Tag: inspiration

Simplicity 2184: Vintage dress pattern holy grail!

Well, it’s taken me almost five years to find it, but here it is – my vintage dress pattern holy grail, in the form of Simplicity 2184.

Raglan sleeves. Short and long sleeve options. FRENCH CUFFS. Convertible collar. In a size that I don’t have to re-draft too much. HALLELUIA! All I need to do is add pockets in the side seams (and 3″ to the waist) and it will be PERFECT! It even still includes the embroidery transfers for the monogram. *swoons*

It’s probably just as well that I need to wait for it to arrive all the way from Canada (I bought it on Etsy, from HoneymoonBus), hopefully that will ensure that I’ve calmed down a little bit by the time it arrives. I’ve already mentally sewn it in about 153 different fabric combinations, and thrown out every other item of clothing in my wardrobe. I need to slow down.

I posted the link on Facebook, and several people were somewhat boggled by the term “Slenderette”. Thankfully a friend discovered that Gertie (whose blog I am now reading obsessively) had contacted Simplicity to find out what on earth. Apparently the term was used for patterns that were specifically designed to make you look more slender. Not that this is going to work for me, as I’m going to have to let out the waist by at least three inches to make the dress fit – or invest in some fairly serious underwear.

Yes, underwear is still an ongoing issue. This stupid annoying fibromyalgia thing that I’ve got going on means that wearing a bra is absolutely excruciating, so I haven’t done it for the best part of a year. (And the Fashion Police didn’t arrest me or anything! It’s been a revelation!) Those “secret support” vests – sorry – camisoles with a soft bra hidden inside are a bit better, but they still have a constricting band of elastic around the body, so they’re not ideal. I did make a lovely soft teddy from bamboo fabric, but there were some issues with the fit (which is why I haven’t blogged about it yet), and Paul said it looked “like Victorian underwear – in a bad way”. Clearly some improvement needed there!

I keep looking at Kiss Me Deadly, whose vintage-inspired underwear would be perfect underneath this type of dress. But sadly their pretty things are outside the realms of my budget at the moment (anybody want to buy me a Vargas dress? Go on, you know you want to!), and I’m not 100% certain that my body will tolerate being squished by powernet all day.

So perhaps while I’m waiting for this pattern to arrive and fill me with wonder and glee, I should concentrate on doing some experiments with underwear. I’ve only made a couple of bras since I went on LCF’s Structured Lingerie course, and that was two years ago. Now I really want to do their Lingerie Workshop, but again, budget, and the courses take place in the school holidays, which is when I tend to be doing extra hours at work. Hey ho.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading blogs such as Ohhh Lulu, and reading my 1970s and 1980s lingerie-sewing books, in the hope that these might encourage me to get over my terrible fear of wasting fabric, and actually cut something out. I think now’s the time!

Tumblr Thursday: April Archive

This is everything I uploaded to Tumblr in April.

You can see the archive in more detail, here.

Sometimes Tumblr takes me by surprise. I use the queue functionality to collect images that I like, and then allow the site to automatically post a certain number of images each day. This means that I never quite know exactly what I’m going to find there, and sometimes images pop up that I’d forgotten about.

I like to think of it as a kind of endless digital scrapbook. I used to collect pictures from magazines and stick them into a book. Sometimes I wouldn’t look at them again for months, and I’d be taken by surprise at the images I’d chosen. Sometimes themes would become apparent, sometimes there’d be duplicates. Sometimes I’d wonder what on earth I’d been thinking of, when I’d collected certain images that somehow no longer appealed.

There’s something very satisfying about collecting what appear to be very disparate images, and then looking at them in a large group like this. It becomes very easy to spot trends in colours, or shapes, or textures, and I find that very useful when I’m stuck for inspiration.

 

I used to cross-post every image from Tumblr to Twitter, but quickly found that my “proper” tweets were being lost amongst the noise. If you have a tumblr account yourself and would like to follow me, you can find me here. If you follow blogs via an RSS feeder, there’s an RSS link too. Otherwise, I’ll keep posting archive pictures like this, as often as I remember!

 

Doctor Who meets Helena Bonham Carter.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this was one of my Christmas presents this year. A box set of all eleven Doctor Who figures. They were held into their TARDIS-shaped box (it had doors! with velcro!) with forty-four little twisty ties, which gave me plenty of time to contemplate the little Doctors as I was wrestling them out of the plastic.

As a general principle, I think bow ties are cool. We were watching some Sylvester McCoy episodes yesterday, and I genuinely contemplated knitting a fair-isle tank top with a punctuation motif. I like long scarves and big coats and funny hats.

And then I thought of someone else who likes long scarves and big coats and funny hats. And wearing things in lots of layers, and generally looking a little bit crumpled.

My fashion inspiration for 2012?

Doctor Who meets Helena Bonham Carter.

With the somewhat eclectic contents of my wardrobe, that should be pretty easy. Watch this space for pictures, if I manage to make it work…

Ayten Gasson & Kiss Me Deadly


Picture © Ayten Gasson

Remember the skull & rose print bra that I made last month? Well, I wore it last week. It was certainly a better fit than the first bra I made, but it still wasn’t all that comfortable.

I have a few ideas regarding underwires, and I thought it might fit better if I gave the bra a much wider band. So I did a search for “longline bra” thinking that even if all the results were frumpy and horrible, I might get some construction ideas that I could translate into pretty fabrics.

You can imagine my surprise then, when one of the first pictures that came up was the one above! Isn’t it lovely? It’s part of the Lady M range by Ayten Gasson. Ayten specialises in vintage-inspired lingerie, all of which is hand made in the UK from silk and Nottingham lace.


Image © Kiss Me Deadly

Another designer that features all manner of pretty things is Kiss Me Deadly. Vintage-inspired again, and with a gorgeous range of shapewear. Most of their items are limited edition, so if you see something you like you need to snap it up quickly!

Sadly for me the longline bra that matches this gorgeous girdle is sold out already, otherwise I’d have gone for the whole set!

Never mind making my own bras, I think I might need to go shopping…

Violet Baudelaire.

Over Christmas we watched A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Lemony Snicket movie. We’d seen it before, but it’s a film that I’m always happy to watch over and over again, so that I can get a really good look at Violet’s costumes.

There are so many things about the dress that I love. The layers of translucent burn-out fabrics, the stripes, the lacing, the little puffy sleeves, the asymmetric hem with its slightly scruffy-looking ruffle… everything about it is just gorgeous. Pretty without being little-girly, grown-up without being sexy. Perfect.

(If nothing else, I need to make myself a Violet costume simply so that I have an excuse to buy those gorgeous boots I spotted the other week!)

Gone to a good home.

When I posted a picture of my experimental feather & fan scarf, Sara left a comment to say that she was coveting it. I have more scarves than I know what to do with, so it’s now hers!

By a happy coincidence, she’d already bought the perfect scarf pin, for holding it in place. It’s by South4th on Etsy, who makes all sorts of beautiful wooden pins. I think this little bird is my favourite.

Sara’s also hanging out on Etsy – you can find her at Jombolom, where she makes beautiful quality cards.

Again, I think this little bird is my favourite:

Comfort Zone

A little observation from Keri Smith.

 

I’m also very tempted to make a real-life version of her Secret Explorer Uniform:

(Both images are © Keri Smith.)

More Knitting Inspiration

The latest issue of Vogue Knitting (now apparently renamed Designer Knitting) landed on my doormat this morning. On my first glance through, I’ve already spotted two things that I’m dying to knit.

The giant yellow jumper is the Cropped Turtleneck, by Leena Sullivan.
I particularly like the sideways construction with the cables, which is what I’d originally intended to do with the Rowan Colourscape. I’m a huge fan of giant polo necks, and I think I’d be tempted to knit this one even taller. I’m currently knitting a giant moss stitch coat with my mountain of Big Wool, but I think I might have enough left over to make this as well.

The green hooded top is the Green Iiris Cropped Hoodie by Mari Muinonen.
I like hoods, I like cables, I like cropped jumpers… I love it!

I don’t know whether I have enough yarn in my stash to knit this one. I do have some lovely Rowan Cashsoft in Kingfisher, but I’d have to do the cabled sections in a contrasting colour, I think. If I was going to splurge on yet more wool, I think I’d go for Colinette Cadenza in one of their more subtle Dali shades. The one in the picture is Salty Dog.

One thing I particularly like about Vogue Knitting’s website is the new Fashion Preview section. When you click on the picture of each design you’re taken through to a video, where you can see a model actually wearing and moving about in the knitwear. It makes a real difference to know that the bottom of the jumper isn’t going to roll up as soon as the model moves her arms, for instance! You also get a chance to see the piece from all angles, which you don’t see in the magazine itself.

My subscription to Vogue Knitting has just expired, and I’ve been so happy with the launch of The Knitter that I wasn’t going to renew it. Having seen these patterns, and the website support, I think there might be room for both…

“There’s always a certain irresponsibility about hats…”

I was browsing through the BBC iPlayer this afternoon, looking for something to watch in the background whilst doing a spot of hand sewing.

I hadn’t realised what a lot I was missing!

 

The title above is a quote from a wonderful 1950s programme about fashion history. The series is called Men, Women and Clothes, and this episode is Fashion in Faces and Figures. Look out for a fabulously moustachio’d Benny Hill, and some lovely shots of corsets. This one’s only fifteen minutes long, and well worth watching! Unfortunately it was broadcast yesterday, but it’ll be on the iPlayer for a week, and there’s another episode on January 15th.

There’s another series just started called Style On Trial. This is a seven-parter, looking at the fashion of various decades, beginning with the 1940s. The first episode is on the iPlayer now, and episode two airs on January 14th.

Another programme that I’m particularly interested to watch is Ozwald Boateng: Why Style Matters. This one’s repeated on BBC Four tomorrow (January 10th) at 9pm. I’m quite a fan of Boateng’s menswear, and given my current interest in men’s shoes and tailoring, I think this one will be brilliant!

More brogues.

You know that strange phenomenon where as soon as you start to become obsessed by something, you suddenly see it everywhere?

I was flipping through the February edition of Elle UK, and spotted these lovelies:

I wonder what colour those patent Church’s brogues are in Real Life? Once again they’re Oxfords though, so I wouldn’t be able to wear them even if I did have £190 to spend on shoes. (The Tricker’s pair are Derbys – and they also make a lovely Derby boot.)

I am very tempted to take a wander down Jermyn Street the next time I go into London. Tricker’s and Church’s are both based there, and it would be lovely to have a look at these in person.