I got a present!

I am always always amazed by the kindness and the generosity of others. Especially when I head to the post office and find this in my box:

It was a huuuuuuuuge box of patterns from Ms. Contessa Timmerman. The box was just packed full of patterns from the 1940s all the way up to some that are less than 10 years old.

By the way Ms. Contessa I just love your handwriting:

I took them out of the box and laid them in my front entry way so I could examine them all. First of all, Contessa, you have excellent taste. And second, would any of you believe me if I said this wasn't even half of what she sent me? I was completely blown away.

This was my personal favorite pattern as bridal gowns are a subject that's currently very near and dear to my heart.

I also loved this really sweet Butterick dress which I had never seen before and this Advance gardening apron which I may or may not have already busted into and cut out the fabric pieces for....

She also sent lots of patterns from the 1960s including this sweet little sundress. Or at least what will be a sundress when I get through with it. Probably in sunny yellow floral print.

Here are a few more of the other great 50s and 60s patterns she included. I also love the 1970s shorts pattern that you can see peeking out on the far right side below.

Lots of full outfit patterns and this great pattern which included interchangeable collars.

and I now have another caftan pattern. Which is awesome.

So thank you so much, Ms. Contessa. I'm overwhelmed by your kindness and I am definitely going to be busy for the next six months making all these lovely garments. All I can say is thank you thank you thank you and I promise to take good care of these lovely patterns.

Best,
Nancy

The return of Vinspiration! Jacques Griffe

Oh man oh man oh man! Vinspiration is back! Why did it stop you say? Well, mostly because it's a lot of work to find information on certain subjects. I love to research don't get me wrong, but with the ridiculous search for a wedding venue within our budget going on I had trouble justifying the 2-3 hours of research and photo finding time that were sometimes necessary for a vinspiration post.

I've found myself missing my vinspiration lately and I figure you all wouldn't hate me too much if I slacked off a wrote shorter posts every once in a while. So today's Vinspiration are pieces by Jacques Griffe.

The History Lesson (I'll be brief today): Jacques Griffe was born in France in 1917. He was apprenticed to a tailor at age 16, fought in World War II where he was eventually imprisoned for 18 months, was employed at the House of Vionnet, and later opened Jacques Griffe Evaluation, in rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1947. He retired in 1968.

Jacques Griffe created some amazing structured designs in the 1950s-1960s. His runway gowns especially were structured to the point of wearable sculpture.

February 1951. 

Black Cocktail Dress with a very deep V in the front. Look at that thing, it goes almost to her belly button. A little more risky then anything I would wear, but I love the tight waist and structured bit above the pencil skirt. This is from the Paris Spring Fashion Show.

1952

Probably the most famous Griffe gown of all time. I have no idea how those scallops were made. Can anyone shine any light on this subject? I have to say this isn't my favorite evening gown of his... mostly it just reminds me of a pineapple.

Griffe very often used these Kimono sleeves in his dresses. Here combined with a belted waist and some seriously structured undergarments they make this model look like she has no waist at all. To me she looks like she's missing ribs. That's pretty darn skinny. I just love the draping on this garment. We can see the deep V neckline that Griffe favored here again, but this time the added ruffled collar and fur make it much more wearable.

Suzy Parker. October 1953. 

What can you say about this other than what a beautiful beautiful dress. Just looking at it gives me the warm fuzzies. The color, the shape, the outer wrap. This reminds me a lot of the Fortuny Gowns. The empire waist and that little bow are just too sweet.

 February 1956

Look at the structure of this mermaid dress. Can we say gravity defying? The cut is beautiful, the layers or skirt have such a great shape. This is one of my all time favorite Griffe gowns. Do you ever wonder if these pieces still exist somewhere? How much I would give to get my hands on this dress and figure out it's construction.

1965

Moving into the 1960s now. Again we have the V neckline, but it's softened with the high scarf like drape across the neck.  We also see more of Griffe's fantastic fabric draping. The shape here is much softer and much more 60s. Griffe was an interesting fellow. He very often had his hands in every part of a garments construction. Not only could be design, but he was an expert at draping and sewing as well.

Griffe later goes on to do several designs for Vogue patterns. I can tell you from experience that if you can find one of Griffe's patterns for sale they tend to be very expensive. I stumbled into this baby, but I don't think the seller really knew what they had... I'll admit that I didn't tell her either. It's missing one piece, but I'll take that over the $125 uncut pattern selling on etsy right now.  Don't you wish high end designers still designed for pattern companies today? Now don't get my wrong. I love Kay Unger, but she's no Vera and she's certainly no Griffe.

Woah.

So I'm like totally only a few posts away from 100 posts and that not including the very very very old college posts still attached to this blog in some fashion or another. When did this happen? Crazy talk! I'm going to have to think of some special way to celebrate this occasion. Anyone have any thoughts? Pattern give away was one thing, but... mmmm.... not really feeling it. I'm leaning more towards custom made 1940s blouse. Any objections to that?

It'll give me an excuse to get myself sewing again. This has been a crazy month at the house. Our roommate moved out leaving us with an entirely empty room. At first I thought I would take the room for myself as a sewing suite, but it's at the back of the house and there isn't much natural light. I wasn't really feeling it until Fiancé offered to take that room for his office and give me the room at the front of the house that had previously been a den/office. Bigger room? More natural light? Hello. I was so there.

So first step... move all my junk out of the room. So far so good. Next step spend two weeks obsessing over paint. I've had this problem before with our dining room. It takes a long time for us to finish a room, mostly because all of my lines have to be PERFECT and the fact that we have to figure out what to do with our tray ceilings which are a pain and a half to paint. I'm not going to deny that I may have possibly kind of gone over the walls with a half inch artists brush again...

I did manage to convince Fiance to let me use fancy VOC free hippy paint on his walls. We chose these colors.

I always love paint color names. The darker color was "Pinecone Hill" which we used for the wall and the lighter color was called "Shaded Path." We used that for part of the tray ceiling and a beige for the rest. The trim is standard bright white molding color. I think the name was something boring like "snow" so I didn't care to remember the name. These are not the colors I would have chosen for my sewing room, but they work very well for Fiance's home office. I'm a bright crazy colors kind of a gal and Fiance is a traditional, earth-tone, somber color type of a guy. He doesn't find bright colors very relaxing and this is a man-cave we're talking about after all. I hope to add some fabulous art to the walls for a little pop of color later on. We'll see if I can get away with that.

We also moved a mahogany colored desk we've been using as a table in the hall into the office. Imagine a desk being used as a desk instead of a place for me to pile things. Awesome! Next step was to move all the DVDs and our personal records over there. It's amazing to realize how much paper we actually have stored in our house. I felt like a tree murderer :\

I've also been doing some other projects that need doing around the house. Cleaning, winterizing, scrubbing the weird green algae off my back patio. My poor sewing machine is sitting with a giant pile of fabric scraps and notions, just waiting for the sewing room to go together so it can get some use again. Oh the joys of making a house into a home.

I have a few color combos in mind for my sewing room once we get Fiance all moved into his new office. I'd love to do a vintage look that says "this room belongs in your Grandmother's House.". Maybe a fabulous 1950s blue/pink combo.

Think wall colors rather than tile. Also no knick-knacks or weird fish. 

Or we all know how much I love avocado green and harvest gold!

Hotness.... utter yellow doored hotness.

I was leaning towards the pink and blue until Retro Renovation.com posted Benjamin Moore's 1969 paint pallet. Oh be still my beating heart.

I may be in retro heaven. Loving the Sea Foam greens and Powder blues. Yum. Oh the trials and tribulations of picking a darn decade to model my sewing room on.

Dissecting the Bunny Costume: Price Totals

Time for the Dragon*Con bunny costume totals! You too can dress like a vintage Playboy Bunny Girl on the cheap.

I will admit that this is not the first time I've worn this costume. It made it's debut last year around Halloween 2009. My Besty, Fiance and I decided that this would be a good group costume to wear to party that was being hosted in Atlanta. We found out about it about 2 weeks prior to the event so we had come up with something easy and quick.

Halloween Party in October 2009. Besty Stacey, Fiance, and Nancy (that's moi, with much shorter hair)

For me there are three important rules of costuming.

1. It has to be cute
2. It has to be cheap 
3. People must be able to instantly recognize who or what you are. 

The costume doesn't need to be completely accurate, but people need to "get it." So I always start off with lots of research. You know me by now. I'm a research whore amateur fashion historian. So the first step was to figure out what those Bunny Girls actually wore. Cue slides.

All Images pulled from The Independent

So after looking at waaaaaay too many pictures of scantily clad women I was able to determine the key pieces that really made the "look." I do this with every costume I make, but the bunny costume was easier to dissect than most. First you have the cuffs and collar. Next you have the strapless body suit. After that comes the ears. If you look at the images above you can see that the ears are different in each one. What that told me was that I didn't have to pay too much attention to those. The actual Bunny ears changed style and shape over time so no one would care if mine were a bit off.  The next element was the tail which had to be big. None of these little tiny cotton balls you see in costume shops. As you can see in the photos above the girl's tails were quite sizable. I knew I wouldn't find the tail I wanted in a store so I would need to construct one from scratch.

We had limited time so the best option was to make some pom-poms. Each tail took a whole skein of Caron Simply Soft (acrylic yarn you can snag at any big box craft store). It worked like a charm. The tails were nice and fluffy and thick. The yarn was $2.95 a skein, but for the purposes of this blog we'll round it up to $3.00.

Boy do I look hideous in this picture. Yikes. Stacey looks great though. 

The body suits were made from corsets already in our collections and cheap high waisted panties from Kohl's (about $3.00 each). The bunny ears, cuffs and collar were a set we found on the internet. I splurged here and spent $15 on those. The last steps were to add some black pantyhose (I wore tights for Dragon Con) and some black everyday/office heels that we both had lying around.

Fast forward back to Dragon*Con 2010. Oh yes, I look much better here.

So the Grand Total for the Bunny Costume.

    $15.00 : Ears, Cuffs and Collar
    $3.00   : Bunny Tail (Yarn)
    $3.00   : Black High Waisted Panties
    $4.00   : Black Tights
    $0.00   : Already had Corset
+  $0.00   : Black Work Pumps
    A little under $25.00

Sweet!

Happy costuming. Anyone have some great ideas for Halloween this year? I still haven't decided on costumes for myself and Fiance. If anyone has any suggestions for us let me know!

Vinspiration Tuesday! 1920s Hats!

So this week has been nothing short of crazy. Operation finish the dining room is nearly complete. I may or may not have taken an artist brush to my dining room molding this weekend. After about two hours or trying to perfect every stroke Fiancé told me the room was done. Complete. I'm not allowed to paint it anymore. So I can now say that after two months of hemming and hawing over the painting lines the dining room is finished. It is finally time to move in Fiancé's 1930s Brazilian mahogany inheritance. I'm looking forward to actually having a nice place to seat guests. Guess it's time to get to work on those curtains!

My sewing output has been very low this past week, but my business output has been high. Yay work! "But Nancy," you say, "How will you ever finish your summer essentials?" Well my friends, bathing suits. Bathing suits are the way. You may remember the 1980s swim suit post from a while back. I'm planning to make two of these and perhaps a blouse for good measure. Fiancé also wants me to finish Magenta Dress which has been hanging out on the ironing board for a month now. I have to get myself some clear seam stabilizing elastic before I do that. Heavier weight jerseys, like the jersey I am using for Magenta Dress need some added strength at the seams. I refuse to sew my shoulder seams without it.

So that's the goings on here. There probably won't be too many pictures of the sewing process. Unfortunately the new old camera just does not like my operating system and it's a big project to get the photos off the camera. I'm hoping to get a SLR for my birthday in September, but I'd settle for a point and click.

So onto today's vinspiration. I've decided that today will be all about hats.

The Beautiful Marlene Dietrich in "Desire" ca. 1936.  

I love hats! Hats give me this wonderful happy feeling. I can't get enough of them! I love the look, I love when other people wear hats, I like to wear hats whenever possible. Bring back the hat I say!!! Nowadays however I find that hats really give off more of a formal feel than I would like. Whenever I wear a hat I am always asked what the special occasion is or what type of formal event am I going to even if the rest of my outfit is casual.

Two girls in straw hats ca. 1907

From the 1700s up until the 1940s-1960s hats were an every day article of clothing. So what happened? When did the hat become something that is never worn or only worn for special occasions?

Girl in super cute hat ca. mid-1930s

Well most sources point to World War II as the beginning of the downfall of the hat. During the war years many women found themselves working outside the home, doing jobs that were historically men's work, and with rationing many women stopped wearing hats daily. It was just another expense in a tight budget. In the 1960s hats almost completely disappeared. My soon to be Mother in Law can give you a very convincing argument as to how the Kennedy's killed the hat, but I think the most probable cause of that hat's demise is the popularity of big sculpted hairdos.

A family photo ca. 1969. That is some serious hair. 

Women were literally spending hours on building their hair as high as possible. I wouldn't stick a hat on top of that either.

There was a short resurgence of hats in the 1990s thanks to Princess Diana, but that resurgence has long fizzled out. So enjoy these photos of a time long gone when no outfit was complete without a fabulous chapeau. Hats of the 1920s.

And for a little color.

And just for fun I had to include this cute 1920s wedding photo. Love it!

Would you wear this?

Today it's dirty little secrets day. I admit to receiving this pattern in a box lot from an estate sale and not putting it into the "toss" pile.

It is proportioned to my height after all.

 Simplicity 8354 circa 1969. 

I just couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Caftan's are such a unique fashion statement from the 1970s and iconic of the decade. Plus they remind me of one of my all time favorite movies.

Brownie points if you can name this film in the comments of this post. 

I also confess that the idea of making these costumes for Fiancé and myself for the upcoming Dragon Con has crossed my mind several times. With some good bed sheets I know at least the black caftan could be done in under $25.

Although the caftan is iconic to the 1970s it has some how persisted through the decades in sewing patterns. I suppose people might wear caftans at home as lounge wear nowadays, but I don't know of anyone who owns one. The only caftan I've ever seen out in public was worn by my crazy 8th grade art teacher in 1999. So why have you always been able to buy a caftan pattern in the large fabric stores? My best guess as to why they're are still around is that they are very simple to make. The 8354 above has like what... 4 seams?

1980s

1990s

1999 Koko Beall (This looks very similar to the 80s caftan above... just saying..)

2000's Kwik Sew. Yeah... that's a cute model, but that caftan is not faltering to her figure at all. 

I'm sure caftans are very comfortable though I can't say I've ever worn one. I'm not a huge fan of the post 70s caftan styles. I still find the early 1970s vintage caftan styles to be down right elegant. Caftans of the later decades just can't compare.

1973. Not sure how I feel about floral caftan in the front there, but the solid blue without the bow ties is nice.

1973. Very mod. The black and white is actually quite lovely. Green on the left has a great little cinching waistline added which looks oh-so-sweet.

1973. I'm starting to see a pattern here (har har... oh, so punny) as far as which year to get your caftan patterns from. These asymmetrical caftans are so chic.

1972. The red version is definitely more lounge wear than anything, but I like the sleeves very much. The jumpsuit on the right... that isn't really something I could pull off per say, but if it floats someone's boat then I say go for it!

1970. The center caftan there is very cute, though I suppose it's more of an Abaya.

1972. I'm digging the waist line on the view 2 there, definitely improves the flatterability (I made that word up) of the caftan look.

So what do you think? Would you wear a caftan? Do you think caftans are the ugliest things on the planet? Would you make a caftan? Do you think they'll come back in style soon or should they even come back in style? Let me know your thoughts!