Vintage Pledge Shoulder Tie Top

July is all about vintage at the moment as stitchers across the land get well and truly involved with the Vintage Pledge July Extravaganza. This has been organised by Vintage Pledge hosts, Marie and Kerry and includes daily guest bloggers, a month long #vpjuly daily photo prompt on Instagram and LOTS of prizes. You can read more about what they have in store throughout the month here.

I was delighted to be one of the guest bloggers and the summer top I made from a vintage pattern was featured on A Stitching Odyssey last week. I'm posting pictures and details on my blog again today, just in case you missed it!

The pattern I chose was Woman's Own 5003 - a mail order pattern from 1961. The pattern is for two different summer tops: a wrap top that can be made with or without sleeves or a boxy top with shoulder ties. By happy coincidence I bought the pattern from Vintage Pattern Pledge's Kerry when she was having a destash earlier this year!

Isn't the envelope illustration adorable?! It's one of the main reasons I bought the pattern. Both tops are quite timeless designs and I could easily see the two styles slotting seamlessly into my wardrobe. 

It took me an age to decide which of the two versions to sew as I was drawn to both, but in the end the decision was dictated by the fabric. I knew I wanted to use this beautiful Liberty lawn Lilac print that I picked up on a day out with Ashley earlier this year.

I absolutely love the colours, especially the contrast between the background red and the green leaves.  It was available in lots of different colours when I bought it, but only seems to be listed in grey/lilac now unfortunately. Actually I think Charlotte used the same fabric (in a different colourway) to make her dressing gown on the Great British Sewing Bee.

As we all know, Liberty lawn is ridiculously expensive, so I only bought a metre. It was only when I was inspecting the pattern that I realised a metre was never going to be enough to make the wrap/tie version, however skilfully I laid out those pieces. So the decision was made for me - the shoulder tie top it was.

This is a very straight forward top to sew: a simple sleeveless tank with bust darts, slightly shaped side seams and a cute, notched bottom edge. The blouse also has separate shoulder ties/bows.

The pattern was for a size 36 bust and the overall fit was pretty good. The only small changes I made were to lower the bust darts by an inch and add 1½" to the overall length. The instructions were brief, but perfectly clear and the whole top sewed together quickly. The necklines and armholes were given a lovely clean finish with an all-in-one facing - very satisfying! 

The shoulder ties are supposed to be threaded through buttonholes made in the shoulder facings. Sadly, my buttonholes foot isn't working at the moment, so I just knotted the bows around each shoulder instead - they seem to be working fine so far!

The blouse has more of a boxy shape than I'm used to, but I still really like it. My favourite part is the shoulder ties - they give an otherwise plain pattern a lovely vintage twist. I'd love to try the sleeveless wrap version too at some point. Overall it's a perfect little blouse for summer and is a great match with my sailor shorts!  

This blouse counts as the second part of my Vintage Pledge for 2016. My pledge was to sew two items from vintage patterns - one suitable for winter and one suitable for summer. The winter part was taken care of when I made my Topper coat, so this here blouse is the summer part!

Joining in with the #vpjuly daily photo prompts on Instagram has been enormous fun. The vintage themed photos posted so far have been truly inspirational and I've discovered some great new bloggers to follow. If you want to check out what I've been posting you can find me on Instagram here (@janemarland).

Have a wonderful week! x

Vintage Pledge 2016

As March is fast approaching, I thought I'd better officially sign up for this year's Vintage Pledge before the year runs away with me. The Vintage Pledge, now in its third year, is co-hosted by Marie at A Stitching Odyssey and Kerry at Kestrel Makes in a bid to encourage us to sew up some of our beautiful vintage patterns more regularly. Last year, I made a rather rashly thought out pledge to sew up a vintage halter neck top pattern, which I then had to abandon. But I did still end up sewing three garments from vintage patterns last year, so I don't consider it a failure. 

 For this year's pledge, I've chosen to be purposefully vague:

"I, Jane, pledge to sew up two vintage patterns in 2016 - one suitable for summer and one suitable for winter." 

I'm already hard at work on my topper, which takes care of the winter part of the pledge, I just need to decided on a summer pattern. Interestingly, all three patterns I sewed last year (here, here and here) were ones I'd used before, so it would be good to step outside my comfort zone. One thing I'm reasonably sure of is that it won't be a dress pattern. I already have at least two summer dresses in the pipeline for this year and in all honesty, I don't think I can accommodate many more. My total dress tally is probably far fewer than lots of other sewing bloggers, but it's still more than enough for me! So I'll be concentrating on separates pattern, with these three currently on my shortlist:

Vogue 8696 from 1955 - a sleeveless version of C would make a very chic bow blouse.

McCall's 4168 from 1957 - which has a lovely gathered waist and shoulder detail. 

The wild card is McCall 8061 from 1950. These 1950's shorts are almost identical to a red pair I own from Vivien of Holloway - with a high waistband and patch pockets to the front. The problem with my VofH shorts is the sizing: the waist to hip ratio is 12 inches, and in order to get a comfortable fit around the waist, the hips are ginormous. I ended up taking in the inner and outer seams to reduce the hips, which sort of works but they don't look great on. It would be good to make a pair that actually fitted properly!  

I'll let you know once I've made my mind up. Which pattern do you think I should make?!  x

One Seam Skirt Explained

After last week's post on the 1950's one seam skirt pattern, I received several comments and emails from readers all intrigued to know how such a skirt is put together. So I've written a post about it. with photos of the pattern pieces and a few crazy reconstructions. Interested? Then read on! 

The pattern is this one - Simplicity 3983 from 1952 - which I bought immediately after seeing Kerry's first version a couple of years ago (she's made a couple more since then too!) The pattern has one main skirt piece which is cut on the fold. The other pattern pieces are a waistband and two-piece hip pockets.  The skirt has no side seams, so hip/bum shaping is given by the two darts on either side of the centre back seam.

For the purposes of this step-by-step, I've made up a teeny, tiny skirt to demonstrate how the pieces go together. I haven't scaled down the pieces perfectly, but it will give you a good idea of how the skirt is constructed. The elf-sized skirt is made up without a waistband (I couldn't be bothered to add one if you must know) but the original skirt does have one.

Main pattern pieces: skirt front/back, pocket and pocket yoke

Skirt piece opened out

First the back darts are sewn.

Darts from right side

The pockets are then stitched to the front curved edges, curves clipped and a snip made into the corner.

This is to allow the curves to turn under neatly to the inside of the skirt like this:

The pocket yoke is then sewn to the skirt and pocket.

On the original pattern, the pocket piece is longer and should be folded up and attached to the yoke like this:

Here's what the skirt now looks like from the front.

With a close up of the hip pocket.

The pucker on the pocket edge is only there because the pattern pieces aren't perfectly drafted. And because I made the entire tiny skirt in about 15 minutes…

Now we get to sew that famous one seam! Please note that in the pattern there would also be a zip attached at the top of this seam after the notch. For this post, I've just sewn the seam all the way to the top.

There's the ONE seam, on the right hand side!

In the normal course of events, you'd now add a waistband but for the purposes of this demonstration, we're done!  Here's the skirt from the back. The proportions are a bit out, so the pockets shouldn't come quite so far round the back of the skirt.

And one from the front…

And one with a spool of thread included as a size reference, just to show you how twitchy the skirt is!

I do love this pattern, it's so well constructed and easy to sew. The pockets are a bit fiddly, but for me, they were the detail that drew me to the skirt in the first place, so they're well worth the effort. I hope that's explained things a bit clearer, and please do shout if you have any other questions.

Have a great day! x

Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge 2015

Marie from A Stitching Odyssey has just announced the return of the Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge for a second year - hoorah! This year she'll be co-hosting it with Kerry from Kestrel Makes which  is awesome. I really like the way Kerry has identified her own vintage style niche (1970's/1980's). It's absolutely NOT an era I would ever like to revisit personally (I had to wear those fashions first time round!), but I'm enjoying seeing the garments she makes from vintage patterns of that time. It's well known that Marie is a big fan of vintage patterns from the 1930's to the 1960's, so by joining forces with Kerry they should have all the major decades covered! Thanks for organising it ladies, I can't wait for your inspiration posts.

The Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge was one of the few online challenges I joined in with last year and even though I completed the challenge, I have mixed feelings about committing to any kind of numerical target this year. Just to be clear, I love vintage patterns, I'm fascinated by them and can easily lose entire afternoons reading the instructions and scrutinising envelope artwork. I've also sewn quite a few garments from them over the years (19 at the last count). I think my point is that I like to sew from vintage patterns on a whimsy rather than as part of a self imposed schedule. So this year, I'm keeping my challenge very simple. I've got my hands on one vintage pattern that I know for sure I'll sew this year. That's all I'm going to commit to and any extra vintage patterns that manage to get sewn this year will be bonuses! 

This is it - a 1950's tie neck halter top with gathered bust, that crosses at the back and fastens to the front. Why this particular pattern though? Probably because I've been looking for a pattern like this for years. I'm a great admirer of halter necks (as evidenced here) and I think I'll be able to get a good fit on this pattern because of the gathered bustline. The pattern is an ePattern - a reproduction of a vintage pattern in PDF form - that I purchased from Etsy shop Subversive Femme. Obviously I'd prefer to work from the original pattern, but vintage halter neck sewing patterns are like gold dust, so this is good enough for me - I can't wait to work on it once summer's here.

So, whilst I'm on the subject:

I, Jane Marland, will sew up my favourite halter neck vintage sewing pattern during 2015. 

I may even sew it in a polka dot fabric, just for a change! Has anybody else signed up for the challenge yet? I'd love to hear your plans. Happy Sunday! x