Sew Sixties

As was promised, I do have a non-skirt project to post. This project was inspired by vintage clothing shopping at a local antique store, the Cobb Antique Mall, which is located in a suburb of Atlanta (Marietta, GA). While perusing the vintage clothing racks of a dealer, I came across this item that my husband and I both thought was a dress. But, when I tried it on, the thing couldn't have been a dress unless of course I wanted a dress in which the bottom of my butt checks would hang out. We finally came to the conclusion that the item was a tunic, not a dress and that it was meant to be worn over some kind of pants. As a tunic, it was super cool, and I snapped it up. I took it home and tried it on with leggings and a medallion necklace. Voila! That made the outfit.


I've blogged a bit in the past about the "a-line" shape. Although I love the 60's prints, detailing, colors, etc, I've always contended that the "a-line" shape doesn't look quite right on my frame when it comes to dresses (obviously, I like the a-line shape on skirts). However, this tunic was an a-line shape, and it looked great on me. My husband's conclusion: a-line shapes look good on me if they are short tunics, but not if they are long like dresses. Long a-lines tend to swamp me whereas short a-lines do not. Hope makes sense. That's way too many "a-lines" for one paragraph.


So, loving my new a-line tunic, I decided to make one myself. I wanted to do some different colors and right away I found a pattern that was perfect. It was Simplicity 9063 from 1970. The tunic I bought at the antique store was brown. So, to vary it up, I bought seafoam green polyester from the dealer "MonkeyHugSupplies" on Etsy.

This project was pretty easy, because I had a perfect fitting tunic to base all my measurements on. I was able to use my ruler to measure the length of the tunic I had bought and also the front of the bodice at various places so that I would get the a-line just right.


Other alterations? Well, I did the typical alterations of the shoulders so that the seams wouldn't fall off of them. I also made the collar a tad shorter so that it wouldn't be quite so tall on my neck. But, other than following the tunic I had already purchased, that was about it. Of course, since the tunic I bought was shorter than the one on the pattern, I made my tunic to match the one I bought.


Anyway, I just LOVE this color. I've never had an item of clothing this color, and I'm really and truly in love with it. And the texture of the polyester is really cool too. It reminds me of a retro couch.


All for now. If anyone can point me to any good reference pictures of 60's tunics, I'd love to see them. I couldn't find a lot of pictures of this particular style.

Happy sewing!
Astrid