Listen and Look: Everyone - Van Morrison

Hello to you! 

Have you been enjoying your week? I had a nasty cold the past few weeks but I'm all better now, nothing some time off work and lots of movie watching couldn't fix. 

And of course I've been feeling very happy! Have you been feeling happy? (Don't say happy too many times it looses it meaning... ) 

I've been trying to get out of bed each morning to do yoga, but getting up in the cold at 5am is hard, so I maybe only do it sometimes... but I do go to a proper session two days a week and its really so fun and every time I can reach that little bit further or balance that little bit longer I feel like I've achieved something major and makes me very happy! I still can't get the whole breathing through your nose bit, mine is always blocked for some reason! 

Anyway, so for today's post I thought I could pair up a song that makes me very happy along with some dancing, fun and happy looking 60's people

Press play whenever your ready and have a little dance in your house! 

  

Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin', Plannin' and dreamin'...

I know I haven't posted a new project in a long while, and if you read carefully you will notice that I have been having an emotionally shitty year, but now I think I am finally able to turn things and time back into my favour. No more poopy times for me anymore - no way Jose! 

I know this because I feel actually quite excited to sew again and have been carefully squeezing time to do wee little sewing jobs here are there in between regular life stuff. (The ironing pile is even looking less daunting) Sadly, my winter sewing plans (as blogged here) kind of went out the window so I didn't get around to them, and McCall's 8939 is still sitting on the chair half done, but don't worry I won't let them become UFO's!

So what have I been sewing?  

Choosing, storing and using vintage patterns

Hi everyone! How's your week going? 

I was having a little ponder the other day when shopping for patterns about challenges that new sewers might have when it comes to picking out vintage patterns to work on for the first time.

When I started using original vintage patterns, my main concern was the sizing as well as what pattern would suit me best. 

So hopefully in this post, I can give you some tips about how to choose vintage patterns, how to use them and finally how to store them so they are yours for many more years. 

Vogue Sewing book 1964

Its time to get a little sophisticated around here! 

You maybe remember earlier this year I showed you some photos from the Simplicity Sewing book of 1969. Well I also happen to own the Vogue sewing book from 1964 - which is completely different to the Simplicity book. 

Everything is way more couture focused and speaks a lot more of Paris and the classic sewing techniques you can learn. Very fancy!

So while one of these books is fun, colourful and the models are all dancing around. This book is beautifully  photographed and includes lots of lovely illustrations, not unlike the kind you might find inside Pierre Balmain's sketch book.

So lets have a look!

Its give-away announcement time!

Well hello! How was your weekend? 

Mine was well spent getting started on a new weaving project, shopping for dreamy vintage dresses at Retrospectrum and learning about Filipino food but not actually getting to eat any!

Isn't this dress fab!? It matches my blog theme!
Photo taken by Dann @ Retrospectrum

But I know you don't want to hear about all that! I know you just want to know who the winner of the give-away is!!!

Miss Catherine's Pattern Mysteries

I do love it when I can pick up any vintage item and see traces of the previous owner, like second hand clothing that has been altered or handbags with small notes left inside the pockets. But my favourite things to find are the tiny notes on sewing patterns from a hopeful seamstress or from a fashion loving daughter to a mother.

When this pattern - Simplicity 5670 arrived the other day, the notes written so many years ago were quite interesting!  

My Pattern collection and a giveaway!

Hello there lovely people! 

I have two rather exciting things to tell you about!

The first thing is that I have put my organising skills to good use and created a new page listing all of my sewing pattern collection. It was a bit of a pain trying to get blogger to line the pictures up just as I liked them but managed to find some coding tips over here which did the trick.

I really wanted a way to be able to look up my own patterns easily while out shopping and also somewhere for you the reader to see them as well. So I had looked at apps for organising patterns and thought of using flickr as a portal but in the end I decided it might be good to have them all on the blog where it would make sense to have them and then include links to all the projects where I have used them before

Pop over to the page to have a look! There is a button to the right of this page and there is also the link below;

sewingthe60s.blogspot.com.au/p/my-patterns

They're all sorted by company name and pattern number so they're easy to find and if you ever need a hand with finding a missing piece, let me know!

Taking Stock - Mid year

Well its almost half way through the year and I think I can safely say that this is going to be a pretty cruddy year. Various little issues in my non-blogging life are making being my normal happy self a little harder to be and I've not spent anywhere near as much time sewing as I'd like. 

I guess I can be upset about my situation for as long as I like, but in reality I'm the only person who can get me out of this funk. So I decided that I will need to start being responsible in taking charge for my life, my productivity at work and how I spend my spare time!

Pip over at Meet me at Mikes regularly likes to 'take stock' so I thought I'd try it out. I've tried to be positive and you can have a try too if you like! It's fun!

Me Made May - Week 3 and 4 and a bit of 5

Well I've taken my sweet time since the last Me Made May post, so here is pretty much what's left of the month! 

(You can see the first and second posts here)

There were more than a few days where I didn't wear me made mainly because I just wanted to get going in the morning and not have to worry about making my dodgier things look normal. 

I also noticed I didn't have enough separates. I have plenty of skirts, but no where near enough tops. I think I have 2 me made tops that I actually want to wear. Hopefully I can rectify that soon as I've recently bought patterns and fabric just for that purpose. 

Also we had some crazy weather this month. Sometimes it was really cold and then, like last week it was Springtime warm! So dressing to match the weather became an art form

So lets have a look then! 

Sally

It's been awhile since I've named my projects - heck its been a while since my last project!

But what's in a name you ask? Well, if you have been watching the latest episodes of Mad Men, you may now see Office manager Joan is now an Account Executive and has sporting a few dresses contrast collar and cuffs - much like my new girl below. But the real fashionista I think of this season so far is Sally. Sure Megan has the most fabulous West Coast wardrobe, but Sally's teenage wardrobe is giving me the biggest envy of all! 

Sally doesn't get enough screen time I reckon, but we are now seeing her form a different relationship with her father and getting into mischief with her friends, rebelling against her mum and her school and sneaking out of class to go shopping - all the sorts of things girls her age may do, but in her case, while wearing the most trendy styles of 1969

So now onto my Sally dress then? 

Fabric-a-brac 2014

Hello dears! How is your weekend going? 

For me, this weekend was successfully spent splurging my pay on vintage fabric and patterns, eating bagels, listening to ukulele bands and "sewcialising" with Susan from Measure Twice/Cut once and lots of other fabric lovers

The shops, crowd and merchandise was substantially bigger then last year, which was awesome. If you remember I attended last years Fabric-a-brac at Newtown and had quite a bit of luck with my buys - you can see last years post here. I didn't spend as much time in the notions baskets or button jars this time - I had my eyes on fabric and the huge amount of vintage patterns which filled the boxes, cute suitcases and baskets around the tables

Photo by Susan Goodwin

Less is more

Hello one and all! 

How are you keeping? I think it's time for a nice short and sweet post. Life is all so busy and crazy lately, I need to re-centre myself and get back to basics 

Less is more is the theme today - enjoy my lovelies

Me Made May week 2

Dear lovely readers, guess what? Monday was my bloggy birthday!

Hip, hip, hooray!!!!

Thank you for sticking around and listening to my nonsense this past year! I'm so darn excited and grateful to have you all popping by every now and again for a look. The frequency at which I post has definitely slowed down from those first few months, but I guess it was all very exciting back then, and it still is, I'm just such a busy little bee of late. 

I wanted to post this on Monday, but man I've been sooo tired lately after work that I crash out after dinner, I haven't sewn in about a week, but that's ok cause this weekend end is gonna be spent behind that machine!

I'm still prepping the pieces for my McCalls coat, which is taking ages cause I have to baste organza to each of the coat pieces. Cause I chose cotton sateen as the coat material it would basically be useless without some sort of under lining so that's what the organza is for! 

So anyway onto the me made's then? 

Eurovision - 1960s style!

I love many things, but each year in May, the thing I love the most is the Eurovision song contest!

Yes, quite seriously I am a Eurovision fiend. When my good friend still lived in Australia we would watch together and play drinking games and have a giggle at the insane costumes and dance around and smile when our favourites would come on. 

Eurovision has a quite a decent following in Australia, being that we are a multicultural country who in the past 60 years has seen immigrants from all over Europe and who are still in touch with their families in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Germany and so on. And as I have Lithuanian heritage I also get to legitimately cheer on my country even though their entries aren't always stellar!

We watch it on time delay however, so I have to restrain my Facebooking and news watching during the weekend so that I don't accidentally see who the winner is!

The most outstanding part of Eurovision is always the fashion and costumes. Some are amazing architectural pieces, some a plain letting the singer shine and some are multi dimensional giving the wearer the chance to change costumes mid-song for higher impact. The show is voted on by the viewers, so the song, set, costumes and dancers must all be entertaining. 

But back in our favourite decade, (before the famous ABBA performance), Eurovision was a little more restrained and certainly didn't reach the dramatic proportions that it does now

Lets take a look at the sweet and demure looks of 60s Eurovision!

Me Made May - week one

Hey there fine people of the internet? How have you been?

Last week was another nightmare week at work so I did pretty much no sewing and totally forgot about Me Made May!!

I knew May 1st was coming up, but for other reasons, and then May 2nd came and I think the only me-made item I wore was a knitted scarf, but it wasn't anything to sniff at!

So I tried to make up for the two days I lost by wearing my pledged me-mades on the weekend! 

Impromptu swing dresses

It's Sunday, and I have to go back to work tomorrow after 10 relaxing days off! But happily I think this has been the most productive work break in a while! 

On Friday, just for funsies I whipped up a new dress so I could have something to wear to my first day back at work tomorrow. Something to help ease back into the work week that was fun and easy that I knew would fit without any problems, and here she is Simplicity 7436!

Green goings on

Hello lovely people! How was your Easter?

I'm still on holiday because I was a smart cookie and took off the 3 days between Easter Monday and Anzac day which falls on Friday this year. Quite a lot of other people in my office did the same thing, so I guess it would be somewhat un-Australian not to extend it out to a 10 day break!

So, what have I been up to these past few days? Well quite a lot of cleaning out of my cupboards - nothing good. Just trying to get rid of those naff things that I've bought over the years that don't fit me or my style any more. Some things I've put into storage because I cant bear to let them go - kind of like an outpatients ward. If I don't see it, it will be easier to let go of later!

And I've also been watching this interesting 5 part series on Youtube - "The 60's - The Beatles decade". Basically it tries to follow the ups and downs of the Beatles in line with the changes of the 60s, focusing mainly on England and its own political and social story. 

You can watch parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 here

I also took time to take photos of all the little projects I've been doing here and there. Repair jobs and modifications as well. 

Peggy Pinny

Hello to you all!

How have you been? Its been a while, but we have no one to thank for that except but my naughty little modem who decided to conk out last week leaving me internet-less until yesterday! 

I have been sewing quite a few little projects in the mean time, but I can now finally share with you the blouse and pinafore outfit that I have dubbed Peggy, in honour of the return of Mad Men for the year! 

Once I had finished and popped on this outfit, it felt like something the smart and career minded Peggy would wear. I just missed the deadline for the Mad Men sew along so I never got to submit it, but I guess sometimes my whole blog is just one big Mad Men sew along anyway!

And so I present to you now for your perusal - the Peggy Pinny!

Me made yay!

Do you recall back to the start of the year when I promised myself I would participate in Me Made May?

Well it's confirmed for another year! So that means for the month of May I will make an effort to wear my me made garments according to a little rule that I get to set for myself

I already wear my handmade stuff pretty often, so I decided to challenge myself to wear something handmade every work day and weekends are optional - depending on what I'm doing that day, though I totally could do it on the weekends too really easily. 

It's getting better all the time

Hello hello there! 

How was your weekend? 

Thank you for all your comments on my previous post. I'll reply to them all shortly as I think they all need a properly written response as you all took the time to write such nice things. 

I think sometimes I just get myself worked up and need a little breathing space and time for things I enjoy! Everyone goes through periods of good times and down times and it's important for our mental health to try to get ourselves out of the funk we've buried ourselves in. 

I've been really good and working away at the tweed pinafore. The fabric is really lovely to sew with - no special needles required. And so far I've gone through 3 packets of bias trim for all the Hong Kong seams!