Two things of note: I don't normally 'do' cream/white or similarly light-coloured dresses and I've steered clear of polka dots since my rather cartoonish take on vintage back in 2013. For these reasons my second version of Tilly and the Buttons' Martha Dress shouldn't work for me, but it's really rocking my world!

I already waxed lyrical about Martha when I blogged about my first version and I'm fairly certain that she may well be my pattern soulmate. I love the silhouette of the princess seamed bodice with the swishy skirt, and by omitting the overtly 60s/70s accents like the mandarin collar and big sleeves, I've found a go-to shape that works well for both work and play. The retro accents are great by the way, I personally just find the dress more wearable without them.



Just like my first Martha, this one is also made from a medium-weight knit. I bought it on Goldhawk Road last year after falling in love with its waffle texture, but I really can't remember the name of the shop...as you look up the street with the tube station behind you, it's one of the very first ones on the left hand side of the road.

Once again, despite working with jersey, I wanted my dress to keep its shape and look structured, so I reinforced the waist with a hardy ribbon and didn't skip the centre back zip. Like before I cut out a straight size 4 and hemmed the skirt at the mini length, which on my petite frame is the right amount of modest.

The only thing that bugs me about my first version is the neckline. I finished it with a facing (which the pattern calls for as it's designed for woven fabrics) which I then top-stitched, resulting in a slightly wavy finish due to the ponte's thickness. Vowing to avoid that issue this time, I followed a reader's advice to under-stitch the facing instead. Sadly, the result was the same so I ended up unpicking the entire facing and simply turning the neckline seam allowance under and top-stitching...which worked a treat! 



I first wore this at a wedding a couple of weekends ago and it seriously felt like cheating. Even though I felt cute and put together, I was so ruddy comfortable...it was just like wearing the pyjama equivalent of a dress! I could have added a belt for some extra glamour, but it was hot and I was like 'meh'!

As an aside, do you wear or blog your makes first? I have this OCD thing going on where I prefer to blog my makes before their first outing when they're still looking as pristine as possible, but that wasn't the case this time. There was a mixed reaction when I raised this on Instagram, but Rachel of House of Pinheiro made the excellent point that by blogging after wearing you can give a better review of how the garment fares in the real world. 


Anyway, it's safe to say that you've not seen the last of Martha from me. In fact, the jerseys on the right-hand side here are all earmarked for future versions! I may even make it up in some slinky viscose, so watch this space.

On that note, I'll leave you with this wonderfully flattering picture of me being a brat. While taking my photos, Charlotte suggested that I might want to look happier, so I flashed her my sweetest smile...

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

When Portia invited me to take part in the Refashioners again, I jumped in without hesitation. 

With my adrenaline pumping, I sought inspiration on Pinterest and fell hard for the patchwork look. It seemed to be the perfect match for Seamwork's woven tee, Hayden, which I'd been dying to make for ages.

Like a total nincompoop though, I totally missed her very clear memo that this year's challenge is all about jeans.

As unlikely as it sounds, distracted by work and life, I somehow managed to convince myself from the very start that it was about denim in general. Despite her follow-up emails, related blog posts and blindingly obvious blog button, I didn't twig until it was far too late.

Nonetheless, Portia is SUCH a gracious host, that she still humoured me with a guest blog and that's just one of the many reasons she's a beautiful human being.




Find out more about what charity shop finds I transformed to create Hayden, why I paired it with my faux-quilted pleather skirt and what I think to the pattern and a boxy fit.

Also, get involved in Portia's community challenge for a chance to win amazing prizes!



Thursday, August 04, 2016

You guys! Kerry and I are so overwhelmed by your participation in #VPJuly on Instagram - between us we posted over 2,250 inspirational photos to celebrate vintage sewing and fashion! It's been an absolute blast, so THANK YOU all!

Although I'm a little sad July is over, don't forget that #VintagePledge is a yearlong challenge. You can sign up by leaving a comment and if your makes on our dedicated Pinterest board you'll be in with a chance of winning brilliant prizes at the end of the year! Details on how to become a pinner are here and we'll be announcing our prizes and sponsors in September.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a cracking round-up of #VPJuly...


Guest Bloggers


Our guest bloggers delighted us with their array of beautiful vintage makes. The links below will transport you straight to their posts, taking you back in time:



Sponsors/Prizes

       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

Of course #VPJuly wouldn't have been quite as exciting without our fantastic sponsors and generous prizes. Check out what they have to offer:

Bamber Sewing Machine Centre / Beyond Measure / Ditto Fabrics / The Foldline / Girl Charlee Fabrics / Love Sewing / Minerva Crafts / Remnant Kings / Sew Over It / Sewn Bristol / Simplicity New Look / The McCall Pattern Company UK / The Splendid Stitch / The Village Haberdashery / Tilly and the Buttons / WeaverDee Sewing & Craft / WhiteTree Fabrics

Thanks again to everyone who got involved and I hope we can keep the momentum going until the end of the year!
Monday, August 01, 2016

I've got a bonus #VPJuly post for you all today, to mark the end of our July Extravaganza! As well as a guest blog over on Kestrel Makes, the inspirational Erin of SeamstressErin Designs is sharing a cool 1970s number with a matching outfit for her beautiful baby girl! Erin is not only inspiring for taking part despite giving birth very recently, she's also got a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, has a growing range of sewing and knitting patterns and has given us a wonderful insight into the style of some of our favourite bloggers!

Butterick 3068 vintage 70s dress 4

Here I am with my #VPJuly dress (and the little munchkin that has been keeping me from doing much of any sewing). When Marie asked me to take part, she mentioned that she liked that I often sewed vintage patterns but put a modern twist on them. Well, I guess I took that as a challenge to be true to a pattern as this a deviation from my norm since I used a 1970's dress pattern and 1970's fabric with (almost) no modifications!
  butterick vintage 3068 envelope

I used Vintage Butterick 3068 that I bought on my honeymoon in New Zealand. I couldn't find a date for the pattern, but it's clearly from the 1970's (those collars are a dead giveaway!). It's described as "semi-fitted, slightly flared dress in mid-knee length has front zipper closing, shaped waistline seam, pointed collar, and sleeve variations." For an explanation of why I agonized over using this fabric and why I picked this pattern, pop on over to the post on my blog.
  vintage dress with collar

I did intend to sew the dress totally as written with its collar. However, once I got the collar sewn (immaculately, if I might add), I basted it on and thought that it threw the proportions off. The adorable floral bodice was drowned out by the giant collar. I think the collar might have worked had I not color-blocked the dress, so I may give the collar another shot if I sew the dress again without sewing the bodice and skirt from separate fabrics (I didn't have enough of the floral to sew the whole dress out of it and I thought an entirely denim dress more plain than I wanted. I considered a denim dress with collar and pocket cut out of the floral, but the floral is pretty thick and I was worried that it would make the collar too bulky. I also wanted to use as much of the floral as possible, so this is where I ended up!)
  Butterick 3068 vintage 70s dress neckline

I'm super happy with the finished dress, most especially the bodice as the cheery floral is just so happy-making! I happened to have a zipper with an interesting pull in my stash in a yellow that coordinated, so I opted to use it, thinking that if I was going to insert a centered zipper, I might as well emphasize it. Normally I would swap centered zippers out for an invisible zipper, but again, I chose to make the dress (almost) as written.
  Butterick 3068 vintage 70s dress pocket

I'm kind of obsessed with the pockets on this dress. I'd like them a bit more centered (they are set quite wide, but I bet that's how the pattern was graded into this "large" size 16) on future dresses, but it doesn't bug me enough to rip and re-sew the pockets on this dress. I think one of the most fun things about vintage patterns is the details, and the slanted shape of these pockets that echoes the slanted shape of the waist seam is no exception!
  Butterick 3068 vintage 70s dress

Thanks to Marie and Kerry for asking me to take part and for inadvertently encouraging me to sew a vintage dress without adding a modern twist!
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Tasha of By Gum, By Golly may be pint-sized, but she's a vintage sewing and knitting dynamo! Her style is to die for and if you have the pleasure of meeting her, like I have, it'll leave you wishing you were neighbours. Today, she's sharing a very cute peasant blouse with us, but keep your eyes peeled for her own post soon, taking us through her pink leopard-print cigarette pants too!


I am so happy to be participating in the Vintage Pledge July extravaganza! My pattern is from the era of my youth, and not an era whose fashion I typically go for...the 1980s!


It all started because I had a style of top in my head for awhile that I wanted to sew, but I could never turn up a pattern to recreate it! Until recently on a fortuitous Etsy hunt, I picked up this pattern from the 1980s, See & Sew by Butterick 5036. Until now, I’d never sewn a pattern from the 1980s!


It fit the bill: peasant blouse style, with a ruffle at the neckline. Actually it had two ruffles which was one too many for my taste, but an easy thing to change!

I used a black embroidered cotton eyelet fabric from Mood Fabrics , which is modest enough in the size of the eyelets that I didn’t feel the need to underline it (nor wear a matching bra, ha ha). But because of the eyelets, and the fact that I didn’t have black ¼” elastic to use in the neckline and waist, I actually used clear elastic. Which is more difficult to use in gathering evenly, I found, so it’s a bit more ruffley on the front than the back.


I didn’t make very many changes to the pattern, but I’m really glad I carefully read the envelope to find out this pattern (in true 1980s style) had a LOT of built in ease - like 10”. Definitely a bit much for me. I didn’t want to change the shape of the armholes, so I simply took 2” each off the center of both the back and front pattern pieces to make it a bit more trim, but still roomy enough to pull over my head. This was an easy change since the neckline is gathered anyway. The only corresponding change I had to make was to cut the ruffle 4” shorter.

The armholes were the only thing that surprised me in this pattern. There’s only the bottom half an armhole, really! You use facing pieces (I made bias tape instead) to finish the armhole after sewing the side seams, but you don’t actually have shoulder seams, so it’s open at the top! The pattern didn’t actually explain this part, it just said to attach the ruffle to the neckline, which had me scratching my head for awhile. But I figured it out, and in the end it makes for a super breezy and awesome shape for hot weather! Plus, the ruffle is long enough to hide your bra straps under it ;)


You can see I made one stylistic change which I wish in hindsight I’d thought through a bit more. I wanted this version to be a cropped style for summer, gathered around the midriff. It didn’t occur to me until too late that since the front and back are the same size (no shaping), my bust pulls the front up more than the back, so the back sags down. I’m thinking a big chunk out of the piece like a swayback adjustment might be the ticket to fix that, if I try another cropped version in the future.


Overall I’m very pleased with this fun little blouse! It was a fast and easy make. I could definitely see a few more in my closet for summer—some without my midriff moderation, maybe in other solid colors of eyelet or Swiss dot. It’s a winner of a pattern, for sure! And it goes to show that someone who typically wears styles inspired by an earlier era can borrow from a more recent decade to get the look they’re after!


Thanks Marie and Kerry for the wonderful Vintage Pledge challenge so many of us love! xo
Saturday, July 30, 2016
I'm a HUGE fan of Petit Main Sauvage's Lauriana, who is an incredibly accomplished stitcher and seems to literally rock every decade. So this heartfelt account about the challenges of sewing, and specifically the 'failure' of her #VPJuly project, really resonates with me. After all, we've all been there at one time or another, but I hardly think Lauriana can class anything as a failure given her gorgeous vintage makes from this year alone!


If you have read my blog before, you may know that I’m not a beginner anymore. Not by a long shot. Although there are plenty of people who have many more years of sewing experience than I have, I think I sunk a lot of sewing time into the years I’ve have. That also involved learning to draft my own patterns, spending time helping a local designer and a lot of fabric shopping (with or without buying anything). 

I’m not writing all of this to brag, I’m writing it to give a bit of background. After all, failure is sometimes an unavoidable part of sewing. And I can tell from experience that the chance of absolute failure of a sewing project grows less as your skills and experience increase. 

A lot of early garments fail because we pick the wrong fabric for the project. Or a design, which looked great in the picture, but doesn’t actually suit us. Mistakes like that can be avoided with more knowledge and more experience.

Add to that the fact that pattern making, although it is time consuming, does kind of guarantee a garment that will fit (again, once you have enough experience with it) and you may be able to guess where I'm heading…

I don’t have many issues with failed sewing projects these days. There may be the occasional thing of which the making feels more like hard work than expected. Or something which looks good, but is not that comfortable. But real failure? That’s rare.

It did, however, happen to the dress I wanted to sew for this post.

I have taken part in #VintagePledge since the start and every year, I have used it not just to motivate myself to sew from my vintage pattern stash, but also to get out of my comfort zone. Because of it, I have, on occasion, gone back to using patterns, tackled new pattern systems and new-to-me eras of fashion history. Of course, it would go wrong sometimes (I had some long struggles with 1930’s fashion in the past two years).


This year, I had started well. After a bit of a struggle, I made a 1920s dress I’m really happy with. 1920s is so tricky. I’ve tried two dresses and both times ended up adjusting the patterns to make them a bit less sack-like. Which may completely ruin the period look.


I found out that the 1950s patterns from Beyer’s Mode work for me without a lot of work. 


And I made my first (actual vintage, not re-print) early 1940s dress from a 1943 copy of the same magazine. 

And then came the moment I really had to decide what to write about for this post. My original plan was quite ambitious, but I won’t tire you with that (it had something to do with the sharing of old “draft to instructions” patterns which I am also doing on my blog this year).


In the end I decided to make this dress, from the same magazine as that first successful 1940s dress.

At first I wasn’t in love with the tiered skirt, but I had warmed to the look. The pattern was actually for one size smaller than mine, which gave me the opportunity to try something: Make it from jersey. 

A lot of 1930s and 1940s dresses should have a sleek fit, which we could achieve most easily and comfortably by using jersey fabric. I’ve seen this done on other blogs, but I had never tried it myself. I thought it would make for a nice, comfortable dress and something interesting to write about. 

I happened to have some thin jersey in my stash with little to no lengthwise stretch. I thought it would work well for this dress. Maybe the colour was a bit boring but I actually have good precedents in my sewing career for making complicated dresses in grey. 


Tracing the pattern was not a problem. Yes, it can be daunting to do this for the first time, but I’m an old hand. I chose not to make a toile because I don’t think I have another fabric which behaves in the same way as this one. I did remember the one fitting issue with the first dress (not enough length in the front bodice) and and decided to cut more than double width seam allowances on the top and bottom of the front bodice piece. 


Then came the cutting. The subtle stripe, which I liked in this fabric, is actually on the wrong side. It is the most stretchy thread in the fabric. It actually gathers up the thin grey knit. And it forms ever-so-slightly wavy lines…I did a lot of adjusting with the cutting out of those skirt tiers. And that was after I had to consider whether or not to adjust for a fabric lay-out on 140cm instead of 90cm. 

The pattern doesn’t give any lay-out information, but the skirt tiers are pieced to fit on 90cm wide fabric. I cut everything apart from the bottom tier. By now, I was starting to regret going for this skirt.

Sewing usually makes me feel better about a project. It didn’t this time. Gathering this material is SO annoying. It seems impossible to get the thread tension even and if you pull the threads later, they sometimes get snagged.


There is nothing really wrong. Not yet. It may not be fun to sew this dress, but it is not impossible that I might still be able to turn it into a wearable garment. However, I lost faith in making this dress. It is still in pieces on my sewing table and chair (and maybe some pieces fell to the floor). It put me off sewing for a week and when I returned, I felt I had to go and do something else.

So here I am, as much as I love the #VintagePledge, it also presents me with the occasional failure, UFO and the frustration that comes with that.

P.S. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Marie and Kerry for their great work for the VSPP, which is made even more impressive by the fact they still keep up the good work over the years!
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Copyright © 2018 A Stitching Odyssey