Vintage hair for VERY thick, short hair

In what may perhaps be a fit of insanity, I've decided to take on a contract on top of my two current jobs. Which means for the next two weeks and a half, I'm going to be working every day. Wish me luck!

While I'm excited about the extra money coming in and the great experience, this isn't going to give me much time to sew, alas.

So to tide me over, I'm going to show a few of my favourite hairstyles for quick and easy mornings.

In preparation - I'm in no way a great hairdresser. But I like to play around and have fun and experiment. I also do not have a haircut that is particularly conducive to vintage hairstyles. My hair is VERY thick. Insanely thick. When it was long by ponytail would have about a 1.5 inch diameter. And since I'm not yet willing to sacrifice and wash-and-wear style, I get a lot of layering and thinning put in my hair when I get it cut. If I don't, it's a big puffy mess every day.

That does mean that pin-curls don't stay in particularly well in my hair (too many layers) although I am still trying. What my hair does take well are foam rollers overnight, and a good curling iron. So here's a great style that works on my super thick, layered hair.

The easiest hairstyle for me - two french braids on either side. It's off my face, it looks cute. A total win. I just centre part my hair (my hair has a natural centre part, so this works best for me) and start with a small section at the crown, braiding and adding in new strands until the hair tapers off. Bind with a clear eleastic, cover with some ribbon, and pin flat with a bobby pin.

You may notice my little short wispy bits in the front - that's because until this summer I had the side of my hair over my ears shaved off. They're just long enough now to curl, so I use my hot iron to curl it away from the face in small sections. Then curl under my bangs, spray, and go! Takes me about 10 minutes in all.

My lipstick today is Rimmel Colour Rush Intense Colour Balm in The Redder the Better. Which I am LOVING. Very moisturizing, but not too shiny.

I hope you enjoy. and see you on the other side!

A wild incoming knit project...

So here's a confession: I have been sewing for over ten years. I have not worked with knits very often.

I made a few items as a teenagers (completely incorrectly, looking back on it), but it never entirely jazzed with me. When I was studying fashion at college, we did have a knit garment section, but by that point I was in a full industrial sewing studio kitted out with all the fanciest equipment. Four thread industrial sergers! Cover stitch machines! Cover stitch machines with binding attachments!

So you can say when I was learning how to sew with knits I was a little spoiled.

Now that I'm back to reality, and back to working on my own one little sewing machine and no serger, it's time for me to learn knits the home sewing way. It's funny to work backwards in that respect, actually.

I came across this very cute lavender polka-dot knit in my stash, and was hit with thoughts of sweet little Peter Pan collar tops. Oh, how delicate and dreamy I will look!

The inspiration:

T-Shirt With Peter Pan Collar (see more peter pan tops)

 Everything I like in a top: kimono sleeves, polka-dots, nice and roomy, good for wearing out or tucking in...

I do get worried about high-necked shirts in conjunction with my huuuuuge... tracks of land. But when tops are kept roomy enough it's usually alright.

I did hunt around the internet to see if I could find a pattern but unfortunately I am hella picky, and kept running into road blocks. Even though it's a knit, I still wanted bust darts. And a keyhole back! And a slightly flared bottom! Oh hell, I'll draft it myself.

I traced off one of my favourite blouse patterns that I know fits well (Burda 7226 specifically) And added a wack of changes - eliminating the waist darts, straightening out the side seams, adding an extra inch of width at the hip... I've made this blouse enough times I knew what tweaks I needed to get the fit right. I then drafted the collar from scratch off the blouse neckline.

I've had a few bad instanced recently of not making a proper muslin and regretting it, so before I dipped into my polka-dots, I cut out a sample in a bit of baby rib-knit that was luxuriating in the stash.

It's more coral and less traffic cone in person. I'm not sure if it's really my colour, which is why I didn't feel bad using it for a mock-up. If it works out well and I still don't like the colour on me, I'll gift it to my sister.

So I was all ready to start sewing when I remembered I don't have any ballpoint needles. Foiled! I'll pick some up at work on Thursday and then we're full steam ahead into knit land.

A fabo thrift store find

I just scored this amazing vintage dress at Exile in Kensington Market. It was even half-off due to a few easily fixable repairs.

I know, more grainy photos. I downloaded the gorillacam app for my phone because it takes delayed photos, but they're all coming back pretty poor quality. Must look into a different one. But in the meantime, look how cute!

I'm wearing it over my Pennyworth longline bra and it's giving me a totally fabulous 1950s lift here. The dress feels made for me. It has gorgeous construction with doloman sleeves that have an underarm gusset. The side seams have belt carriers, but if there ever was a matching belt it's long gone. Over-all, though. Comfy, adorable, totally becoming a wardrobe staple.

A 1920s garden party dress

Well, this has been one hell of a week!

I picked up some extra work assisting a costume designer for a school production of The Little Mermaid. It's been a whole ton of fun, but seeing as this is job #3 by now, it hasn't left me a lot of my own sewing time. I hope to rectify that on my day off tomorrow, but in the mean time I figured I share a cute project from last summer.

Spadina House museum in Toronto has been having  Gatsby Picnic in June for the past few years, and last spring I was finally able to get an outfit ready in time to go. It was an absolutely stunning day - warm and sunny and perfect. I played croquet and drank lemonade and did a tour of the house (Which is GORGEOUS and well worth the trip, if you're in Southern Ontario) and solved a mystery of who stole the booze.

 My friend Leah accompanied me in a dress I made for her the night before (yes, I am a speed demon when it comes to costuming.) It's a pretty basic shape with no waist seam and kimono sleeves, but I jazzed it up with a sailor collar and a tucked inset in the front.

The dress I based on this design from Past Patterns, which is a recreated 1926 McCalls pattern. I would have saved myself the time and effort of drafting and ordered myself the damn thing, but I was working on a tight schedule for this thing and didn't think the pattern would arrive in time. So instead I pretty much draped the whole project on my dress form. I started trying to draft it, but this style of dress works a lot better being draped.

A progress pic of a draping process. I went for short, flutter sleeves instead of the long ones on the pattern, since I knew it was going to be a hot day.

The contrast fabric is plain old pink quilting-weight cotton, and I made matching bias to trim the neckline and cross-over. I went back and forth on making the contrast pink a sort of attached slip with straps that would sit inside the wrap dress, but finally just made my life easy and cut out one piece of cotton the same size as the gap and just sewed it in. The underskirt is just two rectangles, very slightly gathered into the waistband.

The hat, shoes, and rose quartz bead necklace are all very lucky thrift store finds, and the gloves were my great-grandmothers.

I had a LOT of fun in this dress. Twenties styles are so comfy and breezy! I was worried about what such an unfitted dress was going to look like on my very hippy figure, but I think the trick with the 20s is just to embrace it. You're not going to look like the svelt boyish figures of the illustrations, so don't worry about it! If you look up photographs of real people from the time, they seemed completely unconcerned with a little belly poking out, or how wide their hips look with low-slung sashes. The 1920s was all about rolling your stockings down and not caring what people thought!

This article on Reconstructing History has some great things to say about the perceived ideal figure of the 1920s. I recommend reading it if you're nervous about trying out the 20s in your wardrobe.

I will say the dress became INFINITELY more flattering when I added the proper lingerie with it. (a post about which should be coming soon.) You can see the difference when I wore the dress again at Costume College over my recreated 1920s brassiere and tap pants.

Excuse the fact that my fingerwaves were falling out by then.

Underthings pics coming soon!

New Look 6093 progress and some balcony shots

Last night my roommate threw season 2 of Full House on the DVD player and we had a great time basking in cheesy late 80s nostalgia as I worked some more on New Look 6093. This dress really does go together like a breeze, especially when I cut out adding a zipper.

The finished silhouette is more 50s than 30s (added too much fullness to the godets, I think. Also my childbearing hips just lend themselves to that silhouette whether I'm aiming for it or not.) But it turned out so cute, I can't complain about it much! I still need to finish the godet seams with bias, and I've decided I'm going to hand-roll the hem and sleeves. I also shortened the sleeves quite a bit from the pattern. Something about my body type, but sleeves that end add my mid-upper arm are just never flattering on me. I do much better with a cap sleeve. And they're so cute and fluttery like this!

Since I vowed to take some shots not in my mirror, I braved Toronto February weather to take some shots on my balcony. They turned out a little grainy, but dammit I stood outside in a short sleeved dress for my art, I'm using them.

It feels very garden party to me and I like it! Then I decided since I was freezing my buns off, I better get some of my zig-zag print halter dress, too!

Warming up between shoots!

The low scooped back is perfect for showing off back tats and new haircuts! 

This one isn't particularly good at showing off the dress, but I found it nice and artistic. It's the only one where you can see a little hint of the pretty spectacular view I have from my apartment of the city. 

Some construction shots coming up soon!

New Look 6093 and making a good dent in the fabric stash

One of the great things about teaching sewing classes is when a student picks a pattern I've been meaning to work out - I always get to joke that they're my guinea pig!

One of the kids in my summer sewing classes picked New Look 6093, a dress that's been sitting in my to-do list for a while. And since I got a twelve year old to work out the kinks for me first, I had no excuse not to get going!

The pattern website says it's a '1940s inspired' dress, but the bias godets and floaty sleeves always seemed much more 1930s to me. I wanted to nudge it a little further in that direction, so I made a few alterations before I cut it out.

I purposefully cut it a size up from what I'd normally do (I'd have even gone further, but it was the largest size in the pattern envelope. Oops?) I was aiming for a more floaty, unfitted early 30s silhouette, rather than the more fitted later style. So the first thing to do what to add more fullness to the godets, which seamed a little skimpy to me.

I also decided to cut the godets as one piece, which you see a lot more in period. The pattern obviously added a side seam to make sewing and fitting easier, but I like the look of the godets as once piece. So I overlapped the side seam by 5/8" and flared it out at the bottom. I then slashed and spread to add more fullness at the bottom.

You can see from the pattern pieces that there was originally supposed to be some shaping on that side seam, but like I said, I'm going for a more unfitted look so I didn't feel worried about taking that shaping out.

I also cut the centre back piece on the fold, removing the shaping on the back seam. With the extra room I can just slip the dress over my head and not worry about a zipper.

For another vintage touch, I decided to add tucks instead of gathers for the fullness over the bust and sleeve head. The bustline seam I then finished with self-fabric bias strips.

The same tucks and bias finish for the sleeve, with a french seam on the shoulder.

As always, mirror selfies and looking like a dork. Still, this dress is coming together quickly and I'm pretty happy with it! Tomorrow adding the godets and finishing the neckline!