pattern junkie

Web Junkie July 31, 2010

Wecome to Saturday!  Here are some links for your browsing pleasure:

• The next "Frock by Friday" begins at Grosgrain on Monday.  Participants will be making the Anda dress from Burdastyle, pictured above.  (The idea is that you start on Monday and finish by that Friday.)  I'm going to participate -- I'm hoping that it will help me learn to sew more efficiently -- but I'm already complicating the project in my head.  How about layered chiffon?  A different neckline?  Godets?  A belt instead of elastic?  Maybe I should throw in the towel now and call if "Frock by February."
• Badges?!  We don't need no stinking badges!  Except when they're from the Vintage Sewing Wiki!  Pick yours up here.
• Sewing With Trudy has a handy, super-easy skirt tutorial.  Love the fabric she used!
• New Vintage Lady has a fantastic and very interesting article on vintage pattern pricing.  
• Trying to date some vintage fabric?  Mena at The Sew Weekly has a handy tip up her sleeve here.
• I'm guilty of The Seven Deadly Sins of Sewing.  Are you?
• Laura at Sew Chic has an article on finding old sewing and dressmaking books on the Internet Archive.  I'm cursing her already for pulling me into another web-based black hole!
• Carisa at Vintage Red has a few things to say about Vogue's new fall patterns!

The Dolman Dilemma

I never thought about how challenging it would be to illustrate a dolman sleeve until I ran into Simplicity 5286.  The artist knocked it out of the park, don't you think?

 

The poses, from front to back:

1. The "Look What the Cat Dragged In"
2. The "Yes, The Bathroom Is That Way But If You Bother Me Again I'll Cut You"
3. The "Oh My God, Honey, When I Sai You Should Get a Perm I Was Joking"

Great Expectations

The lovely Carmencita B sent me this great image -- an Indygo Junction quilt pattern, The London Jacket:

Carmencita pegged it perfectly -- the model in the upper right is thinking, "OMFG being a model is so not what I thought this job was gonna be!"  You know she was hoping for a bikini and a beach, not a shapeless apron and an Ikea kitchen!

A Confident Sexuality

 

It takes a brave woman to strike a pin-up pose in footie pajamas.

Kwik Sew 868

I Can't Hear You

We've all been stuck in conversations we can't get out of.  Pity poor Red in McCall's 5864:

 

"And then Linda said she was going to bring a lemon pie and I said no, I wanted to bring my lemon chiffon cake and we can't have too much lemon at the luncheon because when there's too much tartness in a menu it really takes away from the savory quality of the casseroles, which is what anyone who knows anything about cooking knows but would you believe that Sheila Johnson said..."

Sometimes being overly polite, like Red there, just leads to pain.  It doesn't hurt to take a page from the animal kingdom in these situations.  I once had a wonderful dog named Hopkins -- a Corgi/Shepherd mix full of attitude who basically looked like a German Shepherd who'd been hit by a shrinking ray.  Anyway, every morning we'd walk by a house where another dog would throw itself at the fence, barking its fool head off.  Most dogs, given that situation, would bark right back -- but Hopkins would trot on by without a break in his step, without even a glance to that yapping idiot.  And I can't help but be reminded of that every time I look at Advance 9798:

 

There's Purple, yap-yap-yapping...and Black and White just blissfully tunes her out.  Well done!

Web Junkie July 12, 2010

First, a little Monday morning eye candy, courtesy McCall's 3696:

The dress is gorgeous, but the hat?  The hat kills me!  And the gloves and purse?!  Amazing.

Lots of fun stuff around the web lately, and I meant to get it up this weekend.  Instead, here are some clicky-clicks for your Monday:

• It's bad enough that all of you super-prolific sewing bloggers turn out gorgeous piece after gorgeous piece with such regularity (how do you have such great time management skills?  you don't actually work or cook dinner or do anything else productive, do you?), now I find the blog New Dress a Day.  The goal?  To refashion 365 dresses in a year for $365: 365 dresses, 365 days, 365 dollars.  With 140 days to go, she's made impressive progress -- I'm envious!  (Plus she's based here in L.A., so she must be scouring the legendary Jet Rag dollar sale!)
• Sewaholic has a handy tutorial on how to match prints along seams -- a good thing to know, since mismatched stripes can only lead to trouble!
•  It's not sewing-related per se, but Jessica at Chronically Vintage is having a fantastic giveaway for a $75 gift certificate for vintage eyewear at etsy shop Collectible Spectacle.  More swooning!  Hurry, the entry cut-off is midnight EST tonight!
• One of my fave new vintage blogs is The Freelancer's Fashionblog, which I initially found when looking for vintage hair tutorials.  Vintage fashion, fun musings and great photos...not to mention a Finnish perspective.  Check it out!
• I keep forgetting to link to this hilarious post at CoudreMODE, Edie Scissorhands.  Just click it.  Trust me on this one. 

Say Cheese!

I am one of those people who looks horrible in most photos.  I mean it.  Nine times out of ten, the camera will catch my eyes somewhere between half mast and closed and my smile crookedly sliding off my face.  Recently I found a baby photo where I sported that expression.  It actually was a tremendous relief: I realized that my horrid photos could be blamed on genetics.

If you think I'm going to post examples here, well, you're sadly mistaken.  But if you want an example of how my eyes tend to droop like saggy curtains, making me seem drunk?  Check out Advance 9926:

And Advance 2831 really knocks it home.  It's the whole package: insipid smile, closed eyes, dork dork DORK!  Really, I swear this could be me:

These illustrations are almost as confusing as the one with the mysterious chair I posted about last week.  The whole advantage of illustrations over photos is that you don't have to deal with awkward moments like these.  What made the illustrator decide to go this route?  Why capture your model at the worst possible moment?!

Maybe...maybe some models curse illustrators the same way I curse cameras.  It's the only explanation I can think of!

Stop, Drop and Drool

Oh, my.  These just showed up on the Vintage Pattern Wiki.

I won't bother to try and describe them.  Just sip your coffee and savor the pretty:

 

Vogue Couturier 568

Vogue Couturier 204

Vogue Couturier 501

Mini-Me

Peruse vintage patterns for a while, and you'll quickly notice an oft-used convention in the illustrations: two "normal sized" models and one "mini," squeezed in to show the back view or a third option.  Usually, it works just fine and dandy, like in Simplicity 2402:

There, the poor mini doesn't even get the benefit of a full body!  Here's another example -- Simplicity 8535:

Sure, Magenta looks like the kind of bad girl who would beat up someone two thirds her size, but we just accept that Black is in her own separate reality and move on.

Sometimes, however, the Two Big/One Little goes horribly, horribly wrong.  Take Vogue 1059:

Yikes!  I don't know whether Black is petting Little Print with her absurdly large gloved hand or if she's just conjured her out of thin air, but I guarantee you she's up to no good.  I predict she has a whole host of nefarious plans that she'll be sending Little Print out to enact.  Is Red in on the plot?  From the look on her face, I have to assume so. 

This I do know: if I wake up in the middle of the night with Little Print standing next to my bed staring at me, I'm toast. 

Web Junkie July 4, 2010

Butterick 3306

Happy Fourth of July!  In between eating ice cream and enjoying fireworks (in your stars and stripes apron, of course) here are some fun links for the week:

• Vote on the new logo for the sewing pattern wiki!  And did you know that the wiki is now home to over 30,000 vintage sewing patterns?  Beware its addictive powers!
• It's been a great few weeks for tutorials: first, there's one at Tilly and the Buttons for a quick and easy bow belt.
• Speaking of bows, the Selfish Seamstress has instructions for pants with a bow.  While you're at her site, be sure to check out her post on next month's Burda and clown love.  That's all I'm saying.
•  Last but not least, Gertie has a fantastic tute on using horsehair braid. 

Now go make something go boom!