Vacation Style

I spent the last week at my grandparents' house in the country, and it was a much-needed break!  They live in the country amongst fields and pastures, and one of my favorite things was to sit out on their patio and peruse some new-to-me vintage magazines.  

I love the fashion illustrations!  And while it's always the fancy dresses that inspire awe, sometimes it's the casual looks that get you through the day.  That's what inspired this particular vacation look!  I absolutely love the "soft & sexy" t-shirts from American Eagle Outfitters, the only things I've ever bought in their store.  They're, as labeled, super soft and the drape is nicer than the average t-shirt.  This black one is a staple for me, especially since the length is a tiny bit cropped and perfect for my shorter torso.  (I think this one on the site is the one I've got... mine may be a bit more fitted, though.)

I paired this comfy t-shirt with some flats and my 1930s khaki clam diggers.  I took these photos with only basic makeup on and wrinkles in the trousers, true to vacation laziness!  This is real stuff right here, folks!  

While I do totally love my yoga pants, this vintage-y look is my midway point of effort between them and full-out vintage garb.  I'm sure ladies back in the day had similar looks because everyone needs a chill day.

What's your boring-but-fantastic, sort of vintage-y relaxation style look like?  Or do you, like a lot of us, just swing from yoga pants to full-out vintage depending on the day?

1940s Ford & Floral

A couple weeks ago those of you who follow me on IG gave your input and said I should use my tropical rayon with this 1940s pattern.  You spoke, and I listened!

But sometimes sewing doesn't go as planned.  Sometimes you do a muslin test of a pattern you think is going to be so easy that you really consider it just a formality of being a "good sewist," then it epically fails.  Then you try another muslin, sure this time it will work, and it turns out to be worse than the first. 

At this point in the story I pulled a CeeLo and told that stupid muslin, "FORGET YOU!"

Sometimes you just have to go balls to the wall (in the aeronautical sense) and just cut into the fashion fabric and hope for the best.  (I've got sewing details on this pattern in the post with a TLDR summary at the bottom!)

I realized after cutting into my fashion fabric that using cotton muslin as a test for a rayon garment just doesn't work well.  The cotton behaves differently than the rayon, and the fitting adjustments I made on the cotton were not necessary on the rayon.  My cotton muslins were far too roomy at the waist, by about 5-6 inches, in fact.  I tried to combat this with bringing in the side seams and back darts, but it ended up looking stupid with the kimono sleeves and looser fit of the shoulders.   BAH!

For my fashion fabric, the only adjustment I did to the pattern was to shorten the shoulder/bodice length by about 7/8".  My torso is a bit shorter than the average person's, so I figured this would be a good tweak.  The length of the pattern in this area also accounts for thick 1940s shoulder pads, a detail I did not consider when making my cotton muslins but did indeed remember in time for the fashion fabric.

The pattern also advises that 2-3" be added to the skirt length for a hem, but since that's usually the amount I remove from a pattern, I just cut it out as it was.

Luckily.... it worked!  The dress has turned out well, though it did involve only one major alteration to the fashion-fabric version I made: I still needed to bring in the waist about 7-8" at the side seams, for there was almost no waist shaping in the pattern at all!  It went almost straight down from bust to hips with very little curve, and I looked like a terrible 1980s tropical shmoo.  I removed the zipper and brought it in about 4" on each side, tapering out to the slim the hips just a tiny bit below and adjusting the bust only as necessary to smoothly meet the curve from the waist.

I made shoulder pads about 3/4" thick, hemmed the dress and let it hang on a padded hanger for a few days to "shape" the shoulder pads correctly.  Then I wore it for the first time yesterday!  

I paired it with a Muchana Panama hat I fancied up with some red yarn pom-poms, blue Swedish Hasbeens, vintage earrings... and a 1940 Ford!  

This is my grandfather's prized car that he built and restored.  Back in his crazy drag-racing teenage years, my grandpa had a 1940 Ford.  He ended up selling it to pay for the hospital bill when my father was born.  A few years ago my grandmother surprised him with boxes full of old car parts... that when put together would make his '40 Ford!  I've never seen my grandfather so happy as when he got those boxes of parts.  He has since built the car, put a Mustang flathead motor in it and gotten it all shined up.  It looks awesome, and he was more than happy to let me borrow it for a shoot.  (You also saw this car in my wedding photos!)

I got a lot of compliments from non-vintage-wearers when I wore this, which kind of surprised me.  Shoulder pads usually earn me some strange looks, but the compliments I got with this ensemble was, "I love the details in it. Clothes don't have details like that," and "Wow, you look fantastic! What a lovely dress!"  I think that's pretty great.

Here is a summary of the pattern details and things I changed:
Fabric: modern rayon, red tag fabric from Joann 
Pattern: 8142 (not sure of the company...)
Year: 1940s war era is my guess!
Notions: 6 buttons, zipper. I also used light interfacing around the neckline.
How historically accurate is it? Pretty accurate as far as fiber content of the fabric and silhouette.  
Any tricky parts to the pattern? The complete lack of waist shaping!  That required major adjusting, and I took at least 7-8" out of the waist.  The point at the back can be a bit trick to line up correctly, but it does wonders in accentuating the bum nicely!
Did you change anything?  I didn't add extra for a hem, just turned it up where the pattern ended.  Took a lot out of the waist, too, as I talked about above.
Time to complete: two days
First worn: 17 July 2016
Total cost: The fabric, I think, was about $15.  The buttons were about $3, and the zipper was from my stash. The pattern was a gift from a lovely friend!
Notes: The drape of this pattern really requires a heavy, draped fabric like rayon. I can't see it working at all with quilting cotton and looking right.

So what do you guys think?  How did it turn out?  Feelin' good about the crowd's pattern choice?

Summer Fun with Temple Towels

One of my favorite parts of summer is being on the water.  Living in Missouri, we obviously don't have beaches, but we do have a lot of lakes and rivers.  Float trips are my absolute favorite, and lounging in the sun next to a beautiful lake vista isn't bad either!

Another part of my fun, as far as lounging goes, is lounging glamorously. We all love the vintage photos of ladies in the sun with their beautiful beach ensembles, and I want to bring more of that into my life.  A fantastic swimsuit and comfy towel are integral parts of that! 

Temple Towels sent me this towel to review and one to give away to you guys.  I wanted to check them out for myself before recommending them to you, and I'm happy to say this towel passes my vintage outdoor glamour test with flying colors!  It comes in a cotton drawstring bag, and the texture!  These towels are some of the softest I've ever felt. They're fluffy as all get out, to the point where I may consider transitioning it to a lap blanket when winter comes.

The particular design I chose is the Ziegfeld Swirl towel, and I like how the design is almost like a mobile photo backdrop.  Now some fun for you guys, a giveaway! 

To find out the details of the giveaway and to enter, check out this post on Instagram.

The giveaway ends on next Monday (July 25th).  Good luck everyone! 

Outfit Details
swimsuit: Old Navy (several years ago)
hat: thrifted
shoes: OLL
towel: Ziegfeld Swirl, Temple Towels

This towel is compliments of Temple Towels, as well as the towel I'm offering as a giveaway for you guys.  The opinions shared are my own, though! For more info you can see my policies page.

The Siren's Call

When I was a super cool early high schooler, my best friend and I would go to the mall every Saturday morning and try on clothes.  Luckily, our parents did not spoil us and we often did not have money to buy all the things we tried on, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.  It was fun to try on all the clothes and splurge every once in a while on some random piece.

Since then, I started wearing vintage, sewing, etc., and the mall no longer holds the same appeal for me.  In fact, I rarely go, and when I do it's usually for shoes, menswear for Jacob, or boba tea.  This past week Jacob and I ventured there to upgrade our cell phones, and it had a strange feeling.

I suddenly felt a pressure to buy all the things. It was a weird mix of my sewist side saying, "Eeew, this clothing feels like crap and stretches too much," and my instant gratification side saying, "But you don't have to put any work into it!  Just slide the card and you can have new, fun stuff!"

Since I hadn't been to the mall in a while, it was a bit of a shock, but I did recall that being one of the reasons I stopped going to the mall so frequently.  There are so many advertisements and just a general feeling of "Get more now" that I don't particularly like. It's all... too fast, too cheap to me now.  When I was younger I hated how quickly clothing cycled through stores because a piece would be gone before I could save up for it.  The more I learn and look at fast fashion, the less I like it.  There I was walking through the mall in a 1940s skirt, a me-made blouse, and 70s/80s shoes handed down to me by a friend, feeling fly and yet... the fast fashion still called like a siren!

Strangely, it still has that tiny bit of appeal of instant reward.  Now I can counter that appeal with the real facts of fashion and prevent myself from buying things impulsively.  I know I don't necessarily need more things to make a good wardrobe; I need the right things.  I'm making/buying things I really love, as proven by the fact that you saw this same blouse in my last post, too!  Despite what the typical blogging world may show... We, too, wear garments more than once, especially ones we love!

I'm not trying to make a specific point in this post.  I just observed how, even after years of "slow" and vintage fashion and education about clothing production, there's still an allure to the quick, easy, and cheap.

If you are a proponent of slower fashion, have you still felt this "siren's call" of fast fashion?  Has your education about clothing production changed your shopping habits, or perhaps motivated your to start moving toward a different kind of wardrobe?

Bicentennial Blouse

Happy 4th of July to my American readers!  Today I'll be partaking in particularly American festivities such as eating meat and blowing things up.  I'll be posting on IG, especially since I am now the proud owner of an iPhone!  A phone that can actually take good photos!!!  It's going to revolutionize my IG game.

I've been saving these photos for a properly patriotic day.  I asked for this fabric for Christmas last year, and I used my tweaked button-down pattern to create this blouse.  The arms are slightly tight at the armscye, so I'll have to adjust it a bit more, but it's  still totally wearable.

What's really cool about this fabric is that it's part of a fabric family! It has a "fraternal twin" print that I'll be sharing soon, as well as a sister print that goes with it as well.  All three of them seem to be poly-cotton blends from the 1970s, when the U.S. was celebrating its bicentennial.  This print is little old-school sailing ships, and the other prints are eagles and Declaration of Independence scrolls!

I paired it with some poppin' red accessories and my favorite gray slacks.  These aviators are totally beat up from me wearing them all the time, but I won't let them go.  I am a bit conscious of the fact that my round face doesn't always look quite right in aviators, and I'm very picky about getting the exactly right lens shape when buying them.  I haven't found a good replacement quite yet, so these janky ones will have to do until then!

I'm going to keep this post short and sweet so I can get onto the festivities!  Wooooo freedom!

Maasai-Inspired 1950s Skirt

This is the last Maasai ensemble post, I promise!  (Though I don't promise you won't see more Maasai-made stuff on the blog... I am a huge fan of their work!)  The last piece in the ensemble I want to talk about is the piece that started it all: the shuka skirt!

As I talked about in my first post, my sister gave me this blanket when she came back to the U.S. for college.  Although I used it mostly for sitting outside, I wanted to do something with it that would give it more of a dignified practical use.  Obviously, clothing is almost always my answer to that!  Why keep memories on a shelf tucked away when you can WEAR them?!

I didn't want to have to deal with lots of stripe-matching, and I needed a pattern that was as fabric-efficient as possible.  I went with a 1950s pencil skirt pattern that I have made up before because it's essentially one long rectangle with shaping created by lots of darts.  I also liked the faux hip pocket detail of the 2nd view.

While I am overall quite happy with how the skirt has turned out, there is one major thing I would do over again if I could: I would underline it.  I started the skirt, apparently, at too late a time at night, and even though I knew I should underline it to keep the shift loose weave in place... I somehow cut it out and sewed up all the darts before I realized I skipped a step.  I was afraid the loose weave would get messed up if I tried removing all the darts, so I switched to a sort of lining-underlining mashup technique.  I pleated the lining material were the darts were in the fashion fabric, and I basted it onto the skirt-rectangle.  I then sewed up the back seam and waistband as if the two layers were one piece of fabric.  I hemmed it up and called it good.

The weave is very shifty, so the lines are, admittedly, not quite straight.  However, that's something that the vast, vast majority of the world is never going to notice, so I'm going to put it out of my mind!

I also saw the hip details as an opportunity to tie in the blouse fabric as well as to make a more dramatic hourglass silhouette.  The flaps are made of the black wool material I used on the blouse, and the buttons match the self-covered buttons that are found on the back of the shirt as well.  The diagonal, dark flaps also add some width to the hips.  While not everyone would go for that idea, it's a common 1950s skirt trick to make the waist look smaller in comparison, and I like it!

I paired the skirt with a beaded leather belt I bought in Kenya.  I LOVE this belt, and it adds to the Maasai beaded layers look.

If you'd like to get this look for yourself, I found a couple shops that can help.  As I mentioned in my blouse post, I've tried hard to pick ethical shops that benefit the communities these designs originate from, so you can buy with confidence knowing you aren't ripping people off.

large check skirt | blue plaid gathered skirt | large beaded belt | blue wrap skirt | narrow beaded belt | high-waisted shuka trousers

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