Finishing a Long Overdue Project

Feels good doesn't it? Finishing a project that's been languishing around for many years?

Yesterday I told you I was going to sew some buttons I bought at Goodwill onto a 40's day dress.

I've been dragging this dress around for almost 8 years. It was in the scrap pile when I worked at Ragpickers. It was a mess. It has split seams all over the place, the hem had fallen, some light fading, a few small stains and it was missing 7 buttons. The only thing it had going for it at the time was the incredibly cute and soft fabric.

Those three buttons sitting on my coffee table are what's left of the dresses original buttons. 

I begged my boss if I could have it. She said sure. I had big hopes and dreams of fixing it all up. I sorted out the stains and spit seams fairly quickly, then lost steam. A few years ago I pressed and pinned up the hem and never sewed it.

And so it hung in my closet, pinned hem and all, and I continued to drag it around. Part of the reason it took me so long is that I could never really find the right buttons for it at the right price. I need 10 fairly large buttons which wouldn't compete with the dress. Oh, and I refused to pay more than $5 for them. Sounds easy right? Well, I'm picky and the right ones never came along.

When I found those buttons in the 25 cent bin at Goodwill I was pretty excited. I know they're nothing to look at, but they fit the bill. There were exactly 10 of them and they were a great price!

I cannot wait to wear this dress next summer. I'm not sure if the fabric is cotton or a cotton rayon blend, but it is the most soft fabric I've ever felt and it's incredibly lightweight. Plus it has that adorable Pan print! I've always loved novelty print day dresses and now I finally have one!

Here's a close up of the buttons for you. I sewed them on with pink thread for a little interest.

Have you saved a seemingly hopeless piece of vintage before? Or have you got a project you've been dragging around for almost a decade like me? Do tell!

Lisa.xo

How to Sew In Seam Pockets into a Dress (Lisa Style!)

Here's how I inserted pockets into my dress from yesterday's post.

Sorry for the randomness in the photo colours. I worked on this off and on all day two days ago and the sun is setting around 5ish these days which leaves me with less than stellar light for taking photos.

Anyway...enough excuses, here's how I did it:

I had never done this before and did not have an existing pattern, so I started by looking through my closet for a dress with an in seam pocket. I used this 60's dress I wore to my step-Dad's 60th birthday.

I turned my example dress inside out and laid it on top of some kraft paper.

Next I traced the pocket onto the kraft paper.

Next I unstiched the cut off hem fabric and pressed it flat with my iron.

Then I folded the fabric in four and pinned my template to it.

Now...I did something silly next. I cut out the template with room for seam allowance.
By the time I had my fabric cut out I realized that the pockets would have been WAY too big. I realized that the pocket I traced included a small seam allowance. Opps! (told you, I had never done this before)

So I went back and trimmed by template back to the line I had originally drawn, pinned it back to my fabric and recut my pockets. After cutting, I had 4 pocket pieces. Two for each pocket.

This is where I started my second attempt. And it's after dinner, hence the darker photos.

Next I put the dress on and figured out where I wanted my pockets to be and put a pin in the side seam where I wanted it to open. I pinned about 3" down from the waistband.

Next I opened up the seam. Not all the way to the hem, just enough to fit my pocket pieces in comfortably. Around 10".

Now I hope I can explain the next bit clearly.
I pinned the straight edge of one pocket piece up with the open edge of the side seam. The right sides together.

Then I sewed the two pieces together along the straight edge.

I did the same with the second pocket piece.

Once I had sewn both pocket pieces to my dress the inside of my  skirt looked like this:

Next I pinned and sewed both sides back together. Instead of sewing straight along the side seam I made sure to sew around the pocket leaving a 1/2" seam allowance.

After this, I sewed along the side seam 3/4" down from the top of the pocket and 2 1/2" up along the side seam from the bottom of the pocket to close the opening some more.

I sewed just on the outside of the stitch line to the pin.

Then I repeated these steps on the second pocket! Ta Da! Pockets!

If this was too confusing for you, this post helped me while I was sewing in my pockets. As always, feel free to ask me any questions!

Lisa.xo

More Than Hemming

I've been working on this dress on and off for two days.

I knew when I bought it from the lovely Erin at Oh So Lovely that I wanted to shorten it significantly. I've had my eye out for a long sleeve vintage dress for a little while now. And I didn't want to buy anything 70's or 80's. This cute 50's housedress was just want I wanted.
The only problem was that I felt very dowdy in it with the long sleeves and the mid-length skirt. Flaunting a little skin was in order.

These two photos were my inspiration:

Calivintage

Charlotte Taylor

So I took the plunge and hemmed the skirt. This, of course, involved cutting off a portion of the existing hem. 

I was left with such a wide piece of fabric once the hemming was finished I got to thinking about what I could do with it. I thought about what the dress was missing. The original belt was missing, but with the pattern being so busy I wasn't sure I missed it so much. I got to thinking that it was a terrible shame that this cute dress didn't have pockets...so I thought I would sew some in!

I have never, ever sewn pockets into anything before. I figured it couldn't be too hard. And with a quick phone call to my Mom for some advice mid-way through my project I got the pockets all sewn in in one evening! I'm so proud of myself!

So here's how she looks now: 

It's getting dark so early here right now. It's getting tricky to find time to take photos in good light! Ugh!

Blue 50's Housedress: Oh So Lovely

Aqua Belt: Thrifted

Navy Tights: Wonderbra (@ Walmart)

Sweater Clip worn at Brooch: Vintage Glory

Grey Mary Janes: Aldo

So cute don't you think?

Stay Tuned tomorrow for a step-by-step on how I inserted the pockets. 

Lisa.xo

Make Mine Shorter

As you know, I've been keeping myself busy these last few days with some hemming projects.

It really is a disease. I cannot stop hemming dresses! A few inches off the bottom hem of a dress just makes such a big difference on how they look on me. I'm not tiny at 5'4", but the more dresses I hem, the more I realize that shortening a dress to just below or above my knee not only makes my legs look longer, but is a great way to modernize a vintage dress without a ton of alteration. And I really do my best to keep the original hem intact and not cut any length off to preserve the original fit of the dress in some way.

Here are two of the dresses I worked on this weekend. (sorry, I am a bad blogger and did not take "before" pictures, you just get the "afters"):

This cotton day dress is new. I just bought it at Ragpickers a month or so ago. It needed some love. There were a number of split seams, so I got it for a song. I just couldn't resist the colour and the pintucks on this dress. And hemming was easy peasy! I just rolled up the original hem, pressed it and hand sewed it into place.

I've had this next dress for a few years. This one is from Vintage Glory. I've only worn it once or twice. Mostly due to the fact that the skirt was so long on my it was only a few inches from skimming my ankles. It is definitely a late 40's, New Look dress. The darker cranberry colour is so 40's, it's got a centre back metal zipper, but the fullness of the skirt makes this dress a 1948-50 style for sure. I just love it!

This dress has pockets! I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nothing is better than pockets on a dress!!

I have always wanted to shorten the skirt, but didn't want to mess with it too much because of it's age. Hemming some dresses this summer has changed my mind about that. I bought it to wear it and I did't like to because of the length of the skirt. I felt like I was drowning in fabric. It's mine and I will do what I want with it. It's not like I'm cutting the whole thing up. I did cut 4 inches off the hem of this dress though. I did leave a 2 1/2" hem allowance if I feel like lengthening it in the future.

I've got a nice chunk of fabric left from the hem of this dress, I shortened it a total of 6 1/2"! I'm considering making a matching belt since it was missing the original when I bought it. Any tips?

Now that I've hemmed it I couldn't be happier with the results. I love how it turned out!

I also worked on this dress this weekend and have another one on the go right now. Stay Tuned for pics of those too!

Lisa.xo

Let it Sew!

Winter has finally arrived in Winnipeg.
It snowed ALL day yesterday. Two days ago there was still grass in my front yard and now we have this:

Due to all this snow I've decided to hibernate and get some projects in my mending pile done.
a.k.a. Hem some more dresses! lol!

This is my vintage sewing machine. It was my grandmother's. My Mom learned to sew on this machine and made many, many things for my brothers and I with it over the years. Mom gave it to me 7 or 8 years ago and I love it! They just don't make things like they used to.

Lisa.xo

Hemming

So I thought for fun I would share with you how I "mended" one of my Costume Museum of Canada Fashion Show outfits. I put mending in quotations because I didn't really mend it, I hemmed the slip for this dress.

The sad story of this dress is this: It was donated to to CMC to use in the Fashion Show. Originally it was twice as large as it is now. Down the line some unknowing volunteer decided to wash the dress as it had gotten a little dirty with repeated wearing. The dress is rayon crepe from 1929. I should never have been washed. Only dry cleaned. It shrank. A LOT! The slip did not shrink as it is acetate and is (was) too long. For as long as I have worn this outfit for the fashion shows the slip has been pinned up so it didn't stick out of the bottom of the dress. I offered to hem it. Today I did just that.

With that little story out of the way, I thought you might enjoy seeing how I go about hemming a garment. This is basically the same technique I used to hem all of my dresses this summer.

Disclaimer: I am by no means a professional seamstress, but I'm no beginner either. I can follow a pattern, I know my way around my own sewing machine and I'm anal as hell (which helps a lot).

When hemming my my own dresses I usually put on the item in question, examine myself in the mirror and stick a pin in the dress where I think I'd like it to be hemmed to. Then I pin up the entire hem to that line and carefully try the dress on again. Repeat if I'm not happy with the results.

This time I had to hem the slip so it was hidden under the dress, so I got out my trusty dress form. Before I put the slip and dress on I gave both garments a good steam (I own a professional quality steamer) so they would hang properly so I could see how much needed to be hemmed.

Here you can see here how much the slip sticks out at the bottom.

Next I pinned the slip up in one spot to see if this was enough to keep it hidden under the dress.

Then off came the dress and the slip. I laid the slip out inside out on the floor.

Then I turned up the hem to my pin mark and measured the turned up length.

After measuring, I worked my way around the bottom of the slip measuring and pinning as I went.

Then I tossed the slip on the mannequin again to make sure it didn't look wonky. Looked good to my eye so I proceeded.

Next I ironed this wide hem I had created to mark my new hem position.

I used medium heat with a little steam and covered the slip with a cotton napkin to protect the fabric. When ironing resist the urge to smoosh the iron around! (smoosh is a technical term btw.) This can stretch delicate fabric and make your hem look funny. Use firm, even pressure and press the iron onto the spot you'd like ironed, lift, move and repeat. This will ensure a nice straightly ironed line.

Once the hem was pressed, I removed the pins. Leaving the slip on the ironing board I measured two inches in from my pressed line and cut off the excess fabric. These 2 inches will become my rolled hem.

Once the access fabric has been removed I folded the remaining 2 inches in half, folded it again at the pressed "line" and pinned it down. (I had to pin the hem down in the first photo in order to photograph it, because I only have two hands. Normally I just turn the hem in and turn it in again)

Place your pins as shown in the photo above. This will enable you to leave them in when you sew everything down with your sewing machine later.
Once the hem is pinned press everything down again for a nice crisp edge. This final press will also make sewing a lot easier.

I decided I would use my sewing machine to hem this slip. Typically I hand sew hems on dresses and pants, but I decided to use my sewing machine for two reasons:

1. This is a slip. No one will see it.
2. The hem on the slip looked like a gnarled mess before I got to it.

I'm not sure if it had been hemmed once already or if it came like this, but I figured I couldn't hurt it anymore than it already had been.

Off to the races!

After sewing I tossed it on the mannequin again and prayed to God I didn't screw it up. (I do this a lot when I'm sewing. Especially before I cut something. Lots of deep breaths!)

Thankfully I didn't. It looked pretty good!

Next I put the dress on over it and prayed again that I had hemmed it short enough. And I did! Yeah! (maybe I should start giving myself some credit when it comes to my sewing...)

I'm really excited that I had some time for this project. Our next Fashion Show is next Saturday and I'm wearing this outfit again. I can't wait to wear it without all of those pins stuck in it!

And just for fun (because who knows when I'll have this at my house again, if ever!), the vintage suede and leather shoes and corded navy clutch that are part of this outfit. *Sigh* So pretty...

I've got another dress to work on here as well...it's on my dress form in my living room as I type this (with so   many other half finished projects!!). The mending is a little more involved with this one. I'll be sure to post about it once I've got it complete!

Lisa.xo