Flirty Flamingo Playsuit

This month I decided to join in for #SpringForCotton hosted by the lovely Rochelle over at Lucky Lucille. 

Then I stumbled onto The Monthly Stitch and saw that the challenge for the month of April was "Put a BIRD on it!" 

So, since flamingos are, in fact, birds, I decided to stitch up and use this flirty little play-suit to complete both challenges! 

As you know from my last post I spent the last two glorious weeks in the Sunshine State enjoying some lovely times with my family. I just managed to get this finished up in the last few days of vacation and had the chance to have it photographed with the lovely palm trees. I miss palm trees so much. But I digress.

This play-suit is a mash-up of McCall's M6969 and the skirt from Vogue V9000. I did view C of the romper and just used the skirt pattern as a template for the gores.

My fabric for this project is this lovely,vibrant, flamingo print, 100% cotton, shirting and a solid pink quilting cotton. I'd been eyeing the flamingo print for about four months and happened to go in with a 50% off coupon and snagged 5 yards of this for only $25! That's a huge bargain as far as I'm concerned.

I also settled on self-covered buttons for this project.

For the construction of the first part, the romper, I decided that I wanted to do a solid color top and use the flamingo print on the bottom. I wanted it to look as if it were two pieces without actually being so. I also liked the idea of being able to wear the romper by itself with a belt and have it still look like a two piece set.

I added the white bias binding on all of the hems. I really liked how the contrast of the white played against the brighter colors.

Due to the long trip and baggage regulations, I was only able to bring limited supplies with me to my mom's. Luckily, she is also a sewist and was willing to share her sewing room with me during my stay.

That also included getting to sew it up on her Husqvarna Viking Designer 1!! This thing sews like a dream. Seriously, it's worth every very expensive penny. While I hope my mother lives forever, I also hope she leaves this to me in her will... unless she decides one day to upgrade and feels the need to pass this on to me. I wouldn't complain one bit.

Lovely woman that my mother is, she also played my photographer for this project. Usually I just photograph my makes on Millie, my dress form. Unfortunately, she was still at home in Ohio and my mother doesn't have one. So that meant, I had to get dolled up and get outside and in front of the camera. We are by no means professionals, but they didn't turn out to bad for cell phone pics. 

So there you have it. This is #vintagepledge make number 3 for me! I'm over half way to my goal of 5 for the year. I guess it's time to unpack, clean up and figure out what my next project will be!!

Much love!!

Presenting... McCall's 5411!

So if you've been following along, I've been participating in a sew-along hosted by the lovely Beccie at SewRetroRose. We were sewing this pattern.

McCall's 5411

I chose this blue cherry blossom fabric with a lovely hot pink contrasting trim and button.

Well, the dress is finally complete!! I finished up this weekend and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. I'm definitely planning on doing a couple more of these for next summer and I'll be trying out a different neckline and possibly some alternate pocket styles as well!

I had to make some changes to this pattern to get it to fit properly and it could still use some alterations but as a whole it's a good fit now. I had to take out a couple of inches at the back bodice because it was gaping something awful when I first tried it on.

After making that adjustment it fits pretty awesome and I'm so excited to say that I finished my first actual vintage pattern! I would like to lower the neckline on the next one, or perhaps do a v-neck. The possibilities are pretty endless as far as customization goes on this one. I'm looking forward to Beccie's roundup post later today so that I can see everyone's beautiful frocks at the same time!

Excuse the terrible pictures (the bare feet and the lack of makeup, it was later in the evening and I was just hanging out with my kids), I do have a decent camera, but no internet at home and it's pointless to try to upload anything. So, crappy phone pictures it is. I'm actually wearing the dress today at work and even though it's terribly dreary, rainy and colder out, I'm still rocking this frock like it's no-one's business! This sew-along was my first ever and I think I did pretty good with it. I made some great new vintage loving friends through the wonder of the interwebs and it feels so good to have some like-minded people in my life, even if we've only met in cyberspace. 

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed the time with your families.

On to the next!!!

It's finally finished!

So I've been struggling with the Cherry Dress, McCall's 6503, that I discussed a little in my first post. Well it's finally finished!! WOOT!

So this is not the best picture of me, but that's what you get. I added a black knit shrug to cover my arms for work. I much prefer it that way just because it's A LOT of cherry print. It really needs a wide belt in the middle to break it up a little. I think.

You can see the arms here. Simple black single fold bias tape around the edge.

This is how I spent most of the time working on this dress. My seam ripper and I became great friends. I inserted the zipper at least 4 times... I am not a fan of zippers, needless to say. Hopefully I'll get better with practice. I did have to take this bodice in quite a bit. I started with an 18 based on the pattern measurements, but ended up with something smaller. Yay on the smaller front, but boo for the work involved in bringing it down, and it's still a bit too big. It would do well with taking it in more in the sides, but I am afraid that too much more will mess up the bust shape. Next pattern I do, I will definitely start at a 16 to see what happens.

This is just a picture of me looking sassy in my new dress! I really love the collar and the ruffled edging on this bodice. It really stands out great!