With Glamour and the Woman’s Budget

That is the tagline for Woman Magazine from 1953…could almost be the the tagline for any ‘woman’s interest’ magazine from today – apparently, not much changes (except women’s body shape but more about that another day!).  Anyway, this is a magazine I picked up on a recent trip to Daylesford and a huge vintage warehouse-type place called The Mill Markets – if you’re in the area, and love vintage you should check it out.  There’s a huge variety of items available from jewellery and clothing, to furniture and porcelain – and many others besides. 

I thought some of you might be interested in the contents of the magazine.  I’ll start you off with some drool-worthy dresses.

Let me know if you need the goss on Ava Gardner's life story, okay?

I love this dreamy dress – I might need to make myself one for next Spring.  It’s the perfect Spring sun-dress for floating around gardens in, don’t you think?

I want them all!

How brilliant is this collection of dresses?  I think I could use at least one of each in my wardrobe.  I particularly like the purple dress on the right.

Colourful Seersuckers, indeed!

I really wish I could find seersucker as colourful as this nowadays.  I reckon I’d rock the green version!

Well, that’s enough staring dolefully at dresses for me for now – time to go and make some of my own.  I’ve a few more gems from the magazine to share soon, so keep an eye out if you’re keen to see more.

Nemesis thwarted

Finally!  It’s done!  The pink dress of doom is no longer a dress of doom but now a dress of va-va-voom!  Or almost, anyway…

Finally...the finished product!

So what if it doesn’t look much like what it was supposed to?  It’s way better than what it was.  Check both out here (if you dare).

After spending way too long with my seam-ripper taking it all apart, re-sewing it, taking it apart again, (rinse, lather, repeat) I finally decided on a course of action which was to take the top part of the bodice from my best-fitting dress pattern and adjust it to fit the remainder of the dress.  It was such a simple solution, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t think of, and implement, it earlier.  It could have saved me from my current feelings of nausea whenever I see pink.

Bodice, or yoke, with the reversed fabric

I made a quick muslin of the bodice to ensure that it would work the way I (eventually) envisaged, and when that seemed to fit the bill, I turned the muslin into the lining.

Op-shopped bed linen for lining

I had to bring the side seams in rather a lot – 60s style straight shifts look awful on me! Who do they suit? - and reattach the zipper for the 40th time, but once that was done (by hand) the dress was finally complete.  Hurrah!  I’ll get a photo of me wearing it soon – it’s way too cold here at the moment for me to even consider getting in and out of clothing for the sake of showing off!

And keeping with my promise to myself that once I’d finished a UFO that I could make something from scratch I whipped up another version of my favourite dress (check out the others here and here).

Simplicity 4744

I’ve already made two other versions of this, however, each are slightly different from the others.  With this most current version, I omitted the pleats right on the sides and it ended up having a sleeker, more sophisticated skirt shape, being more fitted around the hips, rather the usual flare.

Isn't the fabric dreamy?

As I’ve made this dress a couple of times already it went together like a dream, and took only a few hours (including hand sewing the hem, and hand-picking the zipper).  I love those patterns that fit, and just work so easily.  I need to get more of those into my repertoire.  In the mean time, I’ve a couple more projects on the go, and a few more finished ones that I’m loving at the moment, but at the moment I’m so relieved that the Dress of Doom is off my sewing table, I’ll leave the updates there.