Striped T-Shirt dress - vintage '80's Vogue 7338

One of the easiest garment I've made in years.

The striped cotton rugby knit fabric was made at Manawatu Knitting Mills in the 1980's; the pattern from around the same era picked up last year in St Vinnies. My mother gave me this fabric plus two other pieces in different colourways when she retired her stash. I'm tempted to make them all up the same.

Using View C, pin the pockets to the front and back pattern pieces to cut all-in-one, and lengthen the hem and the sleeves as much as the fabric will allow. Instead of using the patterns facings, cut a strip about 4cm wide by 60cm long to use as a neck binding. During construction, ignore the shoulder pleats.

If I do use this pattern again, next time I'll move the pockets up a couple of centimetres. Without a belt or tie they're just a fraction too low.

So basic, yet so comfortable.

Vogue 8628 (ca. 1955) for an afternoon wedding in rural Queensland

Attending an event in another country means serious planning. Besides travel and accommodation, finding something comfortable and appropriate to wear rockets up the essentials list. Thank goodness I can sew!

After resisting buying the cotton sateen fabric (but totally making it up in my head), as soon as the wedding was announced, I raced into Morelands and bought 1.5m. I knew exactly what it was going to become.

Vogue 8628 (ca.1955) is another of Tara's patterns hangin' out in the stash, waiting for its moment to shine. Pocket flaps were eliminated, as was the front button closure – a back zipper added instead (and centre front placed on the fold), but other than these small changes the pattern is as is. Surprisingly, the fit is perfect, even though it should be too small.

Originally, I planned to wear the same purple pumps worn to the last wedding attended, but a little shopping in Cotton Tree turned up a pair of leather sandals in exactly the right shade of pinky-purple - it took very little convincing they were better suited to the rural setting. Belt is from Pagani.

Wonderful wedding, lovely newly-weds, terrific venue and I've a versatile new frock (and shoes) to boot!

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!

A new workhorse – Vogue 1267

workhorse: something that's useful and durable, a dependable performer under heavy or prolonged use.

There's been a piece of navy-blue wool blend rattling around in the stash for a while which was bought on impulse at one of the Fabric Warehouse's sales. Decent quality wool blends are good staple fabrics to have if you work corporate, especially in navy, grey and black. I've also had Vogue 1267 for a while. It took the need to replace a workhorse on it's last legs for me to connect the dots and put the two together.

Belt from Portmans

I changed a few things from the pattern. To make it more work-appropiate, I straightened the high-low hem (felt it would date quickly), adding a kick pleat in the back so there's still plenty of room to walk comfortably. I also added small cap sleeves and changed to a V-neckline - I'm not fond of clothing up around my neck. After the initial fitting I also moved the point of the dart closest to the neckline 1cm further away and extended all of the shoulder darts 1–2cm towards the bust point as they all seemed to stop a bit short.

Very happy with the finished dress which turned out exactly how I imagined, and as you can see by the wrinkles, it's already in use.

Although I manipulated the original pattern by chalking straight onto the fabric to make adjustments to this version, I did keep a record of everything I did (luckily!) because I have a hunch I'll probably re-use it again in the not too distant future.

Off to have a look in the stash…

Also had a bit of a scissor sharpening fiasco recently, which ended happily when Andrew at Knife Edge Sharpening Service put it all right. Highly recommended!