Sewing For two : The Pertegaz Hybrid

Rocking in LA, Giles Peterson spinning tunes.

You know you've been sewing a long time when you start to refashion stuff you've made.

These skirts were made for the trip to Japan that my sister and I never made. Ten years went by, lots of wear, wash, a tear and the tight, stretch cotton, 4 pannel generic Butterick patterned skirts started showing underwear lines due to new fat deposits on the waist, gravity, flab and assorted age related occurences. They could no longer be worn as they were.

I don't mind the age, but I do mind ill fitting clothes on me. Other people can do whatever they want, I won't judge, it's way too time consuming! As a consequence of trying to fit so many garments, you end up caring very much about curving outward bulging stuff for yourself. 

Enter inspiring Pertegaz' Vogue Couturier 2567. Can you see me coming? Yep! I "Pertegazed" the skirts.

And got to look at this amazing pattern piece. Not scratch my head puzzling, but certainly interesting construction-wise. 

I lowered the waist, made a new waistband for comfort and drew this piece, which drapes the a-line a lot better than if I had used a straight on the grain strip of fabric as I intended, made the zipper invisible and got two really fun summery skirts.

Lets see how many more years we get out of these!

Refashion Master

I am refashioning at the moment and I just very quickly wanted to point you to my refashion master : Marisa from New Dress A Day.

This crazy woman, meaning extremely enthusiastic of course, says she needed a creative challenge and decided it would be a great idea to whip up 365 items of clothing, for $365 dollars in 365 days. So armed with her scissors and her machine, she turns the like of that into this every single day!  

Or that, 

Into this : 

Check out her blog, it's turbo charged with inspiration daily. 

Overdressed

I just purchased Burda 7517 (hot results here). It's another attempt at sewing Burda, which I invariably find difficult to sew. But hey! this one has pictures inside with their criptic un-spell-checked French instructions! So I am going to give it a try once again. 

This of course is part of my ongoing attempt to make stuff I wear everyday. But in reality, I want to sew this, from Chanel's Haute Couture collection.

Now where would I wear this I ask you? For, hear my lamentations here, nobody dresses for anything anymore, so I am always overdressed. Even at a recent funeral where I thought it appropriate to wear black when it turned out, nobody else was or, at a recent baptism where I was to become godmother to a wonderful little girl, in the green satin suit that you can see here in action, where people wore jeans. 

Oscar Wilde said: "You can never be overdressed or overeducated." I have lived by that, but really, wouldn't my sewing life be more fun if I was to make this Dior number in pink terrycloth to go to the beach instead?

The Week Of Plenty : Take 2

Sychronicity!

The day I wrote my second post, my sister said she'd picked up a Mondrian themed knitting magazine from 1977. St-Laurent was soooo ahead of it's time, that it took 11 years to trickle down to the mainstream.

I am not going to make this, knitting sweaters for Brittany weather is usless, it's never really cold, cardigans are warm enough and it rains a lot so I have been thinking about raincoats and a nice red wool coat for everyday wear this winter.

This one, from Armelle's vintage patterns collection, is a raincoat contender. I picked it up because I like the way the welt pockets are included into the princess seams. There is only one slight problem with  it. It's got no instructions! They probably were in the magazine that the pattern was mail ordered from. So I am looking for the March 1967 issue of Modes & Travaux no.795. Or if any of you knows how to do this, because I don't think I can make my own instructions for that pocket.

A quick look inside brought a big surprise, the pattern was stamped! A handmade pattern!