Vintage wedding photo on Awkward Family Photos

I was browsing through the archives of http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com and found this photo.

Aside from the fact that the dresses seem to match the drapes behind them, I actually really like these bridesmaid dresses. The flower girl's dress is just adorable. We're not having a flower girl, but if we were I wouldn't be opposed to putting her in a cute dress like that.

So what do you think? Am I crazy for loving these gowns?

Baby patterns

I'm constantly on the look out for babies to make cute vintage clothing for. I mean, how could you not want to make these things? 

They're too cute and you can whip them up in 15 minutes with half a yard of fabric. How could you not want to make them all the time. Right? Right? 

Just be careful when ordering vintage baby patterns. A lot of patterns that look like newborn patterns are actually for dolls. While these outfits would work for preemies, your going to have to size them up if you want to use them for standard size newborns. Luckily if the envelope is in good shape it's pretty easy to tell the difference. Most newborn patterns will say "one size" for their sizing. Doll patterns will sometimes say "Doll" or they will often give a measurement such as "12 inch" or "16 inch." (Often times the illustrations will be creepy looking as well.) 

Simplicity 3043 is my personal favorite baby pattern and must have been a pretty popular design because you can find these everywhere. Actually I kind of get tired of seeing the patterns on the internet, but on the other hand I don't think I've ever seen anyone other than me make up one of these sweet little dressing robes or bibs. 

Well this time I finally found a baby to sew for. Eleanor over at Unfamiliar Ceiling is expecting! I met Eleanor through the Ruby Shorts experience and have followed and enjoyed her blog ever since. So congrats to her and her hubby. I'm making a few baby things for the newborn whether she likes it or not. 

Would you wear this?

I normally don't pay any mind to the Butterick Catalogs. I normally give them a brief thumb-through before throwing them in the trash. However, Butterick's New Fall pattern line intrigued me. So many of the designs are based on vintage dresses this time around. Stylistically they seem to be drawing from the 1960s and 1970s, but I'll post more on those later this week.

This pattern I thought was really quite cute. I don't normally go for modern dresses... mostly because my house is full of vintage ones, but this looked like a nice classic design.

I'm totally digging the cowl neck, but it's the back of the dress that really caught my eye.

Cute right? I love the little coat detailing. So what do you all think? Would you wear this? What fabric would you choose? Would you go dual color or maybe a solid?

Comment! Let me know what you think. Oh.. and PS. This pattern is on sale right now for $4.50. Or you could just wait for a 99cents pattern sale.

Cute Halloween Costumes

Tina over at What I Found has been posting some seriously awesome illustrations of costumes from a Pictorial Review catalog ca. 1925-1927. If you love the 20s like I do these are a must see!

Super cute pirate costume. A little risqué even.

I would totally wear that giant bow on my head. Just saying. 

Tree fairy maybe? Actually this is Pan according to the description. You know, Peter Pan (as if you couldn't tell the second you looked at this image.)

I would totally wear this right now. RIGHT NOW. Ruffles people! Ruffles..... The caption on the pattern illustration says "Colonial Girl," but I'm not sure how colonial this is. Looks more like what we would think of as "Little Bo Peep" today. 

Do check out Tina's Blog. She post all sorts of scans from her collection of vintage literature. They're always fun and interesting.

The plastic home of the future.

I've fallen behind

I want this House Dress so badly. I saw this baby on the pattern rescue and haven't been able to get it out of my head. So far I have not been able to locate a copy. Some of the trouble comes from identifying the pattern number. I think it's 1689, but it's hard to tell. 

So with the completion of the Guys and Dolls Show I realized something. My house is a mess. Don't worry though I have valid excuses-- I think.

First of all. Massive amounts of sewing, organizing and measuring to put together the costumes for a show.
Second: Taking night classes. (This seriously impedes on my cleaning time.)
Third: Wedding. We're getting down to crunch time on choosing a venue. Luckily I think I've decided.
Fourth: (goes with #2) Copious amounts of homework.
Fifth: Dragon Con.... Spent too much time planning and engaging in that.
And Sixth: General Tiredness/Laziness. With so much to do I just haven't wanted to do much cleaning. I get home and pretty much fall into bed. In the mornings I'm not motivated to get up and get out of bed. What I need is some motivation to get me back on my specially tailored cleaning schedule.

So my question is what do you all do when you get in that cleaning funk? How do you climb your way out when you've let things go too far and you don't even know where to begin?

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!

Dragon Con

So we totally spent a few days at Dragon*Con this weekend. If you don't know what that is it's a HUGE nerd convention that happens every year in Downtown Atlanta. We went for a couple of days. It was way too much fun.

The Convention has tons of panels for nearly every type of Nerd-dom. Most of the panels are grouped into tracks based on topics. There was a Trek Track, a Star Wars Track, a Video Game Track, a Supernatural Track, a Skeptics Track, a Boardgame Track, and the list goes on and on.  I mostly went to the Costuming Track Panels. The classes that I took involved pattern drafting, wig construction, historical costuming, and Burlesque costuming.  Fiance was a Science Track Guy. He did things like go to panels about the recent changes in the classification of objects in our solar system, went to a sun viewing (apparently saw huge solar flares and sunspots), and panels on where the American Space Program is headed.

There were some great retro inspired costumes at the convention. Fiance was the photographer during the convention so all these photos were taken by him.

Retro Space Girl. She was very cute. I'm told that she's posing with someone from the Watchmen. I am ashamed to say that I have never read the comic nor seen the movie so I cannot verify this.

Loved this Lady's cute sailor dress. The guy she was with was sporting the Steampunk look.

Not really sure if these girls are something or whether they just made cute Mardi Gras themed dancer costumes. I loved their feathery headpieces.

This Lady was very my Fair Lady-esque. Gotta love the hat. It seemed larger in person.

Here is the lovely lady who taught the Costuming for Burlesque Panel, Pinky Shear. She is a costumer for Big City Burlesque in Atlanta, GA. Her shoes have over $200 worth of crystal attached to them. This Lady really takes the time to craft her costumes. She was awesome.

Holmes.

Nifty 1910 inspired costume.

This was the retro/throwback portion of the Dragon*Con Parade. I love the A League of Their Own costumes. You can see some of the Pinup girls in the background there too.

And then we stumbled across Jem and Holograms, the Misfits, and Synergy. How cool is that? Totally geeked out over these guys for a while. They were outrageous. Also, is it bad that I'm lusting over their shoes?

I went a little retro myself and sported my interpretation of the old Playboy Bunny girls.

Wooooo. Magical disappearing legs.

Later I got to hang out with Bud Trooper. It was pretty sweet.

We also attended a few of the celebrity panels. The cast of I Dream of Jeannie was there.

Picture blurry, but we were sitting pretty far back and were using a cheap camera. From left to right Host, Barbara Eden (Jeannie), Bill Daily (Major Robert Healy), and Larry Hagman (Major Tony Nelson).

We also went to see Kevin Sorbo's panel (HERCULES!!!), but it was too dark in there to get any good pictures. Fiancé did manage to snap this one of him during the parade.

We also had to stop for a photo opp with Rogue from Cruxshadows. Awesome! He totally touched my shoulder, then gave us each a big hug. I heart the Cruxshadows. Yes we're washed out, but some nice random guy snapped this photo for us so I can't complain.

Another one of the Tracks that was very very popular was the Steampunk Track. The idea behind it is that they take things in the modern world and recreate them as if they were in an alternate reality where steam power is the dominant technology (rather than electricity). Confused yet? Well the Steampunks definitely put some serious effort into their costumes.

Steampunk-ified Super Heroes. Batman on the left, Superman on the right. I think that's the Joker and the Penguin between them. 

Correction! The lovely lady in purple in this photo tells me that she is portraying Catwoman. The lovely lady in the tux is portraying Zatanna. Thanks for the update!

Steampunk Wizard of Oz. This group made my jaw drop. Do you see that Tinman in the back? How many hours of work went into that?! And Glinda! And the wicked witch! And check out the flying monkey with the jet pack next to Dorothy on the ground. Wow. These guys invested some serious time and some serious dough into these.

All and all I had a lot of fun. I'd like to go back next year. 

Last Guys and Dolls Post I Swear!

The director of the show, Ms. Tammy Barton, sent me some great photos to post on the blog. So sweet of her to give me these for $25V. She must understand the troubles of New Old Camera. Luckily for me and all my future projects my NEW NEW CAMERA came in the mail today. Holy SLR Batman! I love it!

Now I can request fancy lenses for the next few holidays and not have to strain too hard to come up with gifts. I know that sounds weird, but very rarely need anything. I'm pretty content to make do with what we have so it's always difficult for me to come up with things I want for gifts. Luckily (well, unluckily actually) my camera broke this year so my birthday present was easy to choose. Happy Birthday to me! In case anyone is mildly curious I hit 24 at 2:15 this afternoon. Now I can rent cars! Sweet!

Anyways, enough chatting! Here are the last of the Guys and Dolls Photos compliments of our director.

Better picture of the Hotbox Gals. Love my awesome show-girl headpieces. Very fun, super easy. Anyone interested in a tutorial?

Oh! Em! Gee! feathers! You can also see Nathan's maroon pinstripe suit here. Gotta love interesting menswear.

A much clearer shot of the general cast costumes. You can see the hilariously ugly wedding dress I created for the show on the left there. Love it!

Hotbox girl and Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Blue Pinstripes = awesome sauce!

More of the ugly wedding dress. The dress was a great find at $25. It was actually quite pretty before I chopped it up and added some tacky "bling."

Benny South-street. Tell me you don't love the powder-blue sports coat. 

And another shot of the guys costumes. Really loved doing the guys for this show. I could go really crazy with this show so I did. Plaid, Blue, Old Man Coats, Purple Pin-stripe suits. So good.

Hope you all had a great labor day! Anyone do anything fun? I went to Dragon*Con, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that post.

Dress Rehersal Shots

Here are the promised photos from Dress Rehersal last night. New Old Camera isn't the greatest at taking photos of anything that's not in direct sunlight so please open these up to see the large images. I'm so happy with how the show turned out. If you're in the Atlanta Area the show opens tomorrow night at the Fred Ampitheatre in Peachtree City. Doors open at 7:30. 

The cast joking around before rehearsal.

Runyonland number in progress. Sarah is trying to get the drinking, gambling  citizens of NYC to stop their evil ways and come to the Save a Soul Mission

Mission Band Members.

Big Julie. I just love this guy! His name is Bob Grillo and he is a riot on stage! We rented that fabulous jacket and tie from Creative Costumes.

Another Crapshooter. My first attempt at dying a man's jacket. Somewhat successful. I think I need more soda ash next time. Also, I'm not denying the fat that he's wearing a Snoopy tie. 

Sarah, Mission Band Members and Lt. Brannigan in the back. The uniforms they're wearing are old Pyke County High School Marching Band uniforms. Bonnet in Sarah's hand is from Melanie and Creative Costumes.

Side view of the "Oldest Reliable" number. Love the backdrop! (I had nothing to do with it, just love it).

Bushel and a Peck Costumes! Can't take credit for these other than the headpieces. I was running low on time so two of the cast members made the costumes up. I gave them a basic idea and they just ran with it. I thought these came out fabulously. I made all the hats in our kitchen. Mr. Miller (fiance) was not too happy with the marabou feathers all over the floor. 

And I also made Miss Adelaide's headpiece. I love making showgirl headpieces! In fact I think it's one of the most fun things ever. She had to duck to get through to the stage door in the back there, but beauty requires effort! Actually, no one told me they were coming through a door. I assumed they were coming on from stage left. Oh well! She still looks hot!

Here they are going through the door. You can see that Amanda (Adelaide) had to squat a little, but that dramatic showgirl headpiece sure makes for a dramatic entrance!

A Frankensteined robe. Took a bunch of stuff from the costume vault and sewed it together. I'm totally in love with the fuzzy sleeves!

Sorry this is so dark. New Old Camera can't really handle dark scenes. This is the "Cafe Cubana" scene. Those cuban gals are totally wearing my dresses... The red dress on the left is my standard salsa/latin/dancing date dress.

Close up of Adelaide's "Take Back Your Mink" costume which I LOVE. Thanks creative costumes for letting us rent this baby. So cute!

Take Back Your Mink on Stage. The Hot Box Girls are wearing my best costume find ever. 10 MATCHING dresses in the RIGHT sizes at Kohls, on the clearance rack, for 12$ each! I was so happy that day! Perfect costumes, and 10 of the same thing from clearance!? Unheard of! That was a lucky lucky day. Afterward I took these home and installed Velcro to turn these into fabulous rip-away dresses. They work great!

After the rip away, black leotards underneath.