Last weekend's vintage finds

Hello everyone! I'm glad you enjoyed my tutorial on how to make a feedsack hair bow. It's such a quick and easy project, you better let me know if you make one!

Last Sunday was our one year wedding anniversary. Our plan initially was going to involve a walk around the nature preserve where we got married, but come the day of, we just weren't in the mood. Isn't that terrible? lol We keep missing the vintage fairs this spring and summer due to conflicting plans, so we've been a bit starved in that department. So instead, we drove out to the suburbs, had a lovely lunch and went to an antique mall. Julia from the Volo Antique Mall... if you're out there reading, we're coming to you next! :)

I am crazy about this rhinestone-studded nut charm bracelet!

The purse is hard to photograph because yes, it's actually covered in plastic.

Outfit details: me-made New York leaf dress and matching hair bow, vintage belt from Etsy, 50s confetti earrings from Auntdelta (though you can't really see them), bangles from here and there, nut charm bracelet from eBay, Lotta from Stockholm clogs, can't remember where the purse is from.

What do you think about these shoes? I love clogs. I have worn my red or yellow mary jane-style Sven clogs with many vintage outfits (like here). They are just so darn comfy and cute and great for casual summer outfits, even if they make my outfit a little funky or folksy. (What the heck, I've always been a little funky and folksy!) Last summer I saw a brand that had a style of peep toe clogs. Clogs that have a 1940s feel, yes please! I saved a pair to my bookmark list and of course promptly forgot about them. When I looked this spring, it seemed like the brand didn't exist any longer. So I found Lotta from Stockholm, which had peep toe clogs in a medium and low heel. Of course since then I've discovered Sven has peep toe clogs now (with way more colors) as well as Swedish Hasbeens, though the Lottas are quite a bit less expensive.

I'm still deciding if I like the look of this heel style on me. It's the same as the Hasbeens high heel... their super high looks more 40s but 3.5" is just too tall for me. But I'm in love with the rest of the shoe. And I know I'm not the only one who likes this style, I've spied peep toe clogs on Katie from The Little Red Squirrel and Jenny from Yesterday Girl, too!

Anyway, enough shoe rambling, onto the vintage finds. Not a huge haul, but we picked up some nice things. From the last time we visited this place I remembered there was a booth with oodles of inexpensive scarves and buttons, so of course I had to take a few of each home.

We got two Richter Artcraft wall plaques for the living room that are amazing. Molded gold plastic! Since we're keeping the gold-flecked mirrors on one wall, these will go between. We may decide to paint the frames to make them a little more dramatic, and because there's a bit much brown in that room. I've watched Hepcat Restorations do this many a time with amazing results.

(And wow, I actually found a room in the house that I can take natural daylight photos in, at least for a small window of opportunity in the morning.)

I love seeing things like this on the back. :)

And the find that takes the cake. For our anniversary, Mel bought me this amazing lamp for my bedroom (AKA the guest bedroom, where my closet and vanity are, and where I'll be decorating and painting).

Isn't she stunning? She's not in perfect condition... the shade has some issues, and what looks like the matching finial is actually clearly not from this lamp (hint: it's a fish) but is a good match. She's not a Reglor, but definitely in that style.

I saw her the last time we were at this place and kind of regretted not taking her home, but she was still waiting patiently for me this weekend. I love her! I can't wait to design the rest of the room with this piece in mind. She's just what the bedside table (early Heywood Wakefield) needed.

Finished project: No-more-sewing-slump dress

I mentioned it in my giveaway post (one last day to enter!), but I finished the dress I was working on that finally kicked the sewing slump out of me. Yee haw!

This pattern is a 1940s house dress, Simplicity 4660. You can see my copy is in really rough shape, but I couldn't resist it when I was searching for inspiration on Etsy a couple of weeks ago.

No one really wears house dresses anymore, so who cares if I wear a house dress pattern as a sundress, right? Right.

I used what I would describe as a not-really-great-quality cotton lawn from Denver Fabrics. It was kind of bizarre to work with and required every single seam to be enclosed because it frays if you look at it cross-eyed. This dress felt like it had miles of slip-stitching and French seams. But I love the print, it gave it a very farm dress feel to it.

(By the way, this hairstyle is faux all the way and doesn't use an actual bun or an actual roll in the front. Just bobby pins and a scarf. My hair has been giving me fits so I whipped this up recently for a messy, cute and vaguely retro shorter hair updo, inspired by lots of long-haired high bun tutorials. I might do a quick tutorial if there's any interest, it seriously takes no effort or time. Nope it's not vintage, but kind of fun and great for hot weather.)

Now while you can't tell because of the bow at the back, the dress buttons all the way up from the skirt to the top of the bodice. I used a skirt fastened at the waist so I didn't have to waste a button you would never see. Aren't these great?

Did I mention I sewed this dress with stash fabric and only had 2 yards, and I managed to squeak this out with about two inches of fabric leftover?? I shortened the length quite a bit (then turned up the hem about an inch too short for my taste so I may later lower it, whoops) and somehow managed to get it all to fit. It was a nail-biter for sure.

This was my first time doing a sweetheart neckline. I used bias tape as a facing for the neckline, following Lauren's from Wearing History's great tutorial on how to miter inside corners with bias tape. It worked like a charm.

I pretty much followed the pattern as written with a couple of tweaks: I make the waistband ties like a tube and top-stitched all sides instead of just folding in the seam allowances and sewing, and I stabilized the outer waistband piece after picking Liz from zilredloh.com's brain on the subject. And it worked great—thanks again, Liz!

My darts are a bit too high, but the print is so busy you'd never know. Ha!

Due to the completely gathered skirt, the pockets hang open a bit. Fortunately I lined them and finished them neatly. The gap bothered me slightly at first but after looking at some other 1940s patterns with gathered skirts and patch pockets I noticed a lot of them look like this, even in drawings.

I'm really pleased with how this dress came out! It's very comfortable, I think it's a fairly flattering style on me and I like the ruffled sleeves and tie at the back. They're cute without being too cutesy, if you know what I mean. It's a tad too tight at the waist but that would be so easily remedied in future versions by cutting the waistband pieces about 1" longer and just gathering it a little less. And I do see other versions in my future for sure!

There are a few more photos on Flickr starting here if you're interested, including the inside of my bias tape sweetheart neckline.

I'm so happy to be over my sewing slump!!

Non-camping weekend activities

This weekend we were supposed to go camping in Wisconsin with our friends, but the weather had other plans.

Now, we are not lightweights. We've camped in the rain. We've camped in the cold. We've camped in a bazillion percent humidity, with mosquitoes biting everything that wasn't covered with a layer of bug spray. We can make almost anything work. So before our trip, we stalked the weather forecasts. It was looking rather grim all week but we kept hoping for a change. However, on Friday the forecast for the weekend was supposed to be in the low 50s (as the high) and 80% chance of rain with 15-20 MPH winds. So sadly, we made the call to cancel our trip. (Which is a good thing in the end, because the weather turned out to be closer to the high 40s with constant drizzle, wind and fog. Because yes, I checked, just to make sure it was as miserable as we thought it would be.) I was seriously bummed because I was really looking forward to it, but the good news is we have another camping trip planned at the end of the month. Hopefully the weather will cooperate!

Instead, we spent the day with our friends who we would have been camping with. We passed on the Vintage Bazaar because for some reason none of us were feeling it that day—ever just have one of those days? We decided to hit a couple of antique malls in the suburbs and have lunch (I had a fried green tomato sandwich, yum!). Actually, we only intended to go to one place originally, but I mixed up the name and Googled the wrong place. It turned out to be a happy accident, and was only 5 minutes from the place I was actually trying to find.

First, I spied an entire row of wonderful aprons...

Look at the yellow one with the woman with the basked on her head, or the floral rick rack trimmed one in the middle, or the red gingham one with a diamond pattern to the right of that, or the one on the far right with the light green bottom, black rick rack and pocket. So many lovely aprons all in one place! None came home with me, however, because as much as I love aprons like that, I don't find them practical so I stick to the kind that tie around your neck.

But we did find an awesome apron for Mel...

(In case you're wondering why there are two cast iron skillets on the stove, we made Huevos Rancheros for dinner the night before. One pan for eggs, one for tortillas.)

I found a rather un-PC vintage embroidery transfer...

One of the antique malls had oodles and oodles of vintage buttons, so many I couldn't even go through them all. I did pick up a few sets of buttons, still on the cards. 

While I was deep in some tubs of buttons, Mel brought something over to show me...

A vintage tooled leather purse in perfect condition! I've been looking for a purse just like this for awhile, but I've had a hard time finding one I like that you carry over your arm instead of over your shoulder, let alone one in good condition. In fact this one was in such good condition I actually wondered if it was really vintage! Even the inside looked as good as new. But the age of the zippers was the first giveaway that it was indeed an old purse. And the second was a piece of paper slipped inside. You can see it in there in that back pocket...

Isn't this neat? An old advertisement for the brand! I love how the woman is shown in gloves...

And it sure is a dandy purse, isn't it?

The last find was a great vintage dress. But before I show you the outside of the dress, I wanted to show you sewists two features of the inside of this dress that I found interesting. The neckline facing has an unhemmed lining that was sewn into the seam but not to the facing. I'm not sure what kind of fabric this is, but it's slightly stiff and basically a loose woven mesh...

And then even more stiff was a lining under the peplum. It's similar to the lining under the facing, but white and a bit more stiff, also unhemmed, and about 3/4 the length of the peplum itself...

Interesting construction, huh?

And now you can see the dress! It's handmade, with a straight skirt and peplum all the way around. A little fancier style than I usually go for, but it was $30, in excellent condition, and I always have a soft spot for handmade vintage clothing. And did I mention it was a perfect fit, a fact I didn't discover until I got it home and tried it on?

That's the new purse to show you the scale. It's a really nice size, isn't it? It'll hold quite a bit, unlike so many of my other vintage purses. And in case you're curious, those are 1940s pee wee cowboy boots I'm wearing, and I'm probably wearing them for our wedding. (More on that another day soon!)

But enough about the accessories, isn't the dress great? I wouldn't say it takes the place of roasting marshmallows by a campfire in the woods and sleeping in a tent under the stars, but I'll take it!

Finished project: sleeveless blouse for VLV

First and foremost, I want to thank you all so very much for your congratulations and kind comments on my last post. It's been overwhelmingly wonderful reading all your supportive comments. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

♥ ♥ ♥

I recently bought a pair of 50s capris from Bombshell Shocked. They're plaid, they're tight, they're fantastic. They're not my usual style, but they fit great and screamed "I need to be part of a casual outfit for Viva Las Vegas!" (Okay, maybe they didn't really scream at me. But they almost did.)

The main problem was that I wasn't really sure if I had a blouse that I could wear with them. I love my prints, and that constitutes the majority of my tops. I went through everything I owned and came up empty handed. I scoured eBay and Etsy and came up empty handed there, too. Drat.

Even though I steadfastly had refused to add any other crafty projects to my list before VLV, I had already planned one new thing and surely I wasn't going to take on a blouse now, too. But those capris... they were so cute! They needed a top!

I took a peek just in case. And it turned out I had the perfect pattern and the perfect matching red fabric (no small feat when you're matching a modern cotton/poly solid to a vintage cotton print). So this is how I spent the last few evenings.

It's a sleeveless blouse from Butterick 8946. I'm guessing by the hair and a consultation with my mom that the pattern is from the late 50s or early 60s. Don't you love that the previous owner, Mrs. Risberg, wrote her name on the pattern? Why do you think she did that?

I made view C, the sleeveless version with faux pocket flaps. I made a muslin Sunday afternoon and went full steam ahead, not making a single change to the pattern. Amazingly, with the exception of some armhole facings that refused to cooperate on the inside, it went together like a dream.

(Sorry the photos are a bit inconsistent, this red is so hard to capture in a photograph and I just don't have the time to take nicer photos outside right now!)

The fabric was a cotton/poly blend that I picked up from Fabric.com, which I was a bit disappointed with when it arrived. It definitely feels and looks a bit more like the 'poly' part than the 'cotton' part. It also didn't press very well and tended to show marks at the seams. I found myself needing to use something to put between the seam and the rest of the fabric when I pressed, which turned out to be two food delivery menus that were the nearest pieces of paper to my ironing board.

In spite of the pressing problems, I was able to get nice clean lines around the neckline and armholes. Fortunately for me Casey recently posted about understitching, which reminded me about this technique just when I needed to use it!

 (Don't mind the crappy-looking ponytail. I discovered with my new haircut that I do not have the option of using Hot Sticks on lazy days. Lesson learned.)

The buttons are interesting vintage buttons I had a bunch of, and I think they look perfect on this blouse. Like little sunbursts! Even better, I still have several left for future use.

I love how this blouse came out! I blind stitch hemmed it by hand, understitched the neck and armhole facings and did the buttonholes on my machine. 

 (That's me knitting my black blouse for VLV. Wearing the project that temporarily put it on hold. Ha!)

It also fits well on my new dressform! Her name is Notasha. Not-Tasha... get it? It was a birthday present from my mom and step-dad, and she arrived last night. Currently she's living next to our hutch.

Yes, I guess that's a little weird having a dress form next to our hutch. On the other side is Mel's art studio area. We have a small condo so we do what we can to double up on space. :)

Overall I'm really pleased with this blouse. The only change I made was to use 5 buttons instead of 4. And the only change I'd make in the future would be to lower the bust darts, which seemed fine on the muslin but on the final blouse are a bit high. But really, that's my only complaint.

I am a huge fan of sleeveless shirts in the summer when it's super muggy here and I don't want a lot of extra fabric sticking to me, so I could easily see myself making several variations of this top. A fun novelty print, or a solid with printed pocket flaps, maybe contrasting bias tape around the armholes instead of the facings... lots of possibilities. What do you think?

Expect to see some photos of this with my plaid capris at VLV!

This weekend we're off to Wisconsin with our friends for a getaway. We'll be enjoying the kitschy wonderland that is House on the Rock, drinking New Glarus brews and hopefully we'll fit a cake in there somewhere since my birthday is Sunday. I hope you all have a fabulous weekend, and once again thank you for all the congrats on our engagement!! ♥

Little outfit details

I am nearly in panic mode about my wardrobe for Viva Las Vegas. This is in part due to the fact that we did an idiotic, massive spring cleaning last year of our home and everything in it, and that's left me (actually both of us) with some ludicrous holes in my wardrobe that I've been struggling to fill ever since. Case in point: I no longer own a brown purse. Seriously. No brown purse of any kind.

I know it's time for me to open up my closet and figure out what I want to wear, because if I wait until the last minute and discover I need an accessory for a particular outfit (see above), I'll be screwed.

Because I've been so busy I'm trying not to be delusional about what craft projects I can complete in time. I want to finish my black u-neck blouse, because otherwise I have no top for a couple of skirts I'm planning to wear (once of which will be my castles skirt once I finally make a buttonhole for it). I don't think I ever posted the picture of this blouse, did I? It's a pattern from the 1953 Spring/Summer Vogue Knitting Book. I may do something different around the armholes and neckline because I simply don't know if I have the time and patience to knit little bias bands and sew them all the way around. I'll also be raising the neckline a bit in the interest of modesty as I'm not small-chested like the model.

I was daydreaming about other outfits, specifically trying to come up with something to wear with a navy-colored gorgeous slinky vintage sweater I recently got from Etsy. (Excuse the blah slapdash photo.)

It's a bit fancier than I usually go for, with the silver-flecked rope trim at the neckline,  rhinestones and a back keyhole neckline (sorry I didn't photograph that), but I couldn't resist. I thought it would make a great top for an evening outfit.

However I couldn't think of a single thing in my wardrobe that I could wear this with! Not one thing. It occurred to me that I could probably sew up a skirt in time, but I already feel pressed for time with the knitting project (not to mention Briar Rose), so I nixed that idea.

Then I remembered I have a pair of navy slacks from Heyday that have been sitting in my closet as I've been too lazy to hem them. I can squeeze in hemming, certainly. Those slacks, the knitted top, a pair of red Remix L'Amour wedges (that Mel bought me for my birthday at Viva two years ago since Viva usually falls near my birthday) and accessories? Perfect.

But when I pulled the slacks out, I realized they had white buttons.

I thought naturally they'd be so much nicer with vintage buttons, so I went through my stash. Sadly, I didn't have any navy buttons the right size. A quick stroll through Etsy and eBay didn't turn anything up, either. What I did turn up in my stash, however, was a set of great red vintage buttons.

While in general I'm not a fan of contrasting buttons because I am a big weirdo and they make me feel I can only match those exact colors in my outfit, this turned out to be just the lightbulb moment I needed. I thought I would switch out the buttons on the slacks to red, they'd go great with my outfit for Viva, and then I'd have the luxury of time afterwards to find perfect navy buttons for permanent use on the slacks.

So that's exactly what I did.

One outfit complete with 5 minutes of sewing!

Finished project: Olivette cardigan

Today I finished a cardigan that I knit entirely to match one blouse. Yes, one blouse. Last fall, I bought a lovely short-sleeved silk blouse at one of our favorite antique malls. There's one booth that is always filled with clothes that fit both Mel and I. They aren't always our style, but when they are, the odds are in our favor that they'll fit. It's really weird. I love that booth.

So I bought this blouse. I don't really wear much silk, and I don't really wear big flouncy bows. Yet this blouse is both. With polka dots thrown in to boot. It's not really that me, but I love it. The polka dots are navy, and I'm pretty sure this blouse is responsible for my navy kick. (Notice that navy is one of my palette colors in my handmade wardrobe challenge.) Only at the time I bought it, when it was already cold out, I didn't own a navy cardigan to wear with it. Now I do.

The pattern is a modern pattern, Olivette by Sandi Rosner, which is available from Twist Collective. It's knit in worsted weight, and if I hadn't put it away for over a month it would have knit up really quickly.  It's knit in one piece from the bottom up to the armholes. The only seaming is setting in the sleeves. I  modified the size to have a little bit of negative ease as I didn't plan to wear it buttoned very often, and wanted it to be fitted when worn over a dress. I find when I wear cardigans that have zero or positive ease with a dress, I look like extra short and squat.

I chose to make a few modifications. Because I wanted a bit more of a vintage feel I knit the bottom ribbing plain instead of in the cabled pattern as written, and I worked 40s style box pleat caps. Having worked some variation of that on my last three sweaters, I'm putting that technique to bed for awhile. I may still work knit shoulder pads for this cardigan, I'm not sure yet. I know the style would probably benefit from it, but I'm always kind of iffy about shoulder pads. And since it's knit in worsted weight, the seam at the top of the shoulder is already rather pronounced, so I don't really want to enhance that which a shoulder pad might do. Oh well.

(An odd thing to mention about this blouse... the peter pan collar is tacked down all the way around. I have no idea why! Hence why it's inside the cardigan and not outside in the photos. I need to bite the bullet and unpick part of it to see what's going on under there.)

I love the dark navy vintage buttons I used. I got them from Etsy. I always feel vintage buttons add that extra bit of oomph to a new cardigan, don't you think?

I did a little trick I like to do with cardigans when I have an extra button. I borrowed this idea from a few of my own vintage sweaters. I sewed a spare button onto the inside of the sweater (careful not to let the stitches show through to the public side). Now in a few years if I lose a button, I don't have to try and (likely unsuccessfully) find it. Nifty!

I would highly recommend this pattern to other knitters. It definitely has a nice vintage feel to it, and produces a cardigan that can be dressed up or down. The lace and cable pattern is easy to work and easy to memorize. I am a constant pattern tweaker and as I went along, sometimes doing my own thing, when I compared what I was doing to the pattern, I was doing the same thing. No kidding! It really was perfect.

And the sizing is generous! She includes bust sizes 37" to almost 54". And it was easier to make it a little smaller by omitting a few stitches in the stockinette portions. You could also knit it in DK weight to make it even smaller.

One thing I particularly love about the pattern is that it uses a common vintage technique for button bands, which I've worked before, but is rarely found in modern patterns. You knit the bands along with the cardigan, in 1x1 ribbing, slipping the first stitch on each row for a nice selvage (though that part isn't usually mentioned in vintage patterns, but is definitely the best way to go). This produces a lovely and tailored band that holds its shape well. Unlike bands that are picked up and knit, which is annoying in its own right, you don't run the risk of the bands flaring or puckering. And unlike bands that are knit as you go in garter stitch, these bands have no tendency to flip to the inside. It's also less fiddly than another popular vintage technique that involves sewing grosgrain ribbon on the backside to prevent flipping. So really, it's pretty much the perfect button band technique in my book!

All in all, I'm very happy with this cardigan. It should be a great staple that will be useful in winter, spring and fall. But after three worsted weight sweaters in a row, I'm really ready for some finer yarn! Thank goodness for the knit-along. I got my yarn in the mail yesterday (yay!), so expect my post about swatching tomorrow or over the weekend.

And hey—one day into my challenge and I have my first garment complete. Sure, it was a bit of a coincidence, but no one needs to know that... oh wait... guess I shouldn't have said that out loud. ;)