Leather, Plastic and Flowers

My new camera finally arrived. I have been taking pictures of stuff around the house all day.

My ever expanding collection of bakelite bangles.



A new pair of vintage gloves I bought at Ferry Antiques. It's a co-operative shop with different sellers so there's loads of amazing things. I love antique shops that are chock-a-block with stuff.


Fabric I'm using to sew a 60s style dress.

A Picnic and a Check the Technique

Picture pilfered from the fabulous Helga

On Sunday Georgia and Ayesha organised a wee blogger picnic in Hagley Park. It was so nice to meet Christie, Laurel and Ayesha and see Georgia and Helga again. The weather was perfect and the rain that was forecast never arrived. It was great to chat about blogging, vintage and op-shopping while enjoying snacks and drinks.

I didn't take any photos because my camera is broken and I'm waiting for my new one to be sent but you can see more pictures at Georgia's and Helga's blogs.

Picture pinched from the lovely Georgia

I wore a skirt sent to me by the very generous Brians an unusual name for a girl. She sent me a whole package of lovely stuff including a fabulous 60s lingerie set and some great dresses which I'll show you in another post. The skirt fabric is a gorgeous floral cotton. It was too long and needed a waistband and a zip so I cut some of the bottom off to make a waistband. I didn't have the right coloured zip in my stash so I made a placket and used some snaps and a hook and eye at the top.

I decided to use some horsehair braid in the hem which is on my Check the Technique list. Horsehair braid (not actually made of horsehair, it's kind of plastic-y), is used in hems to give them a nice shape. I followed the technique from Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing. You sew it like a facing, then flip it up and topstitch it. As you can see from the above picture my machine didn't really like the horsehair braid. It looks okay on the outside but the inside's a bit wonky. When I use it again I think I'll sew the hem up by hand rather than topstitching it. The braid I used wasn't very wide (about 2.5cm) so the effect is quite subtle. It makes the skirt stand out sort of like I'm wearing a crinoline which I like.

It's only rock and roll

We had a few more big earthquakes yesterday. Not really what we needed two days before Christmas. Luckily, no one was seriously injured. Since there's not much you can do in these situations except keep calm and carry on, we spent Christmas eve eve eating blue cheese stuffed olives and pepperdews and watching telly (which was still sitting on the floor where it had fallen during the quake).

I'm not heavily into the whole Christmas thing (we don't even have a tree) and I hate Christmas songs but Tim Minchin's White Wine in the Sun pretty much sums up all my feelings about it. I hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday however you celebrate, and manages to drink some white wine (or other beverage) in the sun (or snow if you live in the Northern hemisphere).

Australian Home Journal 1955

Sorry about my absence. It's been busy. I got a job as a research assistant for the summer. Fun, fun, fun! No, seriously. I love doing research.



Anyway, I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. All the way back to 1955. This is the cover of an Australian Home Journal from April 1st 1955. I have a few of these which all used to belong to someone named Watson (she wrote her name on the top right). Sorry the pictures are taken with my camera. My scanner died. Hopefully you can click on the pictures to make them bigger. ETA: If you right click and go to 'open in a new tab' you can make them bigger and see the text. Apparently, blogger now has a weird thing where you can't make the pictures bigger by just clicking on them.



Inside they have pictures of the patterns that you could order by mail. I want all of them.




Alongside the patterns are little paragraphs about the lastest trends. Example:
"The New Line? The question in every woman's mind just now is, 'What is going to happen about Dior's 'H' line and his even newer 'A' line, and how much will they affect styles out there?' As yet no one knows the answer. The matter is controversial."

Controversial? If you say so.



How amazing is that dress on the left with the buttons and the pleating?



Aside from all the pretty dresses there are also some ads that make my feminist self nauseous. There are a disturbing number of these for laxatives/diet pills. This is only a small sampling.


'Tonic reducing globules' sounds way scary.



Least you think these were only aimed at adults, here is one for the kiddies. The ad actually says, "They're not habit-forming". Oh, that's so reassuring to know little Joan won't become addicted to laxatives.


On a less scary note, this ad on the back cover tickles me because you can still buy Arnott's milk arrowroot biscuits here. They are yummy!

Sail away with me honey*

I'm pretty sure I've expressed my love of novelty prints about a million times before on here. One of the best places to get vintage style novelty prints is in the children's section. Ages ago, I found some awesome sailboat printed fabric in the kids fabric section on Trademe for $7. I was going to use it to make a skirt but then I saw this sailboat print shirt by Milly (it costs US$230 which is like NZ$300!!!).

Image from here

I wanted a more 50s style than the Milly shirt so pulled out Butterick 9405. I've already made this pattern twice so it went together pretty quickly. I made view D.

What on earth is that woman at the front doing?

I did darts at the front instead of tucks but that's the only change I made. I did french seams where I could because I am obsessed with them.

I actually finished this a little while ago but the print made it a total nightmare to get an okay picture of it. I tried three times to take photos but the bright white background of the fabric made all the pictures blurry.

I used some vintage buttons that I love but haven't been able to use until now because there are only three of them. It closes with a snap at the top because there's not enough room for a button.



So my fabric + notions cost less than $10 vs the $300 Milly version. I think I win.

*Incidentally, I don't like sailing or going on boats because I get seasick. My face turns green and I think I'm going to die.

Well, you must tell me, baby, how your head feels under somethin' like that?*

I love leopard print. I'm sure it started when I was about seven and my Mum made me a little black jacket with a faux fur leopard print collar. I wore that thing until it fell apart. I have been seeking the perfect leopard print jacket ever since. I do have a faux fur leopard coat, that was given to me by a friend, which I love. The only problem is that I can only wear it in the depths of winter because it's so warm. I wanted something that could be worn in spring, summer and autumn so I could have leopard print for all seasons.

I bought McCall's 5525 on sale. If I hadn't seen a few versions of it on the internet I never would have got it because I think the fabric/styling on the pattern envelope is hideous. This is why I don't like modern patterns. I can't look past the ugly pattern envelopes. Vintage ones are so much prettier. I also found the perfect leopard print cotton sateen at Fabric Vision (which is now gone). I think the fabric cost me $45 for 3 metres. I almost didn't get it because I am so miserly and that seemed like way too much money. Then the pattern and the fabric sat in my stash for about a year. I'm not really sure why I didn't have the motivation to sew it up but I'm glad that I waited. My sewing skills have improved exponentially in that time.

I started this the other week and even though it has a lot (over 100 I think) of steps it went together pretty fast. I followed almost all of the instructions and only changed a couple of things. I raised the pockets because, I don't know about you, but I don't find inseam pockets starting at my thighs to be very comfortable. I also made them bigger because they were teensy. It's like they don't actually want you to use the pockets or something.
I also used the sleeves from view D because I like wearing bangles and full length sleeves are not very conducive to this.

I made the tie belt (I'm wearing it in the above photo) but I probably won't use it because I quite like the A-line shape you get without it (top photo). I used a red lining fabric and I like the way you can catch a peek of it when I lift my arms or put my hands in the pockets.

Argh! I'm losing my hat

I had some fabric left over so I thought a matching pillbox hat was in order. I made a pattern from one of my vintage hats and used a combination of the instructions here and guesswork.



I made a frame out of buckram which is a stiff fabric used for hatmaking. I then covered it with the leopard fabric and lined it with the same red as the jacket is lined with. I haven't quite finished. I need to attach some elastic so that it actually stays on my head.

I'm so happy with the way they turned out. I love them. I think they look really 60s. I've already worn the jacket twice and will be wearing the hat once I buy some elastic.


*Under my brand new leopard-skin pillbox hat? Pretty good, Bob Dylan, pretty good.

Polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride

Or as it's more commonly known, bakelite. To me, bakelite, sounds like some sort of weird diet cake mix or something but it's actually one of the earliest plastics, developed in 1907 by Leo Baekeland. It used to be used for all sorts of things, from radios to fittings, but most importantly jewellery. I'm a little bit obsessed with bakelite bangles. The carved ones are especially swoonsome. No diamonds or gold for me, I'll have plastic, thanks.

Because they can be ridiculously expensive, I only have three bakelite bangles (the top ones). The carved orange one is my favourite. The colours have food related names like creamed spinach and pumpkin. They do look good enough to eat, after all.

Fun fact: if you rub bakelite it smells like a science lab because it's made with formaldehyde.

I had my last exam yesterday so now I have some serious sewing/reading/relaxing plans. My sewing plans may or may not involve a leopard print jacket.