Rejoicing with the Truth

I didn't sleep too late, but I did move slowly, trying a new way to curl my hair (way more work than it's worth) and making a grocery list. (The plan was to actually get groceries before leaving for an 11 o'clock appointment, but that didn't happen.) I went to my 11 o'clock, then since I was over there I hung out with my parents for a few hours.  Then I spent 3 hours at the antique mall by their house.

I don't know why I spend so much time at antique malls! I love it, but wow, I get tired, too. This was a good trip, though. One booth had some nice vintage linens, including a basket of colorful hankies. I controlled myself (and was cheap) and got one red one, and one dark blue one with red flowers. I also got a feedsack with pink/plum flowers, plus lime green leaves and navy swooshes.

But my best find was a vintage 50s/60s Swirl-like wrap dress for $40. It's made from a vivid pink/peach color cotton with a wide border print of blue and green parrots in 3 rows on some bamboo. It looks made at home, by an expert seamstress. Not only is the stitching very nice (as well as some neat mending under the arms), but the planning of the layout of the border print was really good.

And after 15 minutes with Google, I found the sewing pattern it was made from! How cool is that?



Obviously the border print goes around the hem. It's very wide, so it covers half the length. But then she added a seam down the middle of the bodice, then cut the pieces out on the bias so the rows chevron down the front. And the long ties are cut so the bamboo runs down both of them!  It's an expert piece of work. And even though it must have seen some wear (the underarm repairs), the fabric is still fairly crisp and it doesn't look faded. I'll definitely put up pictures soon. I was going to take some tonight, but I'm too tired.

So after I finished at the antique mall, I drove home through rush hour, got groceries for the next two weeks, made dinner, and went to Home Depot. I'm beat. But it was a good day. :)

ETA: jordannamorgan , one of the booths had a bunch of the Universal Monster cards. Are you trying to get the full set? According to one ebay seller, these are from the Milton Bradley game "Monster Old Maid." :p

I've owned and worn several pairs of vintage sunglasses over the years, and until now I haven't seen anything new that really captured the right look. Until now!  Target's Xhilaration line has some REALLY good vintage-style sunglasses for $12.99. There are two primary vintage styles I've seen:


* 1930s/1940s round lenses.  I've seen them in stores in leafy/limey green, red, royal blue, and black.  The website also shows pink and tortoiseshell options.  I've not personally seen vintage ones in most of these colors, but I believe the green, red, and blue would have been something available in the period. I know black were. Not sure about the tortoiseshell or pink. I only wish they had white, too!

The picture is skewed and doesn't really show how close they look. I'll take a picture with my new red ones so you can see how they look from straight on.  For comparison, here are some 1930s originals from an excellent Etsy shop, Top Tottie Vintage.



The Target ones aren't identical - the upper outside corner of the frames is the most different - and the tinted lenses are gradient instead of solid.  Other than that, I think they're excellent.  The scale is really good, too, not oversized like sunglasses have been for the last few years.  They actually fit my big face *better* than true vintage ones.


* 1950s Ray Ban Wayfarers style.  (Did you know the Wayfarers came out in 1952?)  I've seen these in the stores in loads of colors! Turquoise, both translucent and solid pink, both mint green and lime green, purple, white, black, tortoiseshell, and even a translucent cream color that's VERY similar in shade to the yellow plastic of the vintage ones above.



If you ever dress in vintage style for a particular purpose/look/event (as opposed to mixing it with modern for regular wear), please consider getting a pair of these! Target appears to be the only store with anything like these shapes, much less colors.


1. Eyewear can be one of the most glaringly modern parts of a vintage getup. There are many valid reasons this can't be avoided. But sunglasses don't have to be!  Instead of putting on your big modern bug-eyes (I have 'em!) and throwing off your whole look, or going without and squinting painfully for hours (also done), just get a pair of these and keep them with your vintage accessories.

2. The right sunglasses will ADD to your look. Look at this lady!


4. I'm in North Texas and I use sunglasses year-'round. Stormy days happen, but not too often. After a few not-happy winter outdoors events, I made the commitment to never be without sunglasses. For me, they're a necessity. And since I spend a lot of time and money to make sure another necessity like my shoes fit the look, why shouldn't a spend just a little time and money on sunglasses?

5. Vintage sunglasses are available. They are, however, not easy to find, nor cheap. I think I've paid $30-45 for the ones I've bought, and that after weeks and months of regular searching.

6. Vintage sunglasses tend to be smaller across across the face than modern ones. I have a big face, both long and wider than average vintage. I can wear vintage ones, but they look a wee bit small. The Target ones fit me.

7. Vintage sunglasses have glass lenses, which can be dangerous if they break. In addition, these glass lenses do not likely have as much UV protection as even cheap modern sunglasses.

8. Vintage sunglasses can be brittle! I broke a small piece of plastic off the hinge of one arm of my first pair, and I can't repair them. In addition, many pairs have warped over the decades and can be awkward or uncomfortable to wear. The Target ones are less fragile, less expensive, fit like we're used to, and aren't irreplaceable.

9. It's a bargain that can't be beat!


Have I sold you yet? Go get some! ;)


Image koshka-the-cat  (The right sunglasses really complete the look, don't you think?)

(It's also pretty much exactly like a nurse's cap, but it's sure the wrong color!)

In and around laundry and cleaning the kitchen on Sunday afternoon, I put together my first version of this 1940s pattern:



My version!



The hardest part was finding fabric from my stash! I want to wear this at Fort Richardson next Saturday, if not this Saturday at Antique Elegance, with a two-tone blue sweater from Rocket Originals and my newly-remade brown tweed skirt. Ironically, the only blue and brown fabrics I had were remnants of blue wool I've had forever, and the brown wool I got in Dallas during estelyn_strider's visit several years ago. It's a nubby but soft brown wool that looks a LOT like Eowyn's brown traveling coat, but is actually only suit-weight at the heaviest.  I don't like cutting into nice big pieces of fabric, even when I have no foresable use for them, but this was just perfect.



I wanted this to be a little warmer, too, so I interlined it with my one remnant of cotton flannel, in Bright Scarlet. I'm happy to report that although the brown wool is lightweight, it is NOT translucent. :D

I didn't take any construction pictures, but it's super easy. There one big pattern piece, basically a T with a very wide and deep top stroke and short upright. The lower corners of the cross are overlapped in the center of the base of the upright, and you have a hat!

I trimmed it a ribbon bow from the scrap left over from my white hemp Regency bonnet. The pattern had instructions for making one from a turned tube of the contrast fabric, but I really didn't want to fuss with turning and ironing a tube!



The mannequin head my mother got for me on ebay many years ago. It's lovely to have a place for it to be out now!

My only real question now is how to do my hair. The hat is not very deep (I'll need a small hatpin, for sure with the wind at Fort Richardson!), so I'm really wanting to try one of the pompadour styles from the vintage hairstyling book. (Birthday present!) I'm not sure exactly if it will look good with the hat, though. As for the rest of my hair, I think I'll curl it tightly again and pin up the ends underneath to shorten it. Or maybe try a neckline roll. Ideas?

With no pictures (yet), alas!  But I can at least discuss what led to Saturday's SOS post.

I've bought clothes from Chadwick's of Boston for years. Sometimes a "mom" or "conservative older woman" catalogue, they still have plenty of cute stuff, and great basic tops like sweaters and tees. (And probably pants, too, except that I'm notoriously difficult to fit in pants, and required a Tall to boot.)  One of my favorite skirts ever came from there.

One good result of being in my own house with a really big closet is being able to see what clothes I have. And this other skirt finally stood out to me. I've had it for many years. Definitely before I got my undergrad, and possibly since high school. Say 10 years.  I've never managed to wear it much, which is odd, because I like the way it feels.

It's a simple two-gore skirt (one front, one back), each piece flared out more than 90 degrees, and cut on the bias. So it's a little more full than a half circle skirt.  It's a wool blend in a brown tweed pattern, and fully lined. No elastic, either.  Sounds just the thing for cozy-but-feminine winter wear, right?

Wrong! (Apparently. Because in 10 years of ownership, I'll wear it maybe 3-5 times a winter.)  Why did I not wear it?

(1) The color. I think/thought I like the use of brown as a neutral. It doesn't look bad on me; at least, it looks better on me than on my Winter mother. I also like how it looks with pink and blue.  And I've all but worn out the brown leather riding boots.  But my winter wardrobe of tops tends to run to clear and bright colors like leaf green, deep red, and plummy and near-hot pinks.  These may not look bad with brown, but they look so much better with black that I had a hard time reaching for that skirt instead of one of my black skirts.

This made more sense when I figured out that brown is not really a neutral, although we're used to treating it as one. The only true neutrals are white, black, and gray - the absence or presence of all colors.  Brown, on the other hand, is a mixture of several (not all) colors, particularly red and yellow. That is, orange.  This is not a bad thing.  But that goes a long way to recognize why my pinks, and my deep reds (which have blue/purple instead of orange), fought the brown so hard. So in my wardrobe, brown is not as versatile.

Plus, while I love tweed, it has a muddy soft appearance that did not go with the clear, bright colors. So I liked the feel of the skirt, but not any outfit I came up.

(2) It's just not flattering!  I often hear full skirts with defined waists recommended for big hips.  But big hips are not created equal!  Mine are wide. Any but the most drapey of fabrics will actually add to the apparent width, hanging directly from - and out from - my widest point.  This style of skirt is particularly bad, since most of the fullness hangs from the side, while being flat in front and back.

A contributing factor was the length.  It was over the tops of my riding boots, high on my (long) calves but not quite mid-shin.  This is a length I've tried a lot with slim-fitting mid-1930s skirts.  While those don't look bad, the just-below-knee length of my early 1940s skirts is WAY better.


It took me 10 years to sort through all this, but Friday night I took a seam ripper to the skirt and reduced it to its component parts.  And for too many hours on Saturday, I delved through my pattern stash and spent a long time trying to fit the pieces for this skirt on it:





I finally managed it, with all pieces on the straight of grain!  Three modifications:

1. Letting the hem be 1-2" shorter in spots than the pattern calls for. That's okay - 1940s patterns allow for a longer skirt than was fashionable for a woman of average height, and even sometimes for me.

2. Cutting away some of the fabric behind the side front pleats.  This let me overlap pieces just enough to get it all out. Brilliant!

3. Piecing the center front pieces to make a sort of triangular yoke. It's practically invisible in the tweed, but even if not, I think it ended up kinda cute.


After all that, I still got the thing perfectly cut out - down to including my standard hip-increasing alteration - and assembled, down to easing in the waist to fit, on Saturday. The only thing that held me up was the mysterious disappearance of the original zipper.  Very suspicious.  But I have a replacement now, and am headed home to put it in and the waistband on. Then a day or two to hang, and a cooperative Mumsie to mark the hem on Thursday, and I shall have an awesome new skirt!

I'm already planning a 1940s collegiate-styled outfit for the reenactment at Fort Richardson on the 25th. I might be able to pull together the jacket from this pattern out of the corduroy I have lying around; either that, or the 40s/50s letter jacket I got last year.  And brown vintage loafer/moccasins, that I've never worn. Maybe knee socks, too. And this hat:



The Dutch girl look.  fancyfrocks, I'm regretting the blue wool felt we saw in the garment district last year! :p

Maybe I was a little too good at the Los Angeles garment district. Anyway, in a spirit of naughty mischief innocent curiosity, yesterday I checked out Fabric.com's current sale fabrics. I found very little to interest me, until I clicked on a set of Rayon Shirtings. And realized that the prints looks very familiar. As in I-know-I've-seen-this-in-a-vintage-catalog familiar. Squee!

So I have four yards of this on its way to me!  I love red, but have none of it in my vintage wardrobe.




Plus two more yards of the navy colorway, for a blouse.



And then on a whim, I got pretty much the last of this printed voile, thinking it looked somewhat 30s. Boo hiss, or cheer? And if cheer, what on earth should I do with it? :)

The Glamour Daze blog just posted some color/colorized photos from the 1920s. Besides being super pretty colors anyway, I adore being able to see actual clothes, in actual color, on real people.

I actually only saw a few of them on the Vintage Baroness's blog entry, when the last one in her entry all but electrified me.



Wait - are those BLUEBONNETS?!

( Read more... )

Well, we've had a very pleasant break from intense heat for just over a week.  We've gotten only a little rain, but there have been enough clouds to keep the temperatures definitely below 100º.  Mid- to upper-90s is *much* better than the 100s, especially when there's some shade.  Yesterday got up to 102º, but it's only 93º now and cloudy.  The next week shows continued 20-30% chances of thunderstorms every day and highs only in the low 90s.  This may mean that we've had an early hot summer, and it won't get hot for extended periods again; or it may mean we'll have a second bout once August gets established.  Honestly, the second seems very probable.  We had some real hot years when I was in high school, and I distinctly remember sweltering in class in late August.  It was not fun.  But for now, we're enjoying all we can get.

• YTD Days over 100º:            20
• Current 100º Streak:               1
• Longest 100º Streak:              9
• YTD High Temperature:    105º
  
  I've been a little absent, since sewing didn't go as well as I'd liked last weekend and I was frustrated.  My first Vogue pattern turned out a little stickier than I had expected, but because of the sizing, not the construction.  I think it's all taken care of now. I'm currently waiting on my black linen to dry so I can cut out the McCall skirt in it.  That pattern was ridiculously easy to trace off, being printed.  The Vogue was a Royal Pain; there must have been 60 dots I had to transfer and connect and interpret.
  
  I have a solo in one of the Impressions songs!  It's pretty fun, and I was very surprised to get it.  And the big ending for "The Impossible Dream" goes up to a high C.  I *can* hit that, although I don't think I've ever done it in concert.  But I'm the only one who can hit it in Impressions, and it's pretty necessary for completing that last chord.  I ran through it with Miss D after rehearsal on Thursday, and Mr. A was impressed.  (He's apparently not gotten over me singing baritone in part of H.M.S. Pinafore.) He pointed out that that does indeed give me a three-octave range. Me and Julie Andrews, indeed! Yeah, I've got the range, but it's not all pretty!  :p  It was very nice of him to say so, though, and it made me feel good. :)
  
  Oh, and the pea green wrapper is this close *holds up two fingers* to being completely, absolutely finished.  Last night we watched "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines," and I almost completed the belt.  (One strip of fabric, interfaced with a strip of domestic cotton organdy.)  All I have left is one thread bar for the second hook, and possibly a second set of thread bars so I can belt it a little looser.  Whee!
  
  More later - I need to look up my notes so I can finalize my tracing of the overalls pattern.  If all goes well, I can cut out the black linen McCall skirt and the denim overalls. Then I can do a lot of sewing before having to change serger thread.  Matter of fact, I'm going to try to avoid serging on the overalls at all; felled seams are much more appropriate anyway.

But not together. Someone asked how I survive the heat. Survive? Just try to avoid being out in it.


The buttonholes on the green wrapper took a loooong time.  Seventeen (17) of them!!!  Sheesh, I didn't know I was that incompetent. It's not like I've never done them before.  Next on that project?  Seventeen (17) buttons to sew on!!!  Yay.  At least they're cute, caramel-colored vegetable ivory whistle buttons.

I've also been doing some vintage sewing.  Thanks to the gorgeous-and-talented fancyfrocks, I haz a playsuit pattern! I've been wanting to try some circa 1940 shorts for a while, so that was terrific.  Unfortunately after I traced everything off and modified it, I discovered I didn't have enough fabric. Those things take a lot of material.  Hmph.  But I ended up in Lewisville, waiting on Bubbles for an hour, last Friday, so I spent some time at the Hancock's and came away with some linen-cotton stuff in a good weight.  (Sheer shorts? No thanks.)  It's a very weird neutral color, too gray to be khaki but too green to be gray. I had a hard time finding thread.  But I cut them out Saturday and assembled Sunday and a little last night. I just have to finish up the hem and do buttons tonight. And fix the placket somehow. Does anyone have any tips for getting them smooth? They always give me such a time.

Also at Hancock's I got denim for my circa 1940 overalls.  It's good dark indigo, not blue-black, in a sturdy but not crazy-heavy weight.  The felled seams worked extremely well on the shorts, so I'm going to do them.  I also tested the halter top of my pattern to make sure it fits. It does, even the crossed straps!  Question: What thread should I use?  How traditional is the gold-colored thread? I think I'd like it, but I'm not sure if it's the right look for these.  And what about buttons?  There are seven or eight fastening the overalls up under the left arm, and two in back fasten the straps.  They'll be quite visible.  Dark blue, to hide on the denim, or metal? What type?

And further at Hancock's I got a lighter, smoother linen-cotton in a good light khaki; and at Joann, where I got thread, I came away with a black linen blend with a woven stripe, and an awesome brightish leaf/pea green linen blend.  The khaki skirt I need because my other khaki skirts (1) don't fit right because I didn't bother to draft my pattern right, (2) are obviously vintage/too full for everyday summer wear, and/or (3) too modern or casual for when I do want to be a bit vintage.  The black skirt will be fairly simple; I just need another black skirt, and I'm not waiting time on details for black fabric.  The khaki and the green, though, I'm not sure about.  I need to look through my pattern stash for some designs with interesting seams or cut and is flowy without being hip-enhancing. *g*  And not very pleated, at least for the khaki skirt, because linen-cotton does a terrible job of holding pleats.  The green might do better.  I do like that green color!


The heat continues, no surprise.  Yesterday? 105º.  Yep, new high for the year.  Today's high isn't finalized yet, but we've stood at 103º for the 4, 5, and 6 pm hourly recordings. Also a new 100+ streak, which should continue through Thursday.  We've got some chances for rain scheduled for the weekend, so that should drop us into the low 90s.

Edit: Yep, today was 104º.

YTD Days over 100º:            17

Current 100º Streak:               7

Longest 100º Streak:              7

YTD High Temperature:    105º

I was thinking longingly last week of such things as soft sweaters, cozy flannel skirts, and warm tights. *g*  There's always a point, usually a couple weeks after either warm or cool weather has become firmly established, that I earnestly desire the opposite!  Then I just go on with what I'm stuck with.  ;)

Since I have to. I guess.

;-)
 

 

roses_for_ann, I have you to thank for this dilemma:



Blue. And silver. And deco.  My winter coat is navy. And it's on (sort of) sale for this week, plus free shipping.  But it's still not a steal, and I certainly don't need it.  Agh! What to do?

From jordannamorgan:

Comment and I will give you 3 interests on your list, and 3 icons, for you to explain. Then you must post the answers in your own journal and allow others to comment.