Lounging Around

I am not sure I will ever fall completely in love with 1970s fashion, but there are some a few things I quite like - starting with the sleeves!  

And, of course, there are quite a few styles that draw directly from 1940s fashion, which are always fabulous.

Although, to be fair, I am not in love with each and every 1940s and 1950s design I have come across, so why am I so hard on the 1970s?  It probably has something to do with all that polyester.  Yuck!

Thankfully, my dress is made out of a rayon/linen blend, so there goes that objection.  

The fake ikat print also came in a turquoise colorway.  I adore the color turquoise, but something about the color and the print did not look quite right to me.  So I went with the purple!

I ended up shortening this dress by three inches.  As much as I love the idea of a full length, floor-grazing gown, they just are not very practical.  And this way, if I am feeling especially lazy, I can wear a pair of flats.

All in all, I am going to call this one a success.  The silhouette will never be my favorite, but it sure is comfortable!

Dress:  Made by me, Vogue 7630

Shoes:  Banana Republic

Buttons & Loops

My Memorial Day Weekend was not nearly as productive as I had hoped, but I did manage to get some sewing done.  Recently at a Bay Area Sewists pattern swap, I picked up this sewing pattern.  Time to try something a bit different!  

The Vintage Patterns Wikia gives this design a 1969/1970 copyright.  That makes this my first 1970s vintage pattern, complete with some funny tissue markings of tiny scissors and sewing machine parts.  

My plan was to make this version in a woven fabric to make sure of the fit and then have some fun with an Alabama Chanin inspired cotton jersey version.  I expected that the dress would have bodice pieces, skirt pieces, and a channel connecting the two with an inserted drawstring.  Turns out, the dress front and back are a solid mass of fabric from shoulder to hem.

The construction is very straightforward.  The most time consuming part was constructing the cuffs and covering the buttons.

A trip to the fabric store did not produce any suitable buttons which meant the project was going to have to go in the UFO pile.  

But then I rummaged around and found that I had enough button forms to cover.  Since they were slightly bigger than the pattern called for, I eliminated one of the buttons on each of the cuffs. 

The pattern also uses a length of purchased bias binding for the drawstring channel, which I do not have . . . so I made my own (which I think looks much prettier than the polyester stuff you can buy ready-made).

The most irritating part of the process?  Turning the button loops right side out.  I have a loop turner, and I even tried the old needle and thread trick . . . getting that first section pulled through drives me crazy!!

Hook & eyes, on the other hand, are a piece of cake!