50's Designer Dresses

I have found a couple designers from the 50's that I adore. Ceil Chapman, an American designer was an expert draper and made beautiful dresses, including this shelf-bust dress.

Anne Fogarty makes some of my favorite dresses with a beautiful sillouette. 

I've seen several patterns come up for sale in the $90 range. I finally scored my own on eBay for $3.00! It is a size 9, bust size 30, so it will have to be sized up rather significantly. Anne did a number of dresses in velvet which would make this a great winter dress.

The pattern calls for 6 yards of fabric, and with velvet costing about $26 per yard, it's going to cost a pretty penny!

Fashion Sketching 101

What do you do when you have lots of ideas for dresses but don't know how get them down on paper? You take a fashion sketching class! I signed up for a 3-day class at Sew Fresh Studio in Niwot.

Day one - we learn basic fashion model sketching. It's similar to anatomy sketching but with exadurated long legs. We learned how to add action to our figures to make them look more realistic.

Day two - garment sketching on our models. We learned to show the various features of our dresses and how to use color and shading to add movement. We were told to wear what we wanted to sketch, so I wore my 1950's polk-a-dot dress.

Day three - technical sketching for fashion design. This is a very clean, simple sketch showing the stitching and other various details of your dress for a professional dress maker to follow. 

Not Just for Me

Before you think all the sewing I've been doing has only been for myself, I thought I'd show a couple projects I made for friends and family.

The first I call the Racheli skirt. My friend Racheli had some fabulous material she had been holding on to until she could find a use for it. She decided on a gored skirt pattern I had. The material is a grey cotton like a light denim with a teal blue pinstripe.

I also made a pair of pajamas for my 4 year old son. He picked out a cotton print that looks a little retro and features Route 66. I picked up a pattern with six different pajama options and decided to a short sleeve button up shirt with pants. It turned out pretty cute!

Japanese Pattern Magazines

I bought several Japanese pattern magazines on-line. These have beautifully photographed designs and up to 50 patterns inside (all in Japanese, of course). The Pochee collection comes out twice a year with a spring and fall collection.

The patterns are all printed on top of one another. Once you figure out the number of your pattern, you trace it on to pattern paper, add seam allowances and cut it out.

This One Day sewing magazine has great illustrations for those of us who cannot read the kanji.

I made this dress for myself and a shorter version for Sarah. It has a wrap top and empire waist.

French Skirt

While looking for some fashionable skirt patterns, I came across this French pattern company. Au Bonhuer has some really unusual designs. I bought a skirt and a sweater pattern.
They came in the mail with very few instructions and, of course, they are all in French. The patterns are made of thick paper without seam allowances.

I decided to make a muslin mock-up to be sure I got it right.

I used a rich brown silk for the body of the skirt and a turquoise and brown plaid for the wrap. It's very different and the only compliments I've received by strangers are the Israeli guys working the kiosks at the mall! I guess they are more fashion forward than your typical American dude.

Tea Time

This dress I made for Katie's baby shower at a tea shop in Denver. The fabric has little tea pots printed all over. It's a combination of the top from one pattern and a skirt from another.

This is a more modern style shift dress made from

red linen. I used Simplicity pattern 2648. The top is

view C without the cap sleeves. The tea dress above

is using the bodice from view A, but I added a full

skirt to the bottom.

1950's Style Dresses

I love the dresses of the 1950's. The fitted bodices and flared skirts are flattering on any body type. One of my favorite designers from the 50's is Anne Fogerty. I've tried to replicate a couple of her dresses without total success. The first is cherry print button front dress.

The second one didn't turn out as well

as I would have liked. I need to re-work

the top.

A Tale of Two Skirts

Projects number two and three were a couple skirts. The first is a sort of pencil skirt that can be made in several different lenghts. I chose view D from McCall's pattern 3930. This skirt has a back zipper and is fairly easy to piece together. I plan to make a longer one for fall out of a plaid.

The second skirt is a little more fun. It is a full skirt with two coordinating fabrics and a ribbon trim which helps make the hem. This pattern, McCall's M5631 has three options and chose A. I get tons of compliments when I wear this skirt out.

Sewing 101

I was looking for a fabulous dress to wear to a summer wedding. While looking at some vintage dresses on ebay, I came across tons of 50's sewing patterns and thought, "hey, I could make that!" Granted, I haven't done much sewing since 4-H in 6th grade, but how hard could it be? I pulled out my 1970 Kenmore sewing machine and got to work.

Well, it turned out to be harder than I thought. I found Nora, an incredible seamstress and teacher at Sew Fresh Studios in Niwot, CO. After a bit of a refresher course, I was hooked! This is the first dress of many I would make over the summer.

The dress I made is a cotton polk-a-dot fabric. I wanted to make it a more casual day dress than the evening gown the pattern shows. This is Vogue pattern 1094 is a reproduction from their original 1950's pattern and has been updated with more modern sizing.