Vintage Pattern, Modern Style

My vintage pattern collection is pretty vast, thanks to my aunts and my late, great Maw Maw. An annual charity flea market allowed shoppers to fill a large bag with patterns for just a few bucks, and Maw Maw filled a bag for me. I discovered that vintage patterns are really fun and easy to work with, and ever since that first pattern purchase in the early 1990's, my family knows to be on the lookout at estate sales, antique malls, and yard sales!

My favorite patterns are from the late 1960's--lots of cute little shift dresses and a-line minis, often with coordinating jackets. Most of these are fairly timeless and mesh very well with today's style. Some vintage garments--the wide lapels of 1970's collars, the girdle-squeezed-tiny-waist dresses of the 1950's, the linebacker shoulders of the 1980's--don't translate very well to modern fashion. Still, all patterns can be modified! Older patterns usually contain only one size so they're much easier to work with than the multi-size patterns of today (of course, this requires a bit more treasure-hunting). The tissue paper also seems to be slightly thicker and sturdier and therefore, easier to work with.

My latest project used an easy peasant style blouse pattern from 1976. You can see from the illustration that there's a good bit of that old 70's ugliness going on, but this style is pretty tame compared to most 70's patterns.

I decided on View 2 (though I really like the View 3 style as well). Against my better judgement I used the sleeve pattern even though I could tell it was a bit wonky--some of these old patterns are. The result was an unflattering sleeve with all the fullness underneath rather than at the cap (pretty much as illustrated in View 2 above, but worse). First, I tried cutting the sleeves about 3" shorter. Still ugly. Then I decided I'd just double them under and sew the hem to the armscye seam. Voila, puffy cap sleeves! Much better.

The main fabric is a stretchy, almost opaque mesh. Opaque enough to not line, anyway. The inset is brocade and the sleeves are transparent mesh. Impossible to sew on if you don't have a serger, FYI. And because my time is precious, I did a rolled hem on my serger, which looks totally fine for a casual top. In my humble opinion anyway.

It's a little loud but dark denim works well to tone it down a notch!