Very Weird Vintage pattern give-away

Here we go. This lot of oddball patterns will go to the first person who emails me with your address. Please send me your address with your message. I feel bad when I get dozens of emails asking for my patterns but with no address to send them. Know too that I delete all emails with this information as soon as the patterns are sent.

UFOs and pattern give-away

This has been a busy school week, articulating why I gave up working with adults to work with kids. "Sorry I missed that test but I had a medical emergency ... jewelry allergy." The thing about people in their very early twenties is that they take the small issues in life so seriously and don't take the big issues seriously at all.


The kind of stuff that drives you crazy when you are a parent but gives you lots of laughs, and helps you keep your own perspective, when you work with them.


On the sewing front I have decided to finish off the last of outstanding UFOs - a wool crepe sheath that I am planning on also using as a sort of jumper, and a shell and one of those drapey cozy things that I cut out last year and need to finish since this winter is probably the last one that they will be in style. I have already cut a lot of length off it because I decided having those long pointy things hanging out from under my winter coat wouldn't be an entirely cool look.


I have also decided to race through my pattern give-aways. Sending them out one at a time is going to take me a while, and as far as postage goes, putting more than one pattern in the envelope is efficient.


So I have decided to group my patterns with descriptive names and post them for give-aways, starting later today.


Now mind you I will not be insulted if you look at some of these and say "what was she thinking" in fact I may have a group called just that. And I know that there may be some in each group you don't like, and some you may wonder why I ever picked them up at the yard sale.


The point is that every pattern I can send out is one that I no longer feel I should be making use of and having that off my to-do list (and onto yours) is quite freeing.


I also really like the woman at my local Canada Post office and excursions to see is never time wasted.


So later today "Very weird vintage"

On "age appropriate"dressing

My friend Robin from A little sewing on the side asked me a good question a few days ago, and all through this busy week I have been considering it.


Robin asked if I would wear a long tunic with tights and boots. At the heart of responding to that question is the larger one of do you ever decide you are too old for a certain look?


Well Robin I will certainly wear a tunic with tights if I decides it suits me.


The rule I have made for myself is not to dress as if I was 25, but not to wear anything now that I wouldn't be caught dead in at 25. This, making sure you don't dress too old, is far, far more important in my opinion than dressing too young.


You see when I was 25 I had my eyes opened while living in Montreal. If you really want to see how ordinary North American women, on ordinary incomes, at any age, look stylish, go to Montreal. I read recently too that Tim Gunn calls Montreal his favourite city for style. Just being on the street gives you ideas.


The things you notice are accessories - things any woman can do. One visit I was impressed by all the huge shawls wrapped over every winter coat on visit in February, in Montreal I first saw brooches pinned up high nearly at the shoulder. I once saw a woman in Montreal walking her dog in boots with a fur trim that perfectly matched her dog. What you see are outfits put together not just clothes, you see thought and effort as much as cash or fashion. They take their chances with accessories more than clothes.


I am thinking about this today as yesterday our wonderful, stylish Governor-General Michaelle Jean retired to become the Canadian ambassador to Haiti, the country where she was born. Look at these pictures of her and you can see, I hope, what women from Montreal look like in their middle age, at my age:

In Montreal you see women who are every bit as interested in fashion at 85 as 25.


Which makes me wonder why in many areas of North America we seem to have some idea that there is an age where you retire from fashion, when you move to the "classics." I see a lot of that around here, where I live now in Nova Scotia (think Maine if you are in the US) as if, once you have a family, or for sure grandchildren, that it is inappropriate to care what you wear.


I didn't wear too short, too tight, or too sparkly, when I was 25 so I don't worry too much about that but I also didn't wear old lady clothes either and so I am not going to start that now.


Look I am a person who worried I was too young to wear a black dress and a single strand of pearls when I was 50 so I didn't.


That's the only time I remember thinking about age when I dress, and that's going to be the last time. It is enough work thinking about fit, about what suits me, about what new styles are going to give me a lift.


What about you? What do you wear or not wear these days? And what are your own rules for age appropriate dressing?

Thank you Vogue for some new basics

 It was very nice to get up this morning and see that Vogue had some new patterns, all of which will fill some wardrobe gaps for me. The shirt above is multi-cup size - great, no time consuming FBA and the longer version will satisfy some of my longer-shirt-to-wear over narrow pant needs. Plus I am in a white shirt mood again.

 Since the last Vogue skirt I made with a raised waist turned out to be flattering, surprisingly, on my long waisted body I am ready to try more. Consider this also as part of my celebration that those dumb lowered waists have exited. I also like the fact that the detail is in the waistline so if this goes out of style I can still wear a top over it and no one would know, plus this would be interesting to sew.

Finally the long version of this tunic would work for me and guess what? Another multi-cup sized pattern.


No all I have to do is wait for a pattern sale. Wish the husband was still working close to a JoAnn's in TN, but BMV should come through shortly.


Now off to the dreaded housework and some mental sewing.

Wrapping up the boring stuff

I have stuck to my resolution to make one dress for every two skirts. I have only two skirts to go, to be started this weekend, and then I think I am done for the time being and can move onto more interesting projects.


You will notice I have done two fast knit dresses between the skirts this month because I wanted to keep it moving. I really want to do some tailored, fitted dresses and to be able to take my time with them.


I also need/want some tunic style tops to wear with narrow jeans and pants. Nothing too droopy and something more interesting than a "big shirt". I am not seeing a lot of patterns that are jumping out at me on this one and I will be stalking other blogs for inspiration. Am I the only one who loves to see how a pattern looks on a real person? How many times like me have you passed over a pattern completely until you see someone else has sewn it up, and then you loved it? A lot of my life is involved with family -cooking, eating, babysitting- part of my work is from home, the prep, marking part, and then of course there are the dogs. And occasionally yes I do clean my house and do the laundry and I don't see why I shouldn't try to look decent to do that.


I had a work mentor once, now retired, but still a force to be reckoned with, and always elegant. She wore heeled boots, wide belts and animal prints and tons of classic jewelry right up until she retired at 67. I visited her once at her apartment and she showed me her clothes and pulled out "what I wear to clean the bathroom." It was a purple jumpsuit with a gold and black belt and matching earrings. This lady lives alone, although she has a social life, mainly involved with doing things for other people, that would exhaust me. The thing is that she takes care of herself even when no one is watching.


So why not think about bathroom cleaning outfits too? I clean more bathrooms and walk more dogs than I go to black tie events.


A thought to consider.

Butterick 5173

This is an end of an era dress in my sewing. Knit dresses, specifically raised waist dresses, empire etc. have come the full circle for me. I had this knit and decided to give Butterick 5173 a try. As a result  I have a dress I will wear for those comfortable-tired day-shopping-casual occasions, just because it is so comfortable, but I won't be making more of these. I feel the fashion cycle has just about made a full rotation with this profile.

More structured is more me, and what I will be sewing the rest of the season, but sometimes structured isn't what you need. So despite some ambivalence this is still a wearable dress.

I made one design change. I added a band of solid black to match the inset/facing to the sleeves. This design change was motivated by a shortage of the patterned knit. I added the extra to make the sleeves longer.

I have to make my usual rant about the lack of serger or knit technique friendly instructions. Yes there was reference to a serger, as in you can use one, but none of the illustrations or techniques were serger specific, which is annoying.

I also found that some details were again written as if you were working with a woven, and obviously you are not as this is a knits only pattern.

I also was a little wary of the instructions to pivot at the large dot in negotiating the outside corners of the Vs, centre front and centre back, of the insert. To my mind this was a maneuver that had "rip it out and try again" written all over it so I reverted to a trick I learned a long time ago. The method I used is based on the principle that every time you pivot at a crucial corner you run the risk of pushing, or twisting, the grain right on the tip (ever had a little bump at the point of a V even though you stitching looks fine and accurate? This is why that happens). As a result, and this is supposed to be some industrial technique, you should aim to cross same direction stitching lines, each of those lines stitched toward the point, rather than pivoting. This meant at centre front and back I stitched down one side of the neckline from shoulder to point and then stitched the other side from shoulder to point, crossing the seams and allowing that intersection to create the point. The not terribly flattering picture of the back neckline shows I hope what a sharp and neat point you get this way. Of course it means the entire neckline is made of a seam made in four stages but the sewer stress reduction in my opinion is well worth it.

On the subject of the back neckline one thing I really liked about this pattern was that the back neck band was seamed at centre back - I was able to use this seam to take in the top a bit and this greatly improved the fit. I suggest you try on the neckband before you attach it to the dress in case you too might want to make a similar adjustment.

So that's it. A nice comfortable dress and my farewell to the empire waist until it comes back in style again.

Close-up of vest

A few days ago I posted my knitted vest. 


I would like to give thanks to the Yarn Haven in Knoxville Tennessee where I purchased the yarn and pattern and met just about the nicest knitters in the world. If you ever get a chance to spend some time in Knoxville make sure you stop by there, they are the best.


The very wonderful executive assistant in our office took this shot of me to show more detail last casual Friday. One of the things that bothers me most about just about every place I have ever worked is that the place is usually run by some underpaid woman who is the only person who really knows what is going on.

At all.

When they put me in charge, of say the world, I am going to make sure that people get paid in proportion to their real value, based on what would happen if that person didn't show up. In our case we would grind to a complete halt without Kathryn and we know it. Her salary should reflect this. I hate things that aren't fair.

Of course this is the clearest picture anyone has ever taken with my camera.

No surprise.