All posts filed under: 20th Century

The Frumpy Dress gets a proper outing

I made  the Frumpy Dress  well over two years now, and I wear it all the time, and I’ve never really gotten proper pictures of me wearing it. But Yay for Art Deco Weekend!  The perfect excuse for an early 30s dress. My only regret is that I didn’t wear it with bright red lipstick.  It’s so pretty with bright red lipstick. Instead, I wore it with my Neo oxford pumps, my marcasite and cameo necklace, and a vintage tan leather handbag which I found in an op-shop three days before the Art Deco festival, and was ridiculously delighted with because I think matching shoes and bag is so important for the vintage look. I started out the day in a little blue hat that I bought from Claire  (and which she immediately borrowed back to wear with her dress!), and finished it with a big grey blue and cream sunhat (perfect for the dress, very late 20s/early 30s, but dreadful for photographs and seeing where you are going!).

The best Art Deco Weekend accessory ever

Yes, I totally hauled my sewing machine all the way to Napier for Art Deco Weekend.  That’s me, sitting on the floor of the dorm room between two bunks, with the sewing machine on a little table 18″ off the ground, the iron cord curling around me, just finishing up the ‘Little Bit of Red’ dress.  On Saturday night.  And I wore the dress on Sunday. Yeah…  that’s how I got everything done! Check out my twist-curled hair. Fun as it was, I’m never doing that again!

A Little Bit of Red dress

Last week I blogged about all the stuff I wanted to get finished for Art Deco Weekend.  I didn’t get everything I wanted done, and that wasn’t all a bad thing – it turns out that evening gowns aren’t really a great idea for street dancing in sweaty heat (actually, street dancing and sweaty heat aren’t a good idea either, alone or together). One thing I did finish was my floral chiffon 1930s dress. It’s made from Excella E3137, one of my vintage patterns.  I made it up without the hip ruffles, because really, hip ruffles? I’ll do a proper review of the pattern in a bit, once I finish the dress properly. I mean, it’s finished properly (rolled hems, French seams & double sewn seams), but I’m not happy with it.  Somehow it just looks uninteresting.  Somehow I failed to notice that except for those hip ruffles it’s just a sack with quirky seaming.  And the quirky seaming doesn’t even show with the print!  Maybe it needs those hip ruffles after all!  So I’m …