Sharon Sews

4064S-50sPattern Originally uploaded by Sharon Sews I received an email the other day from the events coordinator at the Minnesota History Center. See, she had seen my post about the fabulous time my girlfriends and I had at the last RetroRama. The email asked invited us to attend this Sunday's film festiva l wearing our 50s vintage attire. Well, how fun is that? I love these types of events, so naturally I checked around to see who might be interested in going with me. Four of us are planning on going. Of the four, I was the only one with nothing to wear! See, my adorable 50's black and white dress with the pink pom-pom trim is now too large. I wasn't too worried. After all, I am SUPER SHARON ! And I sew :-) Digging thru the vintage pattern stash I came across this 1953 smock top pattern from Simplicity - Simplicity 4064. Not only were all the pieces there, but it was in my size...which meant no alterations. Okay, so hard could it be? Whip up a little smock top; add po

A few weeks ago - okay, fine, it was almost a month ago - I was admiring one of Gaylen's fabric purchases. She offered to purchase and ship some identical fabric to me and just a few days later I had a package on my front steps. She even tucked a little surprise inside - some super-wide white ric-rac which will be perfect adorning an apron. She jokingly mentioned that I'd probably get my dress sewn before she finished hers. I did indeed have plans to sew my dress immediately using the fabric, but my body had other plans and opted for lots of sleep while I battled to rid myself of that lousy two-week cold. She, on the other hand, has her dress completed and modeled it on her blog the other day. I'll probably sew the dress using a pattern from my stash rather than one I've sewn already. Then I can enter it into PatternReview's pattern stash reduction contest :-) The pattern I might use is Vogue 8489. with black as the contrast. Has anyone sewed that one yet? I

Vogue 1060 , Sandra Betzina design, unlined coat with shawl collar and dolman sleeves. I've already added a full review of the pattern on PatternReview. You can read it here . The coat is rated Easy. Mine was bit time consuming mainly because the fabric I was working with unraveled every time I glanced at it. That meant every raw edge needed to be finished. I was also a bit surprised at how fitted it was at the waistline, but as I noted in my review, that probably had more to do with my not-quite-accurate-sewing of the waist darts. I know I should have been more careful, after all with 12 darts, being a fraction of an inch off on each dart will obviously change the fit of the garment. What makes this coat easy? Easy reason number 1 - As mentioned above, the coat is unlined. Easy reason number 2 - The main body of the coat is a front and back with a cut on sleeve. So there is no need to set in a sleeve. Speaking of sleeves, these have a nice shape to them. They are bell sha