artificial) sun

It’s probably just as well you can’t see my dress very well—I’d been wearing it all day and was definitely sporting the rumpled linen look, although it didn’t get quite as bad as I had feared it might.

Funnygrrl & Tanit-Isis

Funnygrrl even brought spanky blog shoes to change into for the photos—clever woman! I am wearing my ubiquitous, desperately-need-to-be-replaced ballet flats. In fairness, they didn’t need to be replaced desperately until last weekend, when I forgot my water shoes and wound up spending the whole day wading in the river, wearing them. Oops. Do you have blog shoes? I confess, I have a whole box.

Thanks, Funnygrrl!

Photo credit for these goes to Funnygrrl (except for the one where my dress is looking truly angelic), since a) her camera’s better than mine, and b) it’s silly enough having one person running around working the self-timer, never mind both of us. So I mostly let her do it.

Oh, aside from taking photos like a pair of tourists in oddly complementary outfits, we sat and talked. And talked and talked. Until it started getting dark on us, basically. I love hanging with sewing peeps.

Acanthostega, a Devonian tetrapod with gills, toes, and a tail-fin.

*Er. It occurs to me that that was probably even more obscure than my usual run-of-the-mill science jokes. So the Devonian Period is a stage of geological history that happened roughly between 400 and 350 million years ago. It was marked by the evolution of the first full-canopy forest ecosystems and, most interestingly from a vertebrate-centric point of view, the first land vertebrates. Panderichthys, Tiktaalik, and Acanthostega are progressively less fish-like examples of the fish-tetrapod transition, which happened in the late Devonian and has to be one of the neatest “events” in evolutionary history. And Acanthostega had eight toes. Does it get any cooler than that?

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Sewn things in use

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The fishing vests have been getting some action.

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August 1, 2012 · 6:58 am
July 28, 2012 · 11:04 pm

Spreading the bug.

Teehee

I have a lovely friend here in town who is creative, crafty, and has one of those unique figures  that makes buying clothes off the rack an experience that ranges from frustrating to soul-destroyingly brutal. She is well-rounded,  busty, and very, very petite. Needless to say, it was glaringly obvious to me that she needed to start sewing.

Of course, persuading her (a busy puppy-mom with nowhere near enough hours in the day already) of this took a bit more work. In fact, it wasn’t until a month or so ago that I finally managed to get her to pick a thing to make, and we began the adventure of fitting her.

Booyeah

As I mentioned before, the pattern she picked was New Look 6789. This had lots of things going for it, from our perspective. Aside from being intensely cute to start with, it has princess seams, no waist seam (a feature she’s about as fond of as I am, with even better reason), and broad, bra-friendly straps.

The main downside is that the pattern only goes up to a size 16, and we really should’ve been starting with an 18, even before the FBA.

I started with measurements. Full bust, high bust, and back waist. To give you a small sense of what we were dealing with—standard Misses sizes are drafted with a back length of 16″ or so. Mine is around 15″, resulting in my standard, moderate petite alteration to the bodice.

My friend’s is 13″. If she’s standing tall.

What followed was not an elegant sequence of well-practiced fitting. Rather, it involved a lot of measurement, followed by pattern alteration, followed by trying on, followed by further tweaking, and that’s without going into all the stitching and unpicking and swearing. My friend did, far and away, the bulk of the work herself, while I directed. This worked pretty well for me, and hopefully for her.

Having determined based on measurements, roughly what we needed to add to the pattern, both all around and for FBA purposes, I put my slave labour friend to work tracing out her pattern. We added width. And I did a Y-type Full Bust Adjustment a la Debbie Cook, except with less precision.

Now, my dear friend, having picked an excellent pattern, had decided on a very cute, black with white polkadots knit for the fabric. Yes, you are absolutely right, this is a pattern for a woven. Ahem. Never one to be dissuaded, I figured that making it in a knit should make it possible to omit the zipper, so away we went. To start off, after she’d block fused a portion of fabric, we cut out the top yokes and straps, and did some quick test-fitting with these. All seemed well, so I set her to cutting out the rest of it. Which was not block-fused. Which was not fun in this fabric. Nor was it the kind of stuff that liked to be sewn. But she soldiered on, hampered mainly by the fact that our days off during a week don’t coincide, and she lives on the far side of the city (which is the better part of an hour’s drive even when traffic isn’t ridiculous). Obviously, it’s not perfect—some spots the angles are a little off, and in particular there’s some issues with the vertical seams where I should’ve had her use a stretchier stitch, and hemming the lining nearly drove her over the edge—but the fit, the fit.

Rear fit

I don’t think I can explain to you how triumphant I feel over this dress. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it’s leaps and bounds above anything off the rack.

It fits her bust.

It fits her back.

We could probably have shortened the waist even more (I wasn’t sure how much should come out below the armpit, as opposed to above it, which was easy to adjust with the straps.), but it’s much better than storebought.

With a little bit of princess-seam tweaking, we seem to have achieved skimming fit. Woot, woot!

Rawr!

So, bear with me while I wax philosophical here a moment. I’m a big fan of body acceptance. A fan of finding what’s beautiful about yourself, whatever your size or shape may be, and running with that.

And watching my friend go through the fitting process has been illuminating on so many levels—the physical challenge of fitting a body so different from mine, sure, but also the body-negativity she struggles with, having a body that not only isn’t the model ideal, but doesn’t even seem to be in the same universe, as dictated by the clothes on the rack. Like most of us, she knows what works for her and what doesn’t, but—like most non-stitchers—she doesn’t quite know the difference between what doesn’t work because it’s not flattering for her shape, and what doesn’t work because she’s never tried on a version that actually fit. (I have a similar problem with tailored shirts, frankly). And she’s still trying to digest that it’s not a problem with her—it’s a problem with the clothes, and the system that only caters to shapes within a certain standard deviation of average.

I hope she does absorb it. I hope she learns to tell the difference between a bad fit and a bad body. And I hope (maybe a little selfishly), that she’ll keep on sewing, even if it doesn’t become a major obsession hobby, and will have at least a few things that make the body that she has look as beautiful as it actually is.

And I think that she looks like a bombshell in this dress. 😀

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July 26, 2012 · 8:00 am

Lengths of the Pantses

Patternmaking for Fashion Design

Curiosity over the actual definition (if there is such a thing) of the names for the various pants lengths after the piratas*/capris post led me to do some book-type sleuthing.

Here’s one picture, from Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph-Armstrong. According to it, we are all wrong and “capris” are the length only one inch above the ankle bone (which I would’ve called pedal-pushers or flood pants or clam-diggers, if pressed). Her pedal pushers and “toreador” length I would both have called capris. Apparently Bermudas are quite a bit shorter than I’d thought, only about 3/4 of the way down the thigh. Maybe I’m mixing them up with men’s board shorts. Probably this says something about the imprecision of everyday word usage, regional variation, and just my own failure to pay attention. Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s no actual standardized terminology. I don’t think there’s an International Code of Fashion Nomenclature that will bar your style from sale if it isn’t labeled appropriately.

What do you think? Any other “official” length designations out there I should be aware of? I’m a little torn on issues like this. On the one hand, who the frick cares? On the other hand, I spend most of my professional life dealing with extremely technical terminology, and I really appreciate the precision it allows. If there is an agreed upon standard, I’d like to at least know what it is so that if I screw it up, it’s on purpose.

Ooo, oo, I know what Tyo’s pants are!

Moi, circa 1983. Jeez I loved this outfit. I am pretty sure my mom made it.

They’re knickers!!!!

Ok, I’ll stick with capris. Or piratas.

*the Patrones magazine is in Spanish, from Spain. Given the differences in clothing terminology between England and North America, I’m not going to assume that the terminology Patrones uses is common to Spanish-speakers worldwide, either.

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July 24, 2012 · 11:33 pm

Next Size Up II

Jeans. She has them.

Tyo’s replacement capris are finished. Or is that Bermudas? My shorts terminology is lacking. Can I blame being Canadian? The Patrones magazine calls them “pirata,” which I think is totally awesome.

They are pretty standard jeans-styled capris, with a few additional details.

Rear view

Funky, asymmetrical pockets are part of the original pattern (I left off the flaps this time. Not even for lack of fabric—I made them, but didn’t put them on. I don’t really like their shape.) I should’ve piped the pocket edges, although getting the piping crisp around all those corners would not have been fun. As it is, you can barely see the pockets are there. Hmm. I do like the piped yoke—I should’ve piped the waistband, too.

I had better not dwell on the missed piping opportunities. That way lies madness. I added one of those weird, pointless straps between back pocket and side-seam, at Tyo’s request.

I’m too cool.

And then managed to photograph her only from the other side.

Luv

Damn she is cool.

I love who I am.

Oh, wait, I’m supposed to be discussing construction, not just posting pictures of my cool kid.

Inside front—pockets, fly construction, buttonhole elastic, bound-edge waistband.

My fly interiors are not generally things of great beauty, and this one isn’t, either, although it’s one of my better ones. I won’t get into how many needles I broke as soon as I started trying to do zig-zags—bar tacks, buttonholes, attaching the belt loops. There was much howling and unpcking. I HATE unpicking bar-tacks. It got better when I ran out of topstitching thread and just used regular blue thread. I may do that for all bar tacks/dense zig-zags in the future. The buttonhole elastics emerge from gaps in the seams where I had to piece the waistband.

Drawstrings

I added buttonholes on the outside before stitching the hems, to run the drawstrings (aka shoelaces) through. Back when I made the first pair of camo capris, I bought a metre or so of narrow black twill-tape for the drawstrings. I couldn’t find it when I finished that project, so wound up using shoe-laces instead. It’s kicked around on and off since then, (notably being used in this project) but again today I couldn’t find it. I did, however, find more shoelaces. (And I can never, ever find shoelaces when my shoes need them…)

Front closeup

Can you see that I screwed up the cutting played with the grain on the front pockets? No? Maybe just as well.

Pattern alterations.

Remember my pattern alterations?

Back view

Ok, here’s how they wound up looking. (If you can see through the print, which you probably can’t.) Rear rise is good—not any too high, could probably have gone a little higher, but coverage is maintained even when she squats down. Yay! Yoke curve-in is good but could’ve been more extreme—there’s still plenty of extra ease at the waistband that isn’t there at the hips. There is still some slight wedgification happening—not enough to be uncomfortable (yet) but I can tell that the crotch curve is not perfect for her. Presumably scooping is in order? I’m really not sufficiently enamoured of this pattern to bother, but Tyo may be, in which case I’ll keep it in mind if we end up at Pair #3.

Whew!

Ok, I’m done. And apologies to Claire for not doing a full-camo photo shoot with the vest. We snapped these pictures in about five minutes just before bedtime.

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July 23, 2012 · 10:38 am

Next Size Up

Patrones Niños

Nigh on a year ago, I made Tyo a set of camo capris. The pattern is from this issue of Patrones Niños, which I got from Her Selfishness back in the day. And Tyo was thrilled, with one exception—the rise at the rear was very low, and tended to give her a wedgie.

The pattern of choice (#12)

Unfortunately, while the capris technically still fit—as in, the width of the hips is still sufficient to go around her hips—the low-riding wedginess has reached a point where she doesn’t really find the first pair wearable anymore. So, a while back, I snooped around my local Fabricland and grabbed some lightweight, vaguely camo-esque twill fabric in a shades-of-blue print, to make a replacement pair. I bought two metres, more than enough to make the new pair plus another later when she grew out of it.

Then I went and made fishing vests out of the stuff.

Oops.

Needless to say, Tyo was not completely thrilled. So this past weekend, whilst she was off camping in the mountains with a friend, I pulled out the scant remainder (just over half a metre) and did my best to eke out the next size up on the capris.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we get to the issue of fabric availability, there was the issue of fit. I traced off the size 12 (the first version having been the size 10), but this time I made a few tweaks:

Pattern alterations.

  1. I extended the back crotch to the line of the next size up at the inseam, tapering to nothing along the leg. Hopefully this helps with the wedginess.
  2. I added a generous (2 cm) wedge along the CB curve. I’ve had good luck with these wedges in the past, but I’ve never done one this big. Hopefully this helps with the rear rise issue.
  3. I took not one, not two, but three tucks in the yoke pattern, to help it curve in at the top. I will also be using buttonhole elastic in the waistband, but this will help reduce the excess of fabric above her well-rounded butt.

Due to my vest-making enterprises, it was an extremely tight fit on the remaining fabric. There is selvedge in seam-allowances, and the waistband is in three pieces. Actually, that worked out really well because instead of making buttonholes for my buttonhole elastic, I just left a small gap in the piecing seam for the elastic to thread through. I predict this will be a win. I hope. With any luck. I’ve also added a small amount of piping (piping a random gift courtesy of Claire of Sew, Incidentally, some time ago—Thank you, Claire!), since I find that camo-type prints really make it hard to see the jeans details. Gee, camo making something hard to see!

Not finished.

Of course, I also spent most of my “free time” this past week and weekend madly cleaning house so that the landlady could start showing it, and then avoiding being in the house so as to not mess it up again. So I can’t tell you if my alterations were successful or not, as the new capris are still a goodly ways off being finished. But here’s hoping!

(and thank you, everyone, for the kind words on my last little post. 🙂 )

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July 20, 2012 · 6:27 pm

Thank you, ElleC

Prezzies

In an effort to make me feel better as my brain esplodes with all the crazy* going in my life right now, famed philanthropist ElleC sent me a care-package.

Two books on nifty sewing techniques.

Because something else to read is exactly what I need right now.

Not to mention inspiration about time-consuming hand-decorating techniques I HAVE NO TIME FOR.

Yes, like all ElleC’s gifts, this one is edged with malice aforethought. However, I am quite sure I will thoroughly enjoy reading through both Sewing with Knits (practical!)  and Fine Embellishment Techniques (exciting!)

Thank you, ElleC.

Thank you.

No, I mean it, really. 😀

Also, Canada Post managed to deliver these in like, two days? Which is insanely impressive for them. I mean, ElleC and I aren’t located too far apart, as the crow flies, but there’s still like mountains in the way and stuff. Thank you, Canada Post.

*I.e. trying to finish a PhD thesis, juggle various family medical issues (not mine), and preparing to move back to our hometown at the end of the summer with neither savings nor promising career prospects, all without having a total nervous breakdown.

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July 18, 2012 · 9:43 am

Fantasy sewing: Fantastic Menswear

A little while back, Peter posted one of his periodic dirges discussing the dearth of stylish modern menswear patterns. However, not one to be a negative Nellie, he went on to highlight one of the more exciting periods, historically, in menswear, the 1970s, and, in particular, the patterns Butterick—the Fashion One—put out for men during this time period. (And the ready availability of said patterns today, often in uncut condition—which probably says something about why they don’t still make ’em like that)

This touching paean niggled something in my memory. Something about 70s menswear.

Butterick 4711

Aha! there it is, folks, Butterick 4711, a men’s suit pattern I thrifted for, as you can see, the princely sum of a half dollar, uncut except for the vest. And designed by, or at least approved by?, Robert L. Green, whoever that is. (Ok, apparently he was the style director at Playboy during the 60s and 70s, among other things.)

While I certainly couldn’t resist this pattern, especially in the size 40 (exactly my husband’s size! Well, for the jacket, anyway), the odds of me actually making it up are, ah, infinitesimal. My husband, despite being only a couple of years older than me, came of age firmly in the 80s. He’d be much more likely to wear this pattern (image also courtesy of Peter) than a very 70s suit.

That being said, Peter’s post prompted me to pull out the pattern and peruse the instructions, as one does, y’know. Some nifty details emerged:

A very nifty fly indeed.

French Fly! (Or at least, that’s what Carolyn called it. See her tutorial. See it now. (durr, I wasn’t paying attention and scanned the picture of the fly, but not the part of the instructions concerning it. Oh well. Go read Carolyn’s tutorial instead.)

Welt pockets!

Welt pockets that hang from the waistband–COOL! Maybe you’ve seen this detail elsewhere? I don’t think I have, not that I’m overly versed in fine tailoring. Still cool.

Vest with odd neck bit.

Odd back-neck strap on the vest. Apparently whoever made the vest before thought it was odd, too, as it’s been clipped off the front pattern and pinned in place on the other piece.

I didn’t get into the jacket instructions, partly because they’re too involved for the amount of time/energy I have right now, partly because it’s for only a partial lining, which isn’t acceptable in menswear as far as I’m concerned, not that I’m any kind of expert.

Now, my husband won’t wear any element of this suit, as I said, except perhaps the vest. My husband does wear vests. And wear them very well, I may add. 😉 My very ticklish fancy is currently dying to make him a soft and summery vest in white slub linen. Of course, I don’t have any white slub linen… but a plain white linen would do (see photo at the top).

Of course if I propose this, he’s going to ask where his jacket is.

/sigh.

But it’s a good fantasy, isn’t it?

Oh, I also got, at the same time, the coordinating boy’s suit pattern:

Butterick 5205

If only I had a sartorially adventurous twelve-year-old boy to sew for. No? Maybe not.

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