Dapper Little Gentleman

After making my Purple Flowered Maternity Dress, I decided I had plenty of the dark purple I used for the belt to make a matching vest for my little gentleman.

I found the perfect piece of purple satin for a lining and bow tie...  a scrap from a Regency dress made for a friend, used to mock-up the top of my 1930's Evening Gown... Being so tiny, I managed to fit the vest and tie pieces on the stored away mock-up. Hurray for being a bit of a sewing project/mock-up pack-rat! 😜

The buttons, as often is the case, were from the pile my Dad found at an estate sale years ago. 

Next up, I made him a pair of tan pants out of a small scrap of twill passed on to me and stored to use later.

The shirt was a thrift store find that looked like it would work with the purple, and finished off the suit nicely. 

 
It was fun to make him something that "matched" Mommy, and such a breeze to put together kiddo clothes! It was refreshing to take a pattern and sew it with very few modifications!

A Foray into Men's Fashion

I got to foray into men's modern fashion a bit more a few years ago, making my brother's 3 piece suit for formal events. He took a break from being behind the camera, and submitted to being photographed so I could share that suit with all of you. :)

After scouring Pinterest for suit ideas, we kept running across this suit with the tail coat and really cool asymmetric vest. We both thought it was the perfect style for him, and only after we settled on making it did we realize we had picked a high formality white tie morning suit to emulate.

 

 

Photos were taken by me this time. ;) :P :D

1930's Linen Ensemble/Disneybounding Tigger

With wedding prep and projects, the editing of photos taken LAST summer got pushed aside to a less busy time. I've finally gotten around to revisiting them, and I'm excited to finally share a few of my favorite outfits with you all!

This particular outfit was a last minute decision for a themed Ball... I've always loved Tigger rather a prodigious amount, and since the Ball was movie character themed, I decided I wanted to be Tigger and set to work designing a Tigger inspired, but historically accurate outfit for the event. Why am I crazy and try to plan an entire ensemble in a matter of weeks?

Tiger striped cat with a Tigger outfit... :D

I drafted every piece for this ensemble, which took extra time, but was worth it. :) The Jacket was the hardest and took the most time in mock-up phase. I still want to hone and perfect the draft for future projects, but I was pretty pleased with my first jacket project drafted from scratch.

 

The skirt was pretty easy to make with just a few adjustments to my original draft for my brown 1930's skirt.

I only ordered 2 yards of linen for both the skirt and jacket... it took a bit of finagling to fit it all on, but it just barely made it with a few small scraps left in corners.

The pockets were quite tricky, but I'm pleased with how they came out, and I think it was worth the agony I went through to perfect them. I even brought in my engineering minded brother to consult on the proper angle for these. 😉

The blouse went fairly smoothly, thanks to the absence of sleeves. 😉 Sleeve drafting is my current bane, which I will hopefully someday over-come and begin to feel comfortable whipping out whatever kind of sleeves I want.

I love the versatility of 1930's blouses. Unlike many other decades, they were often designed to be worn un-tucked as well as tucked.

For the ball I merely added a fabric headband with Tigger shaped ears, and used a permanent marker to add a few stripes, and colored more stripes on a pair of skin-tone stockings.

Unfortunately I managed to misplace my stockings and ears for the shoot, so I don't have a photo of the Tigger outfit. *facepalm*

1930's Brown Suit Outfit

Today I finally get to share one of my absolute favorite outfits!

I love 1930's fashions! They're not only historical (and one of my favorite decades of fashion), but also super practical to wear in modern day. I have several more 1930's skirts in the works, and I can't wait to share my most recent 1930's ensemble!

 

 

This 1930's Sears ad was my inspiration for the skirt design. I drafted the pattern myself, and was ecstatic at how well it turned out! I've used and modified the draft to make four 1930's skirts now, and I think it's a keeper. :)

The fashions of the 1930's are a splendid blend of subtle details and unique designs. They seem to have had an amazing grasp of just how much interest can be added to a style with geometric cutting, piecing, etc. I especially love their use of decorative buttons and pleating! It was so much fun to design an outfit with those elements! I've never been much of a frills girl, so the unique cut and tasteful designs of the 30's are right up my alley.

I had just enough scraps left from making the skirt to squeeze out a jacket and complete the ensemble.

This vintage pattern I found on Pinterest was my inspiration for the unique lapels. I used Simplicity 1919 as a base pattern for the jacket, and with just a few modifications to the lapel and length it easily transformed to the 1930's.

The white blouse is made from Simplicity's reprint pattern collection #1278.

Our cat just loves being with his people, doing whatever we're doing. :)

This vintage portable type-writer was passed down to me from my grandparents... One of the perks of being the only grandchild interested in historical knick-knacks, furniture, etc. :)

I have an increased admiration for the secretaries of the past after attempting to type on this type-writer! How did they live without backspace?! The amount of typos and errors I made is atrocious! I may, however, have had way too much fun making up fake business letters based on nursery rhymes.😉

A modern technology time traveling outtake. :D

A 1940's White Suit: From Disastrous Mistake to Happy Golden Hour Part 2

In my last blog post I shared the story of losing a whole slew of photos from my memory card and the subsequent splendid re-shoot in a cornfield.

As if losing pictures of one outfit wasn't bad enough, among the photos lost in the formatted card fiasco were those of this 1940's suit featuring the same jacket.

When we found the cornfield, I noticed that just down the road was a small cluster of birch trees! They're one of my favorite types of tree and seemed like the perfect backdrop for this particular outfit! Once again... losing the photos, though an inconvenience at the time, worked in my favor to produce photos likely much better than those I had lost. I love it when a rainbow appears as a result of the rumbling storms of life! 😊

Upon completion of this jacket I discovered that with careful cutting I had enough material left for a matching 1940's style skirt!

It's amazing what a different hair-style and accessories can do to make one item of clothing look like an entirely different decade! With a vintage hat I got at an auction, a black belt, and the matching skirt, the outfit instantly transformed from 1950's to 1940's. It was a bit of a wild rush doing the flip from this suit and hairstyle to the 1950's suit and hairstyle to get both outfits photographed on the one warm sunny day in the forecast!

I selected this jacket from my wardrobe a couple Sundays ago, but ran short on time to do a proper vintage hairstyle. (Yay for daylight savings time sleep deprivation 😒) I pinned back the front of my hair in a rush and dashed out the door. I was amused and chagrined when I came home and glanced in the mirror... only to find myself staring into the face of someone who looked WAY too much like a 1990's secretary. 😖😄

Though I love this outfit, it doesn't get worn nearly as often as it deserves... A talent for spilling and tripping is not a particularly good combination with white clothes!😬

Photo-credit as always goes to my talented brother. :)

From Disastrous Mistake to Happy Golden Hour: Or A 1950's Photo-Shoot in a Cornfield

On a dull, cloudy day in November I crammed in what I thought would be the last of my fall themed photo-shoots. I pin-curled my hair the night before, set up a time to take the photos with my brother, and got up the next day ready to forge ahead with the shoot. The day turned out to be crazy! An emergency vehicle repair delayed the photo-shoot and we rushed to get the shots before an evening event, shivering in the chill weather.

What a relief! The photos were done! We DID it!

In the hustle and bustle we each thought the other had imported the photos to the computer...

A few weeks later I sat down to edit the photos, and we made the awful discovery... the photos HADN'T been transferred. The card had been formatted in preparation for an event my brother was photographing, new photos already taken, and my pictures were gone, for GOOD! All that work, gone in one fell blow...  so this is how Mr. Banks felt in Mary Poppins after the tuppence disaster...😉

A fair day was predicted in late November, so we seized the moment and rescheduled the shoot. Later that week we passed a cornfield near our house and had a sudden inspiration! Why not take the photos here?!

The day dawned bright and sunny, just warm enough to be comfortable in only a suit jacket. I'm still convinced this was a special "blessing in disguise" from God.😊

I loved all the photos so much that I couldn't decide on just a few, so brace yourselves for an unprecedented amount of photos!😉

I love, love, LOVE this slew of book photos. I selected one of my favorite books for a prop. "Jonica's Island"... copyright 1945, printed 1957. Just the right time period for this shoot, though I didn't know that at the time! :)  It's super hard to find a printed copy, so I was ecstatic when I discovered that it's available on Kindle! If I ever have the terrible misfortune of misplacing my copy I at least have hope of perusing its pages on screen. :D

I made this jacket several years ago based on a photo from the 1950's. The collar was so unique and the button and belt details really tickled my fancy. I went online, bought the material, and found the perfect buttons in my stash.

          Suzy Parker 1952 Photo by Richard Rutledge

I had the material for the skirt sitting in my fabric trunk for years. This fall I finally got around to making it. I LOVED the pocket detail from a 1950's ad, and knew I had to use it for this skirt.

              1957 tweed pencil skirt and blouse

Even though I never got to see the old photos I KNOW none of them were as amazing as these ones turned out. Though my distrusting heart was set into a tizzy at the knowledge of all our lost work, in the end I'm glad it happened! Without that crazy mix-up we would never have found the golden hour in the corn field. I think it will be a long while before we have a photo-shoot I love as much as this one