The Red Sweater re-work

How do you all feel about re-working vintage garments?

I LOVE restoring vintage garments. There is nothing better for me than giving new life to a garment that has been around longer than me twice over. I also love repairing or taking a garment from graveyard status and re-working it to give it new life. When the person who gets it is thrilled with the results, there's no better feeling in the world.

As I was working on some of the many things I made and attempted to make for myself for Camp Hollywood last month, one project I did got a lot of unexpected attention!

My friend, and dance teacher is working out a trade with me. She brought me this sweater: mid-late 50's, cropped, short sleeve, cashmere, and cheery red. SO cute! Only, a sweater like this was made to be worn by itself. Meaning, nothing beneath. Lets just say that with wear, and a lot of dancing, it's had it's share of stress.

Vintage Homemaking: Covering the unsightly.

Happy Monday one and all. I hope you had a great weekend. I actually had a rather mild weekend. I traveled down to the fabric district on Saturday (I'll take pictures of that place soon, I promise) and got some extra yardage for the couch cushions. Now I know I have enough fabric to finish them.

I'm still waiting on the second frame. I'm going to call about it today and hopefully, if it has arrived, get it tomorrow.

But this weekend was actually rather mild. I did go dancing, rather discouragingly (I'll do a post on that later in the week) and on Sunday I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned! It was amusing, I cleaned my 20s apt while wearing my 30s kitchen pajamas all day.

I've been sewing!!

Hi all.

Red & Cream Dream

It's getting colder. Not too fast here in Los Angeles, but it's time to start thinking about warmer clothes. I had this old wool Pendleton that I usurped form a giant pile of clothes at a thrift store some time ago.

I knew it didn't fit, and it was pretty moth eaten in some places, but the wool was so bright and lush that I couldn't pass it by. I stowed it away for some time. I guess waiting on it to call to me to make something out of it. I had always planned a hat with it, perhaps a bag of sorts, and when the beret pattern in chambray turned out so well, I just couldn't help myself. The beret was only a sleeve and a half! Yay! Bag, here I come.

I think the striped piping makes the beret so sporty.

More photos on NVL.

But the red and cream idea didn't start with this hat. Actually it was this dress that is still in the works. You know how you have some fabric, but not enough to make anything substantial but you see a remnant in the store and you just have to have it.

That's how it was with this wool crepe I purchased. Each remnant piece was no more than a yard and a half, but I didn't want to pass them up. I bought these a long time ago, and I always planned to make a two tone garment from them, but then I used one of the larger pieces on something else and the one garment idea just fell away.

Now enters my new favorite dress pattern.

After making some stays, I knew I could finally get the dress to the point of awesomeness. I did all the same touches I did on the first attempt, the chambray linen (i'll have pictures of that one soon). I hand basted the gathers, but with the stays, I was able to be more accurate, and i mean isn't that the point!?

I trimmed the front sipper and d neckline with a woven wool and I love the subtle detail of it.

Because the maroon wool (more reddish than purplish maroon) was too short to make the skirt the length I liked, I used some of the cream wool that was stained. You can't see it on the strips I cut for the skirt, so the addition was perfect!

The thing about two tone garments is that they take a while to make because you can get obsessive about the thread matching. What, I'm alone in that?

I matched the threads for the side zip, I'm a dork.

What remains are the sleeves, the hem, and a hook and eye for the neckline. I may make a shoulder brooch for this dress out of the mums pattern in my flower repro. I've been wanting to make that flower for a while and it seems simple enough.

I hope to have the dress completed in a day or two. I'm just bummed that the red of the beret does not match. Aw well. We cant have everything.

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.

Project announcements!

In my eyes, Nick Cave can do no wrong.

Alright its summer, and since Ive sold most of my summer dresses, I figure I need to make some more. I haven't been sewing these past weeks. Ive needed to work on some other creative projects which are coming along, but I do need some dresses for the hot weather.

Thats partly the reason, the other was I had no fabric. But, the beauty of living where I do is that in downtown there is this fantastic fabric district where you can bet fabric by the pound. Of which Im not kidding. One store, Michael Lavine, has a loft where they take their remnants and if you don't mind digging, you can find some great fabrics.

So here are my projects for the next few weeks.

Ive put the blouses on the back burner because they are rayon, and I need cotton. Im still working on my 20s dress that I posted a few weeks ago. Its nearly complete, I just put it on the back burner. Im going to try and finish it this week.

Also, my awesome dress I eluded to is still in my thoughts. I just hadn't found the right fabric for it until my last fabric excursion when I came across two fabrics that would work perfectly. I just have to save a bit to get them.

But here is the pattern Im using as a template. I know, you look at it and you think, "How in the world is THAT awesome?!" Oh, dont worry, it will be.

Im going back to my WWII dress with some solid color staples. I found these fabrics at the loft I mentioned for $2 a pound!

I haven't decided on the contrasting panel colors yet, but Ill look through my current stash to see what I have. The two below are both cotton. I forget the name of this weave, but the linen below is the same weave.

Cotton eyelet for $1 a yard. You can hate me now.

A calico cotton seersucker. Im also going to make breeches from this fabric too. Squeee!

This linen I am going to make from the dress too, but seeing someone else experiment with rick rack and seeing how awesome and undertoned the garment came out made me decide to give it a try. I never rightly know how to use it, but while shopping I came across this all cotton rick rack and well, I said what the hell. For the contrasting fabric on the pattern Im going to use some vintage cotton I have. I think these will work out rightly well.

Also while at the loft, I came across three pieces of a lovely dark kaki linen which will be PERFECT for my Du Barry suit but safari themed!

Oh! I cant wait. Its going to look so cute!

Also as I try and make all of my repro patterns, Ive cut out my WWII apron. I just have to put it together.

And lastly Im going to make a few more roses from my repro pattern. At my vintage getaway one of the ladies gave me the silk lining from a 19th century garment.

It was just too lovely to throw out, so I backed the shattering silk to red tissue paper. I first tried linen, but that didn't work. Now the silk handles like paper, but its translucent and so lovely and Goth. I think the roses are going to look spectacular.

So thats what's been in the works. Ill keep you all posted!

Roses!

More flowers from my repro pattern!

I dont wear a thimble and the force I had to use to push the needle through 3 layers of glue hardened linen took its toll by digging a crater in my pointy finger :( Gotta wait till that heals before I do anymore hand sewing.

The linen I used for these was originally white. I stained it with an acrylic paint/glue/water mixture. Its not a red as I wanted them. I had to scrap a batch of stain because the deep blue acrylic paint I used was too grainy and like an idiot, I didnt mix it *before* I added it to the glue/water, so I got spotting smears of dark blue in ever paint brush coat.

Cussing all the way to the sink, I started over and this was the result. Also doubled the wire of the stem on these. I like them and Im sure Ill find something to put them on. I might do yellow next...

Tiki dress for drinking.

When I first got this pattern, I didn't particularly like it. I thought it was so not my style, and i just put it in the back of my pattern box.

But then I found myself thinking about it more and more, and I made it for the first time in a brick wool crepe. Then back in the box it went.

I was looking through some of my old unfinished projects some time ago and found an early attempt at a really bad blouse, and a skirt that was too short and too wide. I remember buying some extra of this fabric some years ago, and with an impending get together at a Tiki bar, I decided it was time to put this cotton to use.

I knew I didn't have enough fabric for the dress, so Id have to do some piecing. I made sure I cut the skirt out first, then I used the back of the old blouse for the new dress bodice.

Well, It wasn't large enough. I took two panels from the too wide skirt and cut the pattern to make a kind of nice design, then lining up the grain, I cut the cutting from the pattern into the new fabric. *whew* Also, half way through this project my serger quit on me (rats)!

So here is where serger meets my impatient zig zag stitching.

The front of the skirt is actually two completely different pieces, so being the silly person I am, I made SURE I didn't get them mixed up and marked them accordingly so they wouldn't be opposite.

I wish I could tell you that the facing worked out as well. Oops.

All in all I do like the dress, and its wild colors. I hope its a hit at the Tiki G-to-G.

Finished images can be seen on NVL.