I may be biased, but this is cute

This is a Marian Martin mail order pattern from . . . well, I’d guess 30’s or maybe early 40’s.  My copy is a girl’s size 6 with patterns for a blouse with puff sleeves, peter pan collar, and a front keyhole opening; a bias cut jumper (thus the bad pun) with some cute details; and bloomers.  It is an unprinted pattern, which means it comes with the pieces pre cut and no markings at all on the pattern, only holes and notches (there is a guide to these in the directions).   I’m making the blouse out of an Alexander Henry floral print (I think it is called primrose) and the jumper out of blue linen–both from stash (hurray!!!!).  I won’t have enough fabric left over to make bloomers or shorts.   I  made a vertical fold in the front and back blouse as I thought it would be a bit wide for my kitten but, in retrospect, the extra ease would have been fine.     I never make muslins for children’s clothes but because I think I’ll have to alter the jumper in width and it is cut on the bias I’m going to do a quick muslin for fit.  

  I’ve already made  the blouse and there are a few differences I’ve noticed between this pattern and a modern pattern.  For instance, the shoulders are very sloped–I have never seen a children’s pattern with such a sloped shoulder.   I basted the shoulders and tried the blouse on my dd and ended up resewing them so they were slightly less sloped.  Another difference is that the collar doesn’t call for interfacing.  I went back and forth on whether I should use it and decided not to.  I’m glad I didn’t as it gives the blouse a more vintage look.  The directions are sparse and some of the directions are not given in  the text, only in the illustrations.  I followed the pattern fairly closely, so I hand stitched the hem and  bias facings (luckily, I enjoy hand sewing).  I did make a design alteration to the front closure.  The blouse has a fairly deep keyhole opening in the front which is supposed to be closed with a button and thread loop right under the collar.  Since the blouse is for under a jumper, which will probably cover the lower part of the opening,  this is probably adequate.  But I decided I’d rather have two buttons to close the opening so that if my girl can wear the blouse with a skirt or pants if she wants.  I also made button loops out of a narrow bias tube of the blouse fabric instead of the thread loops because I thought the fabric loops would be easier for my girl to use.   I do like that this pattern uses bias strips  rather than big floppy facings. 

    The blouse is really adorable and really does have a vintage/handcrafted look to it.  I’ll get a photo up soon.

Not suitable for plaids?????

Today this lovely gem arrived.  The front of the skirt is yoked with a quarter circle lower panel.  The back of the skirt is a darted straight skirt.  I love the idea of this skirt–can’t decide between a straight skirt or a flared skirt–wear both.  A woman wearing this skirt would provide a different impression coming and going.  I want to make this from a pinwale cord with a plaid print.  The envelope back warns “corduroy, striped, plaid or diagonal fabrics are not suitable”.   But wait, I say to myself, the front illustration clearly shows the skirt in a plaid fabric.  Okay,  technically it’s a large windowpane check  . . . but still . . . I’ll be now off on a quest to find out if a plaid will look okay on the bias as it would be in the front panel of this skirt.  I think it will look fine.  And I’m not worried about the corduroy either as I am intending to use a finer wale which will drape nicer and won’t have such an obvious stripe to it (plus the plaid will disguise that).  And since velveteen is listed as a suggested fabric, I would think corduroy would be fine.  Speaking of velveteen and corduroy: I have thought for many years that velveteen was merely corduroy without the wales.  It turns out that there is a difference between velveteen and no wale corduroy.  According to Claire Schaeffer’s Fabric Sewing Guide,   the pile of no wale cord is woven in rows while it’s random in velveteen.  I examined the brown velveteen on a dress I made last winter for my girl and found out that it is not a true velveteen, it is a no-wale cord.  But I’m still going to call it velveteen as “a dress made of brown velveteen” sounds more lovely and is easier to say  than “a dress made of brown no-wale corduroy”.

This skirt does call for belting to make a belt that attached to the inside of the top edge somehow.  After doing a little research on that topic at Vintage Sewing  Reference Library, I think petersham ribbon will be an okay substitute.   This poor old pattern; it’s not in good shape.  I’m making copies of everything and then I’ll slip the poor dear in an acid free cover and won’t handle it any more.   Inside the envelope with the pattern pieces and directions are some pieces of The New York Times from February 27, 1955.  One article is titled “Babies, Babies, Babies–4,ooo,ooo Problems” about the baby boom and what problems this increase in population may cause.   There’s also an article on the problems involved with legal and illegal wiretapping and the history of what we’d probably call “electronic evesdropping” in our era.  Fifty-two years later we’re still concerned with the drain on resources that “baby boom” may cause and also with the issue of law enforcement/government’s invasion into the privacy of citizens.   Apparently, the original owner of this lovely pattern used the paper for some pattern alterations.   She could have never imagined  that so many years later somebody would find those pieces and blog about them.   

She’s got style . . .

Warning:  If you click on the bigger image of Sweet Polly you go to the Underdog show website and the theme song immediately starts playing!

This post was supposed to be all about my vintage simplicity skirt that I finished.  Today Mr. Gray Cat took a bunch of photos of me and the skirt  . . .  I had on my black pumps, my red lipstick, and my vintage hat with the veil . . . I was trying to upload the images onto the computer when the neighborhood had a sudden blackout.  It was brief, but enought to corrupt the card so all the images are gone .  So instead I’m going to blog about Polly Purebred instead.

Tonight, before the blackout,  we watched some old episodes of the Underdog show we rented from Netflix.  I wanted the kids to see the original Underdog before they get corrupted by the Disney movie version.  Well, the kids loved the shows and Mr. Gray Cat was equally happy to watch–it turns out that he had an Underdog ring with secret compartment when he was a kid (way before my time–I only watched old reruns of Underdog in my childhood).    I noticed how fashionable  Sweet Polly Purebred was–and it turns out she was based on Marilyn Monroe.   She’s definately my favorite canine ace reporter.  I apologize for not having a better picture of this two dimensional fashion icon.  If you look around at the Underdog show website you can see her in her red jacket, white top, and black pencil skirt–very chic, Polly!

No sewing going on around here . . .

We’ve been away, so I have not been sewing (after a mad rush of aprons right before I left to take to my parents and siblings).  I did go to G street fabrics while I was away and bought some nice cotton stretch shirting in red and dark pink and cotton lawn in red and in white.   Plus some fabrics from the $2.97/yd  section (or whatever the price was–something like that).  I did not buy rayon velvet, which cost too much for me there.  I was looking for something for the vintage draped dress and thought a solid rayon in a red or wine color would be nice–and it would be if I could only find the fabric!