Catalog Sunday: Chicago Mail Order, 1940

 

Catalog Sunday

This sunday it's coats from Chicago Mail Order, 1935

The second satchel bag is complete - with a MONOGRAM!!

Hello lovely people.

I made the satchel again using a maroon colored denim and a light cotton plaid curtain I got from the thrift store. I felt extra special and cut the inside lining on the bias.

MnM 2014: Plaid pajamas completion

Hello lovely people. 

How is your MnM going? Good, I hope. Mine is pretty lively, and nearly complete. I've made two side pairs of pajama pants, and now, I present to you the lovely completion for the great pink plaid pants I made.

MnM 2014: Plaid is the new relax (whatever that means)

Hello, lovely people.

I spent all morning cleaning the apartment. Mopping and throwing away the last of the cat things that could be thrown away. The place seems a bit empty without a bit of fur running around.

MnM 2014: Gathering supplies

Hello lovely people.

Hope you all are doing good. It's been a crazy time for me this year with this month culminating as probably the worst. I hope it ends soon.

Because I stay home so much I tend to sit around the house in my lounge gear. Cotton flannel pants and sometimes matching jackets/shirts because they are comfortable and appropriate enough if I need to walk the pooch down the block for walkies.

My second tailored jacket pt 4: Finished and fun.

Hello everyone. 

Time for the last installment (and tons of pictures) of my tailored-ish jacket.

Another tailored jacket in a week?

Good morning lovely people.

I'd been thinking about what I'm going to sew next for me because I have been going through so many projects for others. Now that it's winter, I was thinking it would be a good time to sew some knits. I envision myself in my own custom t-shirts with cool necklines and perhaps a 3/4 length sleeve but cut to a vintage standard. Oh yes, I can see that.

September Showcase

Good morning!

This past month I got some real neat deals on some cool things and I thought I'd share them with you.

Chambray alteration pt 1

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all are still plugging away on  your Make and Mend projects. I've been blog hopping and I'm seeing tons of people taking advantage of the Make and Mend mentality. It's inspiring! Keep it up!

I guess you could call this an alteration, though, with all the summer refashions going on in the sewing blogosphere, it seems to be an epidemic!

Sheets to dresses. The yay-tastic journey.

I've been in a funk lately. Inconsistent work, and no money make me all sad. I know I'm not alone.

In a moment of solidarity, my friend Jen and I decided to go out on an errand adventure. She needed to get some personal documents and I needed to get out of the house. On our way back to town, we hit the old iPhones up for 'thrift stores' and decided to make a stop at one of our favorite St. Vincent De Paul's.

This place is ginormous, tons of stuff furniture, tvs, clothes and everything.

This day we saw an amazingly tacky wall fixture/ pool table set. Look at it and its stupendousness. It was marked down from $1500 to $1200 to finally $800.

Boy, was I tempted...

The grand thing about this thrift store is that they often have racks of linens and remnants in a rather nice corner of the store. I always go there first.

This visit I found some really great things that I've added to the pile. Often I get a bunch of cheap sheets for mock ups but I've grown a rather large collection of potential garments that I thought I'd share.

These three are all sheets of a poly/cotton blend that I think would make great short sleeves blouses. I envision great buttons and maybe a contrasting collar.

This broadcloth I think would make a great tiki like skirt. I wish there was enough for a whole dress, but what can I do, it was 99¢

These are actual fabric remnants. I love this western one. I recently got a western shirt pattern and I think this will work out nicely with it. This red crinkled stuff, Im not too sure about what it is. I need to do a burn test on it.

The bottom fabric is a cotton duvet. I'm really excited about it. It has a real lovely 40s feel. I'm going to make a dress with this one, from one of my favorite day patterns.

Even though I've gathered all this obscenely cheap fabric, I still picked up a few things in the fabric district when Jen and I had a little downtown lunch.

None of these were over $4 a yard. This denim is a very vintage color. I'm planning to make some jeans and a steampunk corset with what's leftover.

This one is a rayon/cotton blend. I think it has a very 30s feel to it.

This one is a basic cotton plaid and Im most likely going to make a dress from this.

The main reasons we took a detour into the fabric district was I wanted to get some ticking.

I'm gathering the supplies for my homemade girdle. Even stopped by this great HUGE trim store and picked up a yard of heavy duty hook and eyes. One bad thing though, the tapes don't match. The hooks are 3/4" apart, but the eyes are 5/8" apart. Rats. Im debating on whether to cut up and adjust the hooks or the eyes. Ill have to think about it.

I'm also going to repurpose the horrid elastic cincher I bought earlier and cut it up to use as side elastic panels for the ticking girdle. I'm hoping to have it done by the end of the month. I'm going to a birthday party and I want to wear it with my gardenia dress.

The other project I wanted to get fabric for was a flag. I got this great vintage pattern and I wanted to make it out of linen. I also got invisible thread to put it togetehr. I'm curious to see how this will turn out.

So that's about it on my end. All the thrift store fabric, including some that I didn't list was painfully cheap. Like $20 or something. The other fabric is about twice that. This was all amassed over two months, so I don't think that's too bad. I'm gonna start on the hollywood dress first, I think. It's just calling to me.

I love it when a project calls to me.

Plaid Luck

I have monumentally ironic bad luck. Always have. Just a few weeks ago, I was all excited because I FINALLY had some extra money in my pocket. $50! Woo Hoo! But the next day, I get a letter from the phone company saying I owed $50! That kind of shit happens to me all the time.

So its no surprise my meticulous handling of this plaid didn't work.

Ive always wanted one of those plaid skirts cut on the bias like you see on the pattern envelopes. Look at them, how cool the drawn ladies are. "Lookit my skirt, Im cool." Yeah you are.

A friend gave me this plaid. Its a nubby silk, stiff with a great weight and drape. Problem is, well, look how loud it is! HA! She gave it to be because she didn't know what to do with it.

For a while I didn't either, but then that Du Barry skirt pattern came into my life, and I thought about those lovely bias cut plaid skirts, and I said what the hell. I marked the front side pieces as the pieces I would cut on the bias and laid out the plaid.

First off, cutting plaid on the bias has got to be one of THE MOST fabric wasting techniques Ive ever done. But it wasn't just cutting it this way. Look at the plaid.

I started in the corner so as to utilize as much fabric as I could. Apparently it was the one corner that had the only blemish.

See the yellow stripe, its doubled. Its the only place on the entire fabric piece where its doubled, and its the exact width of the fabric piece. Monumentally ironic bad luck.

Im sure you would say its not a big deal, and looking at it, it didn't turn out too bad, but I noticed, and I was trying very hard to make this successful in the traditional execution sense. I mean, I spent 30 min wondering why the plaid at the top of the skirt piece wasn't lining up. The ONLY spot on the fabric, *sigh*.

I just finished the skirt as best I could. Cutting two bias cut pieces eliminated viable pieces of fabric that could be used.

I had to take two of the pleats out of the skirt front. I also had to piece the back of the skirt. I lined up the plaid okay, but it could have been better.

To lessen the bulk of the waist band, I faced it with a basic quilting cotton. Im going to use a slide hook for the closure above the zipper. All thats left now is to hem it.

Thats my plaid adventure.