70's Denim Skirt - vintage Style 1559

When I was 16, one of the first self-drafted patterns I ever made was for a denim skirt. I loved that skirt, wore it for years until it the zip broke (by which time it was looking very tired), then promptly made another. Since then there has pretty much always been a denim skirt in my wardrobe.

This version started with a circa 1976 pattern - Style 1559 - as a base. I liked the length, pocket detail and button front. But after months of fruitlessly searching for suitable buttons (ie, ones I liked), I ditched that idea in favour of a fly-front.

However, great plans don't always run smoothly. First fitting was a disaster! The skirt was so frumpy - too wide at the hem, the waist too high, and goodness knows why the fly-front pucked so much. Into the naughty corner it went for some timeout.

A few days later, I'd formulated a rescue plan. Gone is the fly front, moving to an exposed zip in the centre back; the high waistband was re-cut into a 4cm wide curved yoke at high-hip level; and finally the seams are slimmed at hem length by about 5cm each side.

But the god(desse)s were against me, because 20 minutes into sewing it all back together, the LED bulb in my lamp blew. At 7pm. On New Years Eve. And it would be 2 days before the stupid lighting store re-opened. sigh.

Not able to bear the thought of wasting precious time, I ploughed on during daylight hours. The topstitching isn't perfect, but hey! I still love the skirt and it's already being worn several times.

Brass zip and topstitching thread from the stash.

Denim from Moreland Fabrics

Belt from David Jones

Hippy dippy Style 4917 (circa 1975)

CHARLES PARSONS NZ LTD Exclusive Design was spied printed on the selvedge. "How often do you see this, these days" expressed my collegue browsing through Moreland Fabrics. The more I thought about it, the more I needed some. Although a little pricey, the 1970's hippy paisley/floral colours and design were right up my alley, plus it's pure cotton lawn to boot.

Pattern Style 4917 is vaguely reminiscent of dresses my older sisters wore when I was a toddler. Unfortunately, the previous owner of this op shop pattern hadn't treat it with a whole lot of love. It had been cut, shortened and stuck back together with masking tape. Over the years the tape deteriorated and was now stuck to every piece of pattern in contact with it. There was no way to prise it apart without ripping.

Using view 2, I made two small changes, reducing fullness at the hem by about 10cm (4 inches) and folded out the front shoulder gathers.

As the seasons abruptly switched from summer to winter this year, I'm yet to wear this dress, although I really like it. However, I'm heading to the Sunshine Coast next month so - soon!

Blue Linen Tunic Dress - Style 2040 (1979)

Necklace from Farmers

I'm not at all sure what drew me to this pattern when I saw it in St Vinnies. It doesn't have the most enticing envelope, very dated, in fact. But the more I looked, the more appealling it became. It's a very basic tunic style, with an all-in-one yoke and sleeve detail giving it a point of difference. Paired with 2.5 metres of lovely quality blue linen purchased from an early Fabric-a-Brac and just a few easy alterations, I felt I could make a dress that had very little resemblance to the envelope image.

The most obvious changes made were reversing the yoke opening from centre front to centre back, and getting rid of the zip. I also lowered the front neckline by about 2.5cm. Using the short sleeve version (without the cuff extension), I narrowed them at the hems by about 6cm after first fitting.

Did I mention the pattern has pockets? Tempted as I was to topstitch them to the outside, in the end I went for a clean look and just stitched a length of selvedge between them as a stay.

Very happy with the finished garment. Problem is, we had a bit of a rubbish summer here in Wellington, so as lovely as it is, it didn't get much wear. Never mind, there's always next summer (and the next, and the next...).

Frangipani vintage Vogue 5434 mash-up

Haere Mai - welcome to 2016.

India was awesome - absolutely in love with the south. Kochi, the Kerala Backwaters and Mamallapuram have been added to Udaipur in Rajasthan, and of course Navsari and Surat in Gujarat (shopping - oh the shopping!) as places I'll visit again.

Back home, there's a well-timed challenge over at The Monthly Stitch - The "UFO Showdown". I confess to numerous UFOs, so there's a pile I'm determined to tackle this month. Scroll down if you'd like a sneak-peek.

Waitangi weekend saw me tackled the first. You'll remember the Frangipani frock was a toilé for the red silk dress I wore to a wedding earlier this year. That dress was a huge success, which prompted me to finish this one.

I unpicked and recut the bodice using Style 1751 again. Dilemma thought, a perfectly colour-matched zip was a wee bit too short. "Make a feature out of a flaw" I could hear my tutor Jeannie Gander saying. So I placed the zip as per usual into the lower back seam opening, hen recut the back facings with extensions and finished the closure with a button and fabric loop at the neck. and finished the closure with a button and fabric loop at the neck. It slips it over my head without being unbuttoned, so no weird yoga moves required to get it done up.

The finished frock is my new favourite!

Onto the remaining UFO's I'd like to tackle this month. These are by no means all of them, just the ones I think I can complete, and would like to see completed, in a month. In no particular order:

1. Self-drafted "Melba" Jacket. Started in 2013. Made up to the point where I was deciding whether to make Spanish Snap buttonholes, or just do regular keyhole buttonholes by machine at the end.

2. Vintage inspired frock with full skirt (flower embroidery at hem) and cute pockets. Started in 2011. Abandoned after the ridiculous looking collar was unpicked.

3. Perfect Purple Pants. Second draft in my quest to make the perfect fitting pants (the first attempt so bad they were never blogged about - they're now odd looking capri pants worn only with 'outie' shirts). Cut in November 2014.

4. 70's inspired floral shirt. Can't actually remember how long ago this was started, sometime between moving back to Wellington in 2005 and my first blog in 2009. Yep, a while. Once again, think I had collar issues. Still, you have to try these things to figure out whether you like them or not.

5. The newbie. Ambitiously cut this dress out about 3 weeks before leaving for India - wasn't going to happen! The teaser was a newly acquired vintage pattern working perfectly with a stashed fabric - how often does that happen?

Wish me luck!

A cautionary tale - becoming a VoPIF with vintage Vogue 5434

What's a VoPIF, I hear you ask. A Victim of Pattern Illustration Fraud - when the allure of the envelope image does not match the reality.  Eventually every stitcher will become a VoPIF, the most experienced amongst us will have fallen victim more than once. Vintage Vogue 5434 from the 1960's has victimized me yet again.

The tale starts with a wedding invitation. Guests are requested to dress colourfully - "as bright as a garden of summer flowers". Into the stash I headed, where a piece of dupion silk in a stunning red has been languishing for far too long. (Showed a swatch to the bride as wearing red to a wedding can be considered inappropriate, but she's thrilled. Colour is actually several shades darker than it appears in these photos.)  I also pulled out a piece of burgundy frangipani print cotton to make a wearable toilé and Vogue 5434 from my pattern collection.

After a few adjustments to the sizing, I whizzed together the frangipani toilé dress - love the skirt, but the bodice just doesn't cut the mustard. The neckline is too high, and the pleats which looked so stylish on the envelope are in reality very "roomy". (I kept patting them into place during fitting.) Another toilé bodice was cut with a lower neckline and less fullness in the pleats, but wasn't much better. After toying with the idea of cutting yet another toilé bodice, I decided to abandon it completely for the moment because I'm running out of time, and instead replace it altogether with a trusted bodice from an old favourite pattern - Style 1751 from 1990. 
Boldly cutting straight into the silk I made one change - a simplified neckline - best leave sweethearts to the bride and bridesmaids!

Very happy with the results, and because using this bodice pattern was much more economical ,there's enough silk left over to make a shrug jacket as well. As for the frangipani dress, I can't decided whether to leave the bodice as is, or change it as well. Your thoughts?

So, in conclusion everyone lived happily ever after.

The end.

Oh, and the accessories. Jewellery still to be decided.

Please feel free to share your own VoPIF stories in the comments below. I for one would appreciate warnings about patterns that don't live up to expectations!

Two shirts to wear in India - Style 2568 and Simplicity 7521

I'm travelling to India once again at the end of the year, during their winter. This time I'm heading south, where the temperatures will be warmer, estimated between 17-33°C. During the Rajasthan visit two years ago temperatures were between 7-23°C, so I spent most of the time wearing jeans and layering several merino sweaters on and off, one over the top of the other.

Conservative dress is advisable in India, which I don't have a problem with (working corporate requires conservative dress anyway). Nothing too tight or revealing, keep shoulders and knees covered, plus if your wearing trousers, cover "the shape of your backside and front". Remember my camel riding shorts which were wisely left behind?

I bought kurtis (tunics) and had a salwar-kameez (tunic and pants suit) made last time, but it's looking unlikely I'll have a chance to shop before my tour starts. So I decided to make a couple of shirts using fabrics and patterns from the stash to tide me over, light enough to wear in the heat, while also offering some shade from the sun.

Simplicity 7521 (from 1978) is very much like a kurti style tunic. The fabric was given to me by a lovely woman I met in a St Vinnies store. After doing a burn test, I'm thinking it may be a light weight wool - it's just a bit scratchy, and steams beautifully. I lengthened the tunic to knee length and left off the sleeves cuffs, instead gathering them into an elasticated band. I also added a couple of waist darts in the back for some subtle shaping. The contrasting neck and sleeve bands are simply the wrong side of the fabric. Bonus, the fabric has flecks of blue, green and grey in it, which matches nicely to these navy linen-cotton trousers.

My original intention was to make the second shirt using the same pattern. However, because the fabric was originally a sundress, when I laid the pattern out I discovered while there was plenty of width, there wasn't enough length. Eventually, I settled on Style 2568 from 1979. I always loved the fabric - a lovely soft lawn, and do like the resulting shirt, however I feel like I have gone from one extreme to the the other in styles. There was something about the fabric and pattern choice of the sundress that always made me feel like mutton dressed as lamb. Now I feel like I'm wearing Grandma's gardening shirt! It does look surprisingly good tucked into a pencil skirt though, so I'm sure to get some wear out of it.

Happy!

The Kelly Coat – vintage Style 1671

As soon as I saw the coat fabric in The Fabric Warehouse, I snapped up a few metres - that green! What a colour! At that stage I had no idea what style coat to make, but just HAD TO HAVE IT. However, it shrank badly in it's pre-wash (a good 20cm+ per metre), and of course by then the store had sold out of it. With the right pattern and some carefully cutting I knew there was still just enough to make a coat, I just had to be patient until things fell into place. So, into the stash it went for some years, to be admired and fondled at regular intervals, with dreams of what it could become.

Finally, with some tricky edits to vintage pattern Style 1671 (from 1976), the dream has been realised. The length is about half way between the jacket and coat illustrated on the pattern cover, but unfortunately I had to eliminate the centre back pleat. There are side seam pockets and the belt is cobbled together out of scraps, with joins cleverly disguised under belt loops. And I used the Spanish Snap Buttonholes technique again.

If I were to use this pattern again I'd repeat the yoke shaping on the front, as I really like this detail, especially topstitched. Also I'd modernise the collar shape from it's the classic huge 70's style. For it to stand up as pictured it's tacked down around the back from shoulder seam to shoulder seam, otherwise it falls flat and is really wide!

Buttons are from Buttonmania in Melbourne bought back in 2013, lining from The Fabric Warehouse.

NB. I've replaced the shoulder pads with smaller ones since the photo shot - could only find mens pads late on night I was doing the finishing touches, and of course I wanted to wear it the next day!

But it's my colour, Mum!