Showing posts with label modern sewing patterns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label modern sewing patterns. Show all posts

Monday, January 17, 2011

First Look: Vintage Pattern Lending Library 1932 Ladies Frock

Well Friends, between injuries, holidays and ice storms $25V has not been very active in the new year. There's also some other surprises in the works that you'll have to stay tuned to see. What I can tell you is that $25 Vintage is getting a total makeover in February including a new website design and logo that have been in production here in Haus of Nancy. 

Well, I hope that your weekends went well. Ours was great. For starters we're finally free of our house! Georgia Snowtastrophe 2011 has finally ended! We had 55 degree Saturday which really helped the thaw out all the roads. Looks like life around here is finally getting back to normal. 

The only good part about being iced in is that I was able to get a lot done around the house. I caught up on all the laundry, I reorganized the master bedroom closet, we cleaned out the upstairs office so we can paint and get it ready to become my sewing room, we reserved our church for the wedding, I cleaned all the base boards in my house, I put away the rest of the holiday decorations, we recycled the tree (which was sadder than expected) and we may or may not have had a Robotech marathon on Sunday. I never said we weren't dorks....

But the most exciting news of the weekend? Ta da!


My Vintage Pattern Lending Library Pattern came in the mail! I've never ordered one of her patterns before so I was super excited to open this thing up and take a look. I thought I'd give you all my first impressions of the pattern before I started chopping it up and turning it into January's dress project. Call this a mini-review.

My first impression of the pattern was very good. It was packed very very well. My mail man had forced the shipping envelope into my mailbox and creased the cardboard "do not bend" envelope right down the middle. The outer packaging also tore while I was trying to pry it out of the mailbox. After an angry phone call to the post office I peeled back the shipping envelope and was ecstatic to find that pattern was still in pristine condition. Awesome!


The pattern is packed in a heavy duty plastic zip-top sleeve and printed on good quality paper stock. My favorite part was the actual pattern pieces themselves. They are printed on two large sheets of vellum and are very tear resistant. I tried tearing an empty corner as a test and it took quite a bit of strength to do it. 


She's added seam allowances to the pattern which I really appreciate. She's also added things like tucks and darts in easily readable red ink. That's going to be a major time saver.


I also really appreciate additions like the dotted line above which will save me quite a bit of time on sleeves down the road if I want to make this dress as intended. 

Overall I am really happy with the quality of this pattern. I haven't had a chance to read through the instructions yet, but so far I'm really impressed. She has really added a lot of time saving features to things that always slow me up when working with unprinted patterns. The only down side to the pattern that I see is that it is one size only. She gives fabric recommendations if you do chose to scale up the pattern, but otherwise you're on your own. 

It was a bit more than I like to pay for a pattern, but with all the features VPLL has added I have to say that this dress pattern was a great value. I paid $12.00 for it and I know that the velum pattern pieces are going to stand up to multiple uses. 

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

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.