Saturday Projects...

Favorite pin this morning:

source

It's vintage, long sold (via Etsy) AND it's suede, not one of my faves to wear.  BUT...can't you see it in linen with self-fabric bias trim instead of the "macrame" stitching??

Idea file, people!!  This is going in the "to make" pile.  Because...it's awesome.

But not today. Today I'm going to be blasphemously cutting into a vintage baby slip that has beautiful eyelet trimmings and the tiniest handstitched tucks you've ever seen, and is of the softest white cotton ever. 

 

The "fancy band" portion of the skirt is gorgeous.  All of that beautiful work, tucked away in a trunk or closet, never to be seen again seems rather pointless and sad.  So I'm going to make something new out of it. 

All of you vintage clothing purists out there should probably avert your eyes. If it makes you feel any better I only gave about seven bucks for it at a flea market years ago.  

I have another vintage piece that I'm trying to figure out how to use too, a beautiful lace and batiste slip.  It's frothy and awesome.  The waist measurement is approximately the same as my right thigh.  So, skirt refashion isn't in the cards.  

But possibly a top of some sort?  Or use the elaborate pieces of insertion and tucking and batiste in a new garment?  There are repairs to be made if I intend to use it "as-is".  Nothing for my bottom half would work, even if my waist suddenly shrunk to the size of my right thigh, we're talking about a 100 year old piece of fabric and lace...it would never withhold sitting and friction.  But a top...that might work.  

If I never, ever wash and dry it.  ha.  Handwashing. Dry flat. Forever.  

But first...baby slip cutting-up-ness needs to commence.   Wish me luck.

Lu's Shadow Smocked Dress

Well, it's been quite a little weekend at my house! First I had a bit of a stomach virus (yay.) Then I discovered I was the proud owner of the rarest of rare Macbook Pro's....one with a crashing hardrive.

Do you know how long it takes to do a complete erase and install? Forever. Especially when it doesn't work and you have to do it again. And again. And finally give up and have to schedule a phone chat to explain it to the AppleStud (hi Mike!) who in the end says, 'Dang, girl. You already did everything I was going to make you do. Best send it in.'

ANYWAY. No sewing going on here, just dreaming of sewing. And no blog or email reading and I MISS YOU GUYS. I'm on a borrowed laptop now for kicks and giggles. (Addicted? Me?) And since I don't have anything new to show you, I thought I'd share something old!

This beautiful dress was an Easter dress for Lu when she was 3 years old.


The inspiration for the dress was an article in Sew Beautiful's Easter 1998 issue (my favorite issue ever!) I believe it was a Kay Guiles pictorial. I used a basic yoke dress pattern and the instructions in the magazine for the shadow smocking.

The smocked portion of the dress is at the waist, and involves a strip of fabric (in this case, a scalloped strip of blue cotton batiste) basted to the back of the skirt (white cotton batiste). When the skirt panel is pleated and smocked, the blue shadows through the white batiste creating the "shadow smocking".


The embroidery included a double feather stitch in cream with pink silk ribbon rosebuds.

The collars were treated to the same shadowed blue batiste and pink silk ribbon roses, then edged in gathered creamy cotton lace.


I have a real soft spot for this dress because of the laces. All three laces used on the center front bodice were vintage scraps from my grandma's sewing basket. I have a bit left of the narrow version, but I believe the wide center lace was the last of that piece. A little bit of my grandma stitched into Lu's dress. I'm the only grandchild who sews, so it has always been something I like to think I got from her.

There is featherstitching between the laces on the front, and I remember fussing over the silk floss I used (my first go at silk floss. And possibly my last. I've never mastered its slippery feel!)

The puff sleeves were trimmed in cotton laces, one a Swiss insertion and the other a gathered cotton.


The back of the dress buttoned down with creamy buttons. I hemstitched the placket by machine using one of my "fancy" stitches.


I hope you enjoyed this little walk back through early Quality Time sewing! I still have several things from Lu's baby & toddlerhood to share in the future. My utmost favorite dress, my own design, is yet to come. It is (if I do say so myself) DIVINE.

And there's sewing mojo too...I'm seriously into the 1930s right now, but another 1960s frock in white & blue madras plaid is calling my name too. Stay tuned!

baby things & a sunshine top

I really enjoy sharing my beginning projects with you, and you've been so sweet with comments. Even though I don't currently sew baby garments, I know many of you do. But even more important, you might be able to take a technique I used on one of these garments, and incorporate that into a current project.

Today I'm bringing you two baby/toddler garments that I loved. Lu was a mid-summer baby, so lightweight, cool clothing was a must in her baby/toddler years! Plus, the child just hated clothes. The first is a pink rosebud voile baby romper, made with the Old Fashioned Baby's Summer Clothes pattern.


I added folded release tucks at the shoulder seams and a dainty lace ruffle around the neckline. Three pearl buttons are for decoration only in the center front.


There is beading and lace trim around the leg openings. The crotch closes with buttons and buttonholes because I was still afraid of snaps at this point!


The romper buttons up the back.


This was such a sweet baby garment! I know it seems a little impractical with the crotch buttons, but it actually wasn't. Lu was a year old at this point and I wasn't changing diapers every hour like when she was tiny. I saw a discussion recently where a grandmother was lamenting her daughter-in-law throwing the handmade, lace-adorned dresses and rompers in the washer and dryer. I'd like to point out this romper is 12 years old and was washed & dried in the machine many times. Looks pretty darn good to me!

This next little dress is actually a pink pinafore, made from poly/cotton batiste. This dress features something I was sort of obsessed with figuring out at the time, the "t-yoke" dress. The yoke & center front of the dress form a "T", and then the side portions of the skirt front are gathered to the arms of the "T". It's a very vintage look.


The pattern was a free one in a back issue of Sew Beautiful (my older issues are in storage, so I don't have the issue number handy! Let me know if you want it!)

This little pinafore is just precious. I adore the sweetheart neckline and the t-yoke. I trimmed the neckline and armholes with flat lace edging, and then pin-stitched over the lace header.


I traced the little rabbit applique (it's a needle-turned applique, done by hand) and embroidery design from a great vintage book reprinted at about the time Lu was a baby. It's called "How to Make Handmades for Your Baby". The entire book is adorable. The rabbit is white batiste, and all of the embroidery is done using plain cotton floss.


I mentioned this was a pinafore, although it definitely passes for a sundress or suntop! But here's the back, where you can really see how cute this design is. The back closes with 4 buttons, and the back skirt is circular, creating a cute little flair.


Underneath is a plain white batiste slip. Lu wore this slip under most of her high yoke baby dresses. She had 3 or 4 of these because they are so easy to make. I traced the armhole and neckline from a bodice pattern, then scooped each out just a bit more. I turned under the seam allowances and did a shell hem for a seam finish. The bottom of the slip is finished with a lace-trimmed ruffle.


Baby clothes are so much fun to make. I wish I had saved everything of Lu's, I'd probably be sharing it for months if I did! I hope some of the techniques or patterns you see from my stash might inspire you in a future project.

Speaking of my Lu, she had a band concert tonight. Can you believe this beautiful girl once wore those tiny baby dresses? Amazing.


This weekend turned into a Hotpatterns weekend of sorts! I not only made the Once, Twice, Three Times a T-Shirt, I also made a HP Sunshine Top. Here's a sneak peek:


You'll have to wait for some daylight so I can snap a picture of it on moi! I love love love this tee. I need about a dozen, immediately. If you don't have this pattern you most definitely need it!

dandelion delight

In an earlier post I told you about the Easter dress that originally influenced my desire to learn to sew. That dress is called "Dandelion Delight" and is a vintage reproduction of a baby dress, featured in the 1998 Easter issue of Sew Beautiful Magazine.

This is my version of Dandelion Delight.


This dress was my original "first project", one that I failed miserably at. The experience made me determined, however, to learn to sew (and sew well) so that I could one day return and make this dress for my baby girl, Lu. I'm happy to say that Lu wore Dandelion Delight for her 2nd Easter.

This dress is so beautiful, and it featured so many difficulties for a new seamstress! The skirt is a full circular skirt, and it is in 2 layers, a batiste underskirt (trimmed in wide lace) and a point d'esprit netting lace overskirt:


Finding materials to make this dress proved difficult. As a single mom, there was no way I could afford traditional English netting point d'esprit (which is cotton). I found nylon point d'esprit netting lace in the bridal section though, and batiste in the cottons.


The wide lace for the hems is cotton lace. I purchased it from a mail order catalog, "Home Sew". This was still pre-internet days for me! The wide lace is zigzagged onto the hems of the netting skirt and the underskirt.


The shaped yoke gave me fits, I do remember that. I was stitching 2 layers of skirt remember, to a curved shape. Then, you apply the wide lace to the yoke seam, "pinstitching" OVER the lace header. It was nervewracking. But it turned out lovely.



I found a tiny stash of entredeaux at Hancocks too, and used it to trim the neckline, followed by a narrow cotton lace edging.

The tiny puff sleeves are netting lace with a row of entredeaux beading and gathered edging. I ran a narrow satin ribbon through the beading holes to draw up the sleeves to fit, then tied in a bow.


Sue Pennington Stewart designed the original reproduction, and the pattern was featured free in that issue of Sew Beautiful. Unfortunately that issue (the most beautiful of all my Sew Beautifuls!) has been out of print for more than 10 years. The good news is that Sue is now offering the Dandelion Delight pattern on her website! You can purchase it here.

As a special treat, here's a photo of Lu on that long ago Easter morning, wearing this dress I was so proud of, and a sweet bonnet (also a Sew Beautiful free pattern!)


And of course my gorgeous G-man at age 4, wearing a mommy-made button up shirt complete with a paper pieced farm scene. This was his all-time favorite shirt for a very long time!


It has special meaning for me too, because it was my first published piece. I wrote an instructional article for Sew Beautiful magazine the fall 2003 issue. The article includes the directions for inserting paper-pieced or smocked blocks in little boys shirts. If you have back issues, dig that one out and have a look!

Pink Lacy Baby Dress

This dress was an exciting project for me! It is a reproduction of an early 20th century baby dress, in pink cotton batiste and a variety of cotton laces (both tea-dyed).


After I fell in love with Sew Beautiful Magazine, I had ordered all the back issues I could find. The instructions for this sweet baby dress are in the Easter 1996 issue (now out of print). The article is called "Grandmother's Teddies". The original baby dress was created from an Edwardian slip, part of a mother's trousseau.


The instructions were for a size 2 and I had absolutely NO experience resizing patterns/instructions, so I just had to wait until Lu was old enough I could make this for her!! The bodice is entirely made of lace. Strips of varying widths are zigzagged together to form the majority of the bodice, with a mitered section forming the square neckline.


Vertical strips are then zigzagged onto the right and left edges to form the little cap sleeves. The neckline also has a slightly gathered piece of lace edging adding a sweet ruffle. For those of you unfamiliar with sewing with "French" laces, the lace that does not have a scalloped edge, but is straight on each side is called "insertion". The lace with a scalloped edge is called "edging". (**Note: my laces are actually domestic, not French. I couldn't afford French laces! I found a great mail order catalog that had a cheaper alternative cotton lace in pretty patterns.)


The skirt portion is just 2 rectangles of fabric. The pink batiste was off the bargain table at my local Wal-Mart (which used to carry fabrics!) It was so sheer and pretty. The skirt has 3 folded tucks above a lace "fancy band". A fancy band is really just strips of lace, sometimes bordered by a lace or fabric ruffle, and sometimes just a strip of edging to finish it off.


My tucks aren't exactly evenlly spaced, which probably drove me crazy back then since I was so particular. But now, I love those uneven tucks. I think they are so sweet! And its a testament to my growing skill set.

Underneath the little lace dress is a matching pink slip. I drafted the slip using the neckline and armholes of another dress pattern, and then just a-lining the skirt piece out (measuring the length of the finished lace dress first.) The hem is just a single piece of lace edging. This is just a quick easy way to hem things! I still like to hem with lace, because its so fast and pretty. Maybe I'll do a French sewing with lace tutorial if there's interest!


The neck and armholes are finished with a machine shell-hem. I had a basic machine back then, no bells and whistles, so I used the "blind hem" stitch to cheat this. Looks so dainty! Of course, as tiny as this dress is, it wouldn't have taken long to do by hand. But I was learning how to do all of these techniques and I was always excited to see something actually work out!


I know I am repeating myself, but this is one of my very favorites. I love, love, love this little dress. The original dress in the article was passed down from generation to generation, each baby girl being photographed in the lace dress. I hope that some day I will have future babies in the family to pass on this adorable dress.

in the beginning.

Although my blog is not new, nor is my love of vintage clothing and patterns, I've never taken the time to write out how this all began for me. I thought it might be fun to pull out some early projects and share with you how I fell in love with sewing.

Like many moms who sew, my sewing bug bit after my baby girl was born. For Lu's first Easter I wanted the perfect dress. Something vintage inspired of course, since I've been wearing or loving vintage my whole life. I searched high and low, in store after store, all in vain.

Finally it dawned on me that if I SEWED this magical dress, I could make it anything I wanted it to be. (Except I didn't sew.) That didn't stop me from scouring the pattern counter books for this elusive design. Sadly, even here I didn't find it. I was running out of time and frustrated. I needed a break from the search, so I perused the magazine rack for a few moments. I picked up a magazine I had never read before, Sew Beautiful. It was March, 1998.


I don't know why, but I flipped the magazine over to look at the back and there in glorious full size, color, free pattern inside (!) was my dream Easter Dress. I almost hyperventilated. I bought the magazine and scoured the directions. I started sewing.

Dandelion Delight from Sue Stewart's website
my "perfect" Easter Dress

Needless to say, I had bitten off way more than I could chew with this project. It definitely wasn't a "beginner's" dress and that first foray into sewing ended up in the trashcan. Lu wore a store bought, sweet white dress & bonnet to Easter that year. Rather than be discouraged however, I was determined to figure out this sewing business and proceeded to try again and again.

I cried over my first bound neckline. I was something of a perfectionist, and I kept ripping out my topstitching because I couldn't get it evenly placed. My mom finally told me to leave it, no one would ever know... And she was right. Lu wore that little dress a million times the summer she was 1...and no one ever said "Say, that topstitching isn't quite perfect."

At the end of the summer, I was ready to try Sew Beautiful again. Not Dandelion Delight...no, I still wasn't quite up to that level yet. But I was itching to try smocking. Which brings me to this first project I want to share. This is a vintage reproduction dress, featured in a 1998 issue of Sew Beautiful magazine. The original dress (from the 1930s or 40s I believe?) hangs in the Kent State Museum. Here, I give you my version.


I used a pink dotted swiss I got on the clearance table at Hancocks. They had it marked down to $1...because it was "old". To me, it was lovely and perfect. The pink borders are a matching 100% cotton, also from the clearance bin.

This garment has a lot of firsts for me...my first curved applique border, and my first shaped collar. (Both of which I hand drew the patterns for.) But most importantly, this is my first smocking. I drew on the little dots and pulled them up to form the pleats, because I didn't have a pleater.


I learned to make buttonhole stitch thread loops for the placket (which I cut too low, but then this was also my first foray into pattern drafting, as I didn't have a pattern to make this dress from.)


My first bullion roses, and some of my first embroidery stitching, around the hem.


I got really tired of making bullions and only ended up making them on the front, but I continued the green stitching all around the dress hem:


I don't think there are words to express how much I love this dress. Lu wore it for her first birthday portrait in August of that year, and for many Sundays and special occasions afterward. Remember, back in March of that year I had never sewn anything past home ec class in high school. I had found my calling, and I never looked back.

Back then, I didn't even have a computer, much less the internet. That came along a few years later. In alot of ways, sewing saved me. I was a single mother of 2 toddlers and I was living on less than $7,000 a year. I needed this creative outlet, just to keep the stress of my every day life at bay. Many days there was only me, the babies, and the hum of my machine.

I can't wait to share more things with you! There's more to the story of my early sewing adventures, and some truly beautiful garments I would love to show you.