New Jabot

I made this jabot from an old moth-eaten yellow sweater last night. I see that I really need to work on my photography skills; it looks much cuter in person!

The flowers are made from the sweater material. To make the backing, I just cut two triangles out of some yellow swiss dot, ironed on some interfacing, and sewed them together. I left the corners open for turning and so that I could thread some grosgrain ribbon through. I stitched the flowers to the backing, and voila! A new jabot!




It looks nice with a skirt that I just finished out of the same yellow swiss dot. Well, it's almost finished; somehow I made the waistband a bit too small (oops...wishful thinking, I suppose), so I will post a photo of that one soon!

Grammar fail(ure)

We were at PetSmart yesterday, and I happened to spy one of my least favorite grammatical errors: the use of a plural where a possessive is called for and vice versa.



To be fair, this appeared in a tag engraving machine, so it really wasn't PetSmart's mistake. However, some well-meaning but semi-literate PetSmart employee, obviously attempting to follow the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes ( "For every apostrophe omitted from an "it's'' there is an extra one put into an "its"), hung this sign about three feet away:





When I see mistakes like these, made by adults who have, presumably, completed elementary school, I can't help but echo the sentiments of Lynne Truss in her wonderful book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: "Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?"

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Okay, so that's an old joke...but since this is a new blog, I'm using it anyway!

I put this picture of Bette Davis here at the top of my blog because this photo represents my hair ideal. If I had the skill, I would spend as much time as it took to make my hair look exactly like this! Sadly, my style falls far short of the lovely Bette's, but all the same, I am rather proud of it. My nighttime routine goes like this: I shower, spray in setting lotion, and make the fingerwaves using these clips that I got from Sally:


I then roll the back in small foam rollers and go to sleep. When I wake up in the morning, I just take the clips and rollers out, spray all over with hairspray, and I'm good to go! I've seen this done much better on various online tutorials, but this is as good as it gets for me! Here is a what it looks like:

Newest wardrobe addition

Well, I thought I would start out by posting some photos of my latest projects. I do like to dress in the style of the 1930s all the time, and I learned to sew so that I could make my own clothes. Any vintage clothes that I do happen to find are not usually in my size, and I really wouldn't trust myself to wear them if they were (I do have a 15 month-old baby, after all)!  That's the nice thing about reproductions: those little hand prints just wash right out, and I don't feel like I've ruined a piece of history if something worse happens.

 Here is a two-piece sports dress I just completed:       

 I'm not wearing them together because it is still much too hot for September and the material is rather heavy. I made them with this pattern from the Vintage Pattern Lending Library:

 

It's interesting to see how different these dresses look on real people versus the pattern envelope illustrations. I also don't know how anyone could wear the dress open in the back as is shown in the small drawing (I tried it; it's alright as long as you don't lean over)! Maybe she's just wearing it that way to cool off after a rousing game of tennis, hmm?

















                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

First post!

As I am not very computer-savvy and have spent all evening getting this blog in some semblance of order, I only have time for one short "hello" before it's off to bed. Must sleep when baby sleeps!