You’re drooling. Stop that. You’ll wrinkle my pattern!  Oh…isn’t it fabulous?! Yes. Yes it is.  I just received it yesterday in the mail, oh so wonderfully purchased on ebay, and it’s friend, this one, seen below:

Oh so pretty…oh so PRACTICAL!  For living and working in Phoenix, I’m thinking how easy, how simple, oh how fantastic…to select dress from closet, put on sandles and out the door I go to work…less of this “what should I wear?” whining nonsense – can’t find top to match bottoms bullshit that can truly suck the few available minutes one has to get oneself dressed in the morning!  The solution…A Dress! (I dunno, maybe I had to turn 40 to see this as a viable option, because I think 10 years or 20 years ago I would have went, ack! ack! ack! at the idea of wearing a dress…but, back then I wasn’t sewing either…) I’m so excited to make them, sadly AND excitedly, they will have to wait until we get to Phoenix…we leave promptly after the closing on the house on May 15, 2007!

All three dress patterns are similar…each have pockets and self-fabric belts, and interestingly detailed necklines. Each are simple enough to make…since I started sewing 3 years ago I’ve made lounging pj pants, skirts, shirts, dress pants, bolero jackets, even a wool cape! and scads of bags, pouches, totes, duffles, purses and pillows and pillows and pillows…I think I’m ready to tackle a dress. So much about sewing clothes to fit correctly is figuring out through trial and error and trial and getting it right – what size you really are, not a single arbitrary number, but a series of numbers, your exact measurements + the understanding of what ease of measurement is all about within the pattern + what size seam allowance should you use to make the garment fit you, and lastly, how do you want the item to fit you – fit-fitted, loose-fitted, etc.  This is why I’ve found making the same pattern multiple times is extremely useful – trying it on, making adjustments and THEN remembering those adjustments and that seam allowance and all those numbers for the next time and the next time.  I love how sewing is a building upon type of endeavor, I love how you take what you learned and do it again and do it again, building, adapting, perfecting.  You know how some will say, “nothing’s perfect”, I can tell you, that person hasn’t sewn.

p.s. don’t you just love the illustrations themselves? Even if I never sewed I would simply be a collector of vintage patterns for the illustrations alone, I could see them framed in groups, how pretty they would be.

p.s.s. I finished the brown pants and the muted orange re-issued vintage shirt…to be worn tonight! I’ll have JP photograph me modeling my new duds, will post tomorrow.