Sew Sixties

Have been very lazy about sewing lately. It seems that as my social life improves, my sewing life goes to pot. Ah, well, such is life. We only have so many hours in a day.


I did want to share another mini-skirt project that I completed. I made this purple mini skirt out of a vintage polyester that I found online. The texture kind of reminds me of stucco. I love all the different textures on old polyester fabrics. Seems now days most polyesters you can buy don't have much in the way of texture.


I also made this skirt with the idea of emulating a picture I found in one of my old Simplicity pattern counter catalogs. I had the striped shirt but all I needed was the skirt! I'm really pleased with the result and like the idea of pairing stripes with solids. Will need to make more solids in the future.


Happy sewing!
Astrid

I love a good geometric print, especially large prints in which the shapes really stand out. One of the things I find very mod is argyle. Now, I haven't had luck finding a really cool argyle print to sew into a skirt. However, I do think diamond shapes are mod in general and have made a green diamond, gray square fabric into a mini-skirt. The fabric is a vintage polyester that was purchased on Etsy.




Happy sewing,
Astrid

Okay, a quick break from the skirt projects to present a mini dress I made using vintage fabric. I used Simplicity 6783 from 1966, which I've used before. I made view 3, but I made it into a mini-length instead of the regular length shown on the pattern envelope.

This fabric was listed on Etsy as a vintage polyester blend. I was expecting it to be similar to a polyester double-knit, but it was more like a sweater material once I got it in person. I didn't know that polyester could feel like sweater material, so I wasn't sure what to make of it.

I proceeded anyway with sewing it into the mini dress. I'd used that pattern before on a pink houndstooth fabric with good results. It couldn't be that hard...could it?


Yep, it could. I must say that this was the most frustrating sewing project I've had in a while. The sweater polyester wasn't that well suited to a dress. It seemed to stretch in ways I didn't want it to stretch, which was frustrating.


Now here's the rundown of the rest of my problems:

1.) MR. SEAM RIPPER: I think the fabric stretched so weird, because the sweater material was a loose weave. I had similar fears with the acrylic fabric on the last skirt I made, but luckily that didn't result in any real problems. So, when I had the problems with weird stretching, I needed to resew some of the seams.

So what's the problem? Mr. Seam Ripper to save the day? Uh, no.
Because this was such a loosely weaved sweater material, when I tried to seam rip, I had a terrible time not pulling up the threads of the fabric with whatever seam thread I was trying to pull out.

So then I tried basting, so I'd have longer stitches. So, things would be better, right? Wrong.


2.) SIDE SEAMS: Side seams are so important to the final fit of the dress. I like to have the freedom to be able to baste and then remove the basting if the fit is wrong. With the Mr. Seam Ripper debacle, I was prevented from doing this. So, I tried to get my basting as perfect as possible, but I still ended up having to keep ripping it out. And all the time I'm ripping it out, I'm terrified that I'm going to rip out the threads of the fabric. I was becoming certain this dress would fall apart, much like Charlie Sheen's life when the media tires of his tiger blood and *god forbid* his Adonis DNA.

So, with all these terrible side seam issues, somewhere along the line, my side seams ended up fitting. But, here in lies the rub.... they look kinda weird. I'm not sure if it's the loose weave of the fabric, but they don't lay quite right at the bottom of the dress. I gave up trying to fix them after my billionth attempt. Okay, maybe not billionth, but I tried so many times...so many times... (quietly cries).

My husband tried to get a good picture of the side seam problem, but you know how that goes. Whenever you try to show someone something, you can't quite capture it-- like if you're trying to show your cranky neighbor lady that cool trick that your dog always does without fail. When you try to show her, of course, the dog fails. When we gave up trying to photograph the side seam problem *of course* that's when the problem emerged from its dank, little problem-cave, laughing at my pain and suffering.

So, the side seams look a little weird at the bottom of the dress. I'm not sure if he's just trying to humor me, but my husband says it's not that noticeable.

Luckily, the rest of the seams didn't make steam come out of my ears.

3.) STYLE: When I'd finally given up on perfecting the side seam problem, the dress still didn't look right. It was missing something. That's when my husband had the idea of adding a drop- waisted belt. That really helped, because the dress does have a really bold pattern and breaking up the monotony of the pattern gave me more shape and dimension.


Well, that's about it. I hate these tricky sewing projects, but at least this dress looks pretty cool. It's definitely my style, so I didn't make that mistake of picking a style that wasn't me. I guess I'll be more wary about what fabrics I pick for dresses. It seems with skirts, it's a lot harder to go wrong.

Happy sewing!
Astrid

I watched "Project Runway" before I learned how to sew. Now, knowing how to sew, I watch it with completely different eyes and can appreciate it even more. My favorite contestant from last season was Mondo. Anyone who watched will find the reason obvious-- he was definitely inspired by mod fashion, and his work was bold and colorful. But he was robbed of the win!


So, when I came across this vintage polyester fabric from "IntheOldSchoolhouse" on Etsy, I thought immediately of Mondo. When the contestants had to do their own textile print, Mondo created a plus sign design. His story involved being diagnosed as being HIV positive and also trying to think positive throughout his struggle.




Hope you all have a lovely Thursday and Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Astrid

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