As you may have already read, I started work on a sheath dress made from a 1960s dress pattern. I am happy to report that the dress is now finished, though the end result bears little resemblance to the pattern sketch. Mostly because the pattern sketch does not show a sack of potatoes. Once again I fell into the trap of being entranced by the lovely, stylish drawings on the fronts of vintage patterns, choosing to ignore the little voice in my head that knows you can only trust a photograph on these kinds of things.
Not your average von Trapp dress
I normally hate IKEA, but…
…it was just before closing time and there was some cute fabric I wanted to grab (and the boy wanted some pear cider from the Swedish shop) so I allowed myself to be dragged into the 9th circle of hell, just this once. Across the warehouse-wasteland expanse of the store, a bold red print called out to me. But on further inspection, the print belonged to just some pillowcases. How disappointing!
Or, what if I could somehow turn those pillowcases into something wonderful? It took an evening, but out of two pillowcases and a bit of bias binding, this skirt emerged (and because the pillowcases each had a zipper, I’ve got an extra now!):
60s sheath dress
Last night I started work on this lovely square-neck 60s sheath dress pattern that my mother bought for me at a flea market somewhere in deepest, darkest Pennsylvania:
The pirate jacket
My boyfriend and I are currently saving up for the mortgage deposit to buy a boat (a huge barge, not a tiny narrow canal boat) to live on starting this winter. We don’t want your average housewarmi- sorry, boatwarming party, so we’ve already decided it’s going to be a full pirate fancy dress theme. And if you’re throwing a fancy dress party, you’ve got to be the best dressed ones there!
For him, I bought Simplicity 4923 and have very slowly started to make the jacket portion out of a gorgeously thick, black silk velvet I scored at Walthamstow Market for £3/mt (by rights, it should’ve been at least £20/mt). He picked out some very nice hemispherical antique brass buttons from MacCulloch & Wallis plus some dark gold braid for the accents.
Summery vintage kimono top
I made this with a vintage-style crepe-de-chine dragonfly print from efabrics.co.uk (99p a meter! and it was coincidentally made in Japan), and a matching jade green crepe-de-chine from the same place that wasn’t on sale, so it was £2 a meter. I was really breaking the bank on this project…
Green & orange oriental wrap dress
I saw this dress while looking through TopShop’s website recently:
I love it, but a) the bastards don’t make it in my size (what the hell, every other dress but not this one?? argh.), and b) I could make that!
Marc Jacobs-esque, black ruffled New Year's top
I had a bunch of black satin left over from my black vintage evening gown so I thought I’d spice it up a bit by adding some fancy satin accents to it. I think the end result has something of a 70s tuxedo feel to it.
Vintage black satin evening gown
I made this in November 2005 with ten day’s notice. My boyfriend told me that his best friend’s birthday party was back on for the weekend. This wouldn’t cause too much alarm in most cases, but this was her 30th birthday and she was renting out a country house for an entire weekend with a black tie catered dinner on Saturday night.
Yes, I said “black tie” – that means I needed a posh evening gown in 10 days!! I don’t have posh money, but I did have a this pattern, Simplicity 5876, for a vintage evening gown that I fell in love with but had no occasion to make or wear
bracelet bag – brown wool, hot pink flower, + lace!
I was already making a jacket and skirt out of some gorgeous wool suiting fabric (photos of the jacket & skirt HERE!), so I made this bag out of scraps of fabric leftover from the suit (and the lining of the bag is scraps from the lining of the jacket!). I freehanded the pieces to make it match the magazine photo, but spruced it up with some wide white lace, hot pink stitched flower, and some sparkly beads.
