#sewist – Crown Made Vintage Seamstress

It seems I am constantly rotating my vintage wardrobe: buying new things, feeling guilty about buying new things, going through my closet and thinking “what do I REALLY need?” (hint: I don’t “need” any of it ha!), and finally selling some things to make room. Recently I was looking at a vintage dress for sale and thought “I have a vintage pattern that would work for that! Why do I need to buy it”? Well, I’m going to dust off my vintage patterns and fabrics and get to work! What’s the point of having all these fabulous items if I’m not going to use them?

I’m determined to work through what I have with the fantastic library of vintage patterns I already have (of course I wouldn’t pass up a good opportunity to buy more! In fact, I just bought some of the above fabrics yesterday. Oops. ) Below I’ll go through some projects I have in mind for the year plus the inspirations behind them. No surprise, some of those inspirations come from Mad Men. The clothing on that show is SO GOOD. This will also be something I can come back and reference if I’m feeling uninspired or don’t know what my next project will be. So, here goes!

I got this amazing cotton pique floral border print from a Facebook seller. It was too unique to pass up! I thought it would look good as a Butterick 6453 dress with a white top, a la Megan Draper’s “Maria Von Trapp” outfit from the Tomorrowland episode.

Here’s this one again!! Since this has been in the pile the longest, it is definitely going to be my next project when I finish the shirtdress I’m currently working on (which will be the subject of my next post!)

I’d really like to use my smaller fabric pieces to make more of these vintage Butterick tops, which I noticed Betty wearing similar on the “Long Weekend” episode.

Now for some non-Mad Men inspiration! I LOVE blue florals, and I have quite a collection of vintage and modern- way too many for them to be hiding in a drawer. While perusing Vixen by Micheline Pitt’s website, this one caught my eye! I don’t have many fitted dresses, so it would be a nice addition to my closet.

*For more small yardage stash-busting: This Gertie Simplicity 8882. I love the little peplum and the fitted top! (This is Gertie fabric, too)*

*I wear aprons just about every day, and would love to make one with multiple pockets!! Also good for small yardages.*

*Probably easiest are simple shift dresses with these groovy 60’s fabrics! The orange is a polyester knit, which isn’t my comfort zone, but with a simple pattern it shouldn’t be too bad.*

And lastly, a high necked, darted bodice, back zip dress. It looks simple BUT I’ll have to grade this one up because vintage patterns were not multi-sized like the one’s we have today. This one is a 30″ bust. Uh, no.

I think I definitely have a start on my plan for the year! It sure beats spending two hours trying to think of my next project, which is my usual plan. I enjoyed having a challenge with the Liz dress, and I’m excited about these projects because working with mostly vintage patterns is more of a challenge than working with modern patterns. The pattern companies expected that every woman knew how to sew therefore there weren’t extremely detailed instructions, some of the techniques they used are different (in my next post I’ll show some of those differences and how I completely disregard them and do things my own way), and as I pointed out above, the patterns came in one size only and sometimes need to be graded up or down.

If you’ve read this far, thanks! I’m pleased that so far I’ve kept the blogging going 2 weeks in a row, and stuck to my Sunday morning blogging pledge. Maybe I’ve given you some inspiration for your next project! I’m excited to dive back into those buckets of vintage patterns that have been hiding under my sewing table.

Tag: #sewist

Using what I have – a Plan for the year!