Christmas came early this year!

Trolling around Tradera (the Swedish version of eBay) a few days back, I found something amazing. Really old and most likely quite rare vintage patterns, in my size! Look at these beauties!

I thought for a second, googled them (and found other copies nowhere!) and then hit "Buy Now". Got both for 145 SEK including postal fees... that's about 20 USD, and, dare I say, nothing for these darlings. (Sometimes it's really ok to be your own Santa!)

Spending a few hours on research I found out approximately what years these were made: The McCall 7727 is from 1949 (that one was easy, since no. 7726 is on vintagepatterns.wikia.com, looks stylewise very similar to this one, and is from 1949). The Vogue Special Design 4553 was a bit harder to place but I could at last conclude that it's from either 1943 or 1944. This makes it my oldest pattern!

I am so happy for these, it's crazy! :-D Even more so when I think about those thin and fragile pattern pieces being almost 70 years old! I will definitely have to copy them onto new and fresh pattern paper before I use them...  but first I need to unwrinkle them, the ones for the Vogue pattern look as though the last person who used them threw a tantrum and just mashed them back into the envelope... :-/ Wish me good luck!

Awesome hippie pants or "look I got my whole fall palette into one garment"

I was going to finish these for "orange week" at Sew Weekly (the week before last), then I threw my back out, but now I'm back in business! With quick jumps through time I went from the 1920's in my last post and landed smack in the middle of Woodstock era with these pants!

The fabric is heavy woven linen and used to be a bunch of curtains, I got them in the neverending pig-in-a-poke bag of odd fabrics I bought this summer. Of course I just had to take advantage of their previous state, so instead of hemming, I left the hanger fabric thingys in and cut the pants to their exact length from the start. This is what it looks like when I turn the inside out, lol!

If anyone is wondering about the guitar in the above pics, yes, I play and sing... :-)

I used Simplicity 6572 from 1974 because of the high waist, straight leg and the lovely detail that the zipper is in the back just like on a skirt! I looked at all my pants patterns to find one that would work with the width of the stripes of the fabric, and not be cut in a strange way. Those of us who have seen some Project Runway knows about crazy crotch pants, and I really really tried to avoid that... worked almost great. :-) Below is a detail of the back zipper and how I used the stripes for the waistband!

While you're at it, take a look at the cut of the jacket... wow. I just need the perfect fabric for it.

And here's one of a styling idea to make them seem a little bit less crazy (at least in my eyes... guess my acceptable level of crazy might be somewhat different from that of the average person... but I love fun clothes!) Also it's easier to see in these pics what these wonderfully weird Woodstock worthy pants actually look like!

1920's slip - for pin-up week!

This week we're doing pin-up over at Sew Weekly, and I decided (not very surprisingly) to go in another direction than the obvious 50's Marilyn Monroe type of pin-up we all think of when we hear the word. Instead I whipped up a little peachy slip, slapped on some drama-queen makeup and draped myself on our armchair like a decadent flapper girl!

 (And nope, I haven't chopped off my super long hair, it's hidden under the scarf!)

To really get in the roaring twenties mood, listen to sweet Bessie Smith here below!

Also, it's quite nice to be able to do pin-up without actually showing anything I wouldn't want to show on my blog!

...and there is a reason people always look so glamorous and
pretty in old pictures: no high definition. Who could tell from these pics that I'm totally sleep deprived from having a thrown out back and all zombielike from the painkillers I have to take to fix it?

Anyway, here's what the slip actually looks like!

It's entirely made from scraps and freebies from my stash and cost me less than two dollars! The darker peach is a cheap shiny poly-something, and the lighter peach/nude fabric is a finer lining fabric. I got the fringe off Swedish eBay a while ago for almost nothing, and my sister gave me the vintage crochet lace for my birthday this summer!

Took about two hours of sewing to make this cute little thing, and my back is very unhappy with me now but oh well, at least I'm happier that I got to sew again finally!