Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Vintage Pattern Illustrators, I have a bone to pick with you!

First up, I love vintage pattern illustrations.  All the women look so glamorous and beautiful and slim, with perfect posture.  They look the way I want to look.

Look at the posture of the woman on the left - perfect!

And how impossibly slim is the woman on the right - but oh how glamorous!!!

But I have a bone to pick with you 1950s Pattern Illustrators - YOU LIE!!!  Don't get me wrong, I understand that these clothes won't instantly make me thinner, taller, and more glamorous, but I expect that the piece of clothing I make from the pattern you illustrated will at least look like the picture you drew!

Here is my case in point.  Just recently I decided to make a few blouses from a very simple 1950s pattern I had - this one:


I made View 1 (the bottom two illustrations).  Now you would think that from the illustration I would have a blouse with an elegantly low, sweeping neckline... NO!  To get the low sweeping neckline I had to cut it two inches lower AND make a new facing.  Now I wouldn't be so irritated if I hadn't already cut out the blouse four times from four different fabrics...sigh!  Not difficult to fix, but annoying.

Apart from this issue, the pattern makes a really lovely, simple and easy to make blouse:

See look how adorable this blouse is!  It was worth all the annoyance.

The low sweeping back is as per the pattern envelope - they just got the front wrong
(By the way, how cute does my butt look in these Bernie Dexter jeans!)

I have now made this blouse in cute apple fabric, as above (which I adore), a dark aqua and white polka dot fabric (which you havent seen yet but you will), lovely lilac fabric, and boring-but-useful black fabric.  And whilst sewing the same thing a few times is useful, its oh so boring - so bring on the next challenge I say!!!

Beccie
xxx



7 comments:

  1. Ah! Its a really great blouse! I find that particular era of Simplicity terrible for being oversized and generally really different to their illustrations. Like what I'm making now.
    Anyways - yours turned out awesome. :-D

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    1. Thanks Kitty :)
      I don't trust sizes on pattern envelopes any more - I ALWAYS get my tape measure out and measure the size of the bust, waist and hips on the pattern pieces... the amount of ease in some of them is crazy!

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  2. I am actually having this exact problem on a vintage pattern I am putting together right now. No wonder I just make my own patterns, lol. It would have been quicker and less fuss if I had just made my own from scratch like I normally do!

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  3. Who makes this apple fabric?

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    1. I bought it from Spotlight (which is a fabric store in Australia) and they still have some of it, I saw it the other day. I've still got a length of it at home and I will TRY to remember to have a look at it for you :)

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  4. Thanks, I'm willing to buy it off of you if it's at least a yard.

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    1. Unfortunatley I want to keep it because I have another project in mind, but I can maybe get you some more if they have any stock of it - why don't you send me an email and we'll see what we can work out :)

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