1970s Summer Dresses

Hasn't the weather been awful lately?  We have had so much rain and wind this February - I just want it to stop now!  I feel cooped up indoors, only venturing out to get wet and muddy along with the dog on our walks.  Then I have all the palaver of hosing him down and drying him!

So I thought for a little light relief, how about some summer dresses from the 1970s?  I have several summer dress patterns from the 1970s in my Etsy shop.  I really love the pattern covers from this era.  They are beautifully drawn and the colours are bright and fresh.  They are generally in good condition, as are the pattern pieces inside the envelope.  One thing that was different about the older patterns was that you only got one size in the envelope!  You might need to be handy at pattern alterations to get it to fit. 

All these patterns are available in my Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SewLindyLou.  They are all in great condition and are complete - all the pattern pieces are present.

Style 2673 is for size 34 inch bust and is from 1975.  All views have a zipper in the back.  The fashion for extended shoulders is just beginning to appear, 2 of the designs have extended shoulders and the third has wide shoulder straps.

I love this tea dress style of Vogue 9156!  It is for size 38 inch bust.  It is basically a tent dress with an elastic waist.  How comfortable!  I love the front button closing, and the pretty fabric used here.

Style 4195 is a junior petite size to fit a 33inch bust.  Just the sort of thing I wore when I was a teenager in the 1970s!  This one is from 1973.  Look at that gorgeous sweetheart neckline!

I really love the yellow sundress on Style 4613 from 1974.  I love the square neckline and the band across the neckline.  This one is a very small size, bust 32.5inches.

The 'safari' style was very popular in the 1970s.  Remember safari jackets?  This short sleeved dress with its front breast pockets, epaulettes and rolled cuffs really fits the bill.  This one is from 1977 and is size 34 inch bust.

Finally, here is another sundress from Style from 1975.  This one is size 36 inch bust.  I really like the fitted bodice and flared skirt.  The sweetheart neckline on the green version is lovely.  

Which one is your favourite?  Any of these dresses could be made for today.  The shops are full of midi length flared and full-skirted dresses in ditzy prints for the spring.  Very 1970s!  

Completed in January

In the spirit of my word of the year 'Complete', I thought I would list things that I have completed here on my blog:

I knitted a tea cosy!  I am not a good knitter, but had been given a lovely tea pot for Christmas, and decided to knit my own tea cosy.  I used some left over chunky wool from a shawl I had crocheted, and here it is.  I am quite pleased with it.  I have almost completely used up the wool!

I sewed this lovely fabric into a tunic top.  I had bought this fabric for another top pattern, but decided to use this one from which I have already made 2 summer tops.  This one has long sleeves and looks great over black polo neck and jeans or black trousers.  I can see me wearing this one a lot.

I started sewing this little bag a couple of months before Christmas and then left it while I sewed Christmas items.  It is really sweet!  It has a zip across the top and the front and back are made from patchwork panels.  It is from a pattern by The Birdhouse Patchwork Designs, an Australian company.

I did have 1 failure!  Hence my bemused look in this photo!  This green top started out way too big, and I ruined it by trying to take it in.  See how it pulls across the front shoulder?  It doesn't look too bad in this picture, but it is practically unwearable!  I have left this photo uncropped despite the vacuum cleaner in the side because Barney looks so cute photo-bombing!

Remember I made quilt tops last year?  Here's one of them all finished with batting, backing and quilted ready to parcel up for one of my daughter's friends who has just had a baby girl.  I am intending on working through them all over the next few months.

I like to make a scrapbook of each year, and I finished up the 2019 album in January.  I like to use some pocket pages (Project Life) and some 12 x 12 pages.  Here are a couple of examples.

I also finished some pyjama trousers that I had made for Maurice for his birthday back in July!!  All they needed was the elastic in the waist!  I made a black t-shirt top to go with these, but he has been wearing them with a long sleeve top recently as it is so cold.

There is one thing that I forgot to photograph, and that's a little bag I made for my craft friend Burnice for her birthday early in January.  She had been given a vintage sewing/knitting basket for Christmas so I filled a little bag with vintage sewing notions for her.  She was really pleased!  We celebrated by going for afternoon tea.

It's been a good month for completing things!  I love to be able to tick things off my list, but I am trying to slow down a little, and take more care, especially with sewing projects.  I am also trying to keep going with each item through to completion, rather than 'making progress' with several projects.   

My word for the Year - COMPLETE

I have had a word for the year for quite a few years now.  I have chosen words that help me approach and focus my goals.  Way back in 2009, I picked the word 'Simplify'.  I wanted to simplify areas of my life to give me more time to do things I love to do, such as spending time with my family and creating things.  I spent the year tidying away clutter and trying to get into routines each week. As I do not have a job, I have a lot of time to myself, and I like to use it productively.  I have found a way of  using my time intentionally that works for me.

Half way through that year I found a wonderful website 'Simplify101'.  Aby Garvey was running online courses to help with organising, and I straight away signed up for the 'paper clutter' course.  Sadly, Aby's business is not running anymore, but 10 years later, I am still in touch with the friends I made along the way.  Aby was kind enough to host our little forum until she closed the website last year, and we posted every day about our goals and how we were doing.  I have been lucky enough to meet my friends from around the world in real life!  I have met Shari in New Zealand, Cynthia in San Francisco, Lau in France, Nancy in Oregon, USA, and Kathryn from Australia (we met in London).  Now the forum has closed we are not in touch every day, but I am sure we will still keep in touch regularly.

Other words that I have chosen in the past include LIGHT, SLOW, BREATHE, and GROW.  See this post from last January about my word LIGHT for 2018.

I have written goals each year for a while now, and basically they are very similar every year, and are centred around my health and fitness, my family, my home and garden and my crafting.  This year I have decided not to write goals as such, but to use a word to help me focus, and I am partaking in an online class run by Ali Edwards, One Little Word.  Ali provides regular prompts and discussions to keep the word in mind, and to explore how the word's different meanings can be incorporated into everyday life.

So for this year I have chosen COMPLETE.

I first decided on this word as I do have some projects to finish, including completing the quilt tops I made last year.  With the help of Ali's prompts and worksheets I have some other ideas:

*Completely use up stuff around the house - eg fabric scraps, paper craft stuff
*Feeling complete - when my family is around me, feeling healthy in body and mind
*giving things my complete attention - less distraction, eg from social media!
*how well I complete things - perfectly complete or completely perfect
*complete rest - I could definitely do with resting more.
*working on 1 project until I complete it - 1 project at a time

A word about perfection.  I tend to finish things off quickly, tick them off  and move onto the next thing.  Sometimes this is at the expense of perfection.  I am not saying that I want to be a perfectionist as such, but I think I need to keep it in mind, especially when sewing. 

I am looking forward to this year and how my word pans out!  I am keeping a journal to see which aspects of COMPLETE will inspire me the most.  I will keep you posted.

5 things we did in December

After a wonderful Christmas and New Year, we really are back in the swing of things and back to normal routines!  All the decorations are down and packed away, and the house is clean and tidy.  Time to sit down and think about my intentions/goals for 2020 and the new decade.  But more about that in a later post.

First I want to tell you about some of the lovely things we did in December:

Concerts and film:
Early in December, we went to the Christmas Concert at Chichester Festival Theatre which featured the Royal Marines Band and the choir of Chichester Cathedral. 

It was a change from our normal routine of going to the Christmas Concert in Brighton, which we had been to for several years, and the change did us good!  The Royal Marines Band was fabulous, I was thrilled that they included some drummers!  Here's a little video of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkPDxy32ANg 

Chichester cathedral choir were lovely too, the choir boys singing like angels in the first half of the show, then just the adults in an acapella group in the second half.


Much nearer Christmas we saw our local amateur orchestra the Worthing Philharmonic, playing it's Christmas concert.  It was a lively concert with lots of Christmas classics including some of Tchaikovsky's  Nutcracker Suite.  Mum came with us and she was particularly thrilled when they played 'sleigh ride' as the encore piece!  I didn't take any photos this year, so here's one from last year.

Our local cinema showed the film of Nutcracker Ballet performed by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 2016.  What a magical ballet this is!  The music and staging were so Christmassy!  I am always amazed at the things those ballet dancers can do with their bodies!!  Of course I would rather be at the live event for the atmosphere but these live screening events do let us see these eminent ballets/operas and plays at our local cinema.  None of the hassle of getting to London and back!

Party:
We invited our neighbours in for drinks and mince pies in the week before Christmas.  It went really well with about 20 neighbours turning up.  There was lots of chatter and catching up with each other.  Many of us have lived here since our children were little and now they are all grown up, we don't see each other so much.

Visited a stately home:
Mum and I drove to Standen, a National Trust property in East Sussex just before Christmas to see the house dressed for Christmas.  Standen is a lovely homely property decorated by William Morris.  The house was presented as though it was Christmas Day, and the family had just gone out for walk.  So there were half opened presents, and the dining room  table was as though they had just finished dinner.  It was really good!  Sadly my phone ran out of charge so I don't have many photos, but here's the main Christmas tree and the stairway:

Didn't cook Christmas Dinner:
Our daughter Lucy and her fiance Danny invited us to their house for Christmas Day.  With our son Nicholas and his girlfriend Natalie, plus my Mum, there were 7 of us, plus Barney the dog.  Lucy and Danny cooked a wonderful  turkey with all the trimmings.  Food, drink, and presents were plentiful, and we went for a walk and played games too.  We didn't get home until really late!

New Years Eve:
Some lovely neighbours who we have dinner with from time to time invited us with another couple to their house for dinner and games on New Years Eve.  It was lovely to be invited out as we have spent most NYEs at home on our own recently!  Here's a photo of our very tall Jenga tower, that's 31 layers!  And we did that after midnight after several glasses of wine! 

5 Things - October

In the hope that I might write some more blog posts, I am starting a monthly meme - 5 things.  So here's 5 things that I have photographed this month of October 2019.

First is a 'Tilly and the Buttons' Cleo pinafore dress I made in blue denim.  You can see that I had my little helper/photobomber Barney the springer spaniel with me!   I have included one of the outtakes too.  I topstitched the denim with orange thread and put orange buttons on to secure the straps.  I can see that I will wear this dress a lot, including with long sleeved t-shirt and tights.  In fact, I have just bought a pair of ochre opaques.  I am so looking forward to trying them out!

2 Autumn is really here now!  Some lovely red hawthorn berries spotted one sunny morning on my dog walk, and the grass sparkling with dew.   I like to imagine that the dew drops are tiny diamonds sparkling away!

3 I have been hand sewing little bits of my scrap fabric together in the evenings while watching tv.  Here's what they look  like so far.  I have put them away for now as I want to concentrate on sewing for Christmas (I love making little felt ornaments for the tree).  I am imagining this as a bed size quilt in a sort of rainbow colour pattern.

The other quilt I am making but have put away for now, is this one, called the X-factor quilt.  I am using up lots of autumnal colours for this one.  The pattern was in one of my (very) old quilting magazines.

4 Autumn in my garden.  I put my phone right down in the grass to take photos of these little tiny fairy mushrooms.  Or are they toadstools?  I don't know what the difference is.  But I think it is quite a good year for all types of fungi.

I love the colour that this vine goes in the autumn!  And look at the colourful purple berries on the Callicarpa bush!

5 Finally, our son turned 30 last December, and his sister bought him a supercar drive around Goodwood race track.  He finally did it last weekend.   Here's Maurice, Nicholas and his girlfriend Natalie.  He absolutely loved driving the Ferrari and Aston Martin and then was driven at high speed around the track by a professional driver.  Great fun!

Cool Summer Tops

This summer has been hot!  Well, that is until the schools broke up at the end of July.  August has been windy, wet and quite a bit cooler.   Is it me, or is it that the weather is much more humid these days?  Maybe it's my age, but as soon as I start to do anything I feel hot and sticky.  Not a nice feeling.  So time to make some cool summer tops:

First up is the Super Basic Tank Top from Halfmoon Atelier.  This is a free pattern if you subscribe to her emails.  As the cost of patterns is quite significant I do love a freebie!  I made this in the pink and white stripe jersey and I have made an orange one, and have a red one ready to sew.  It has a similar scoop at the back which I really like.  I love having bare shoulders and arms on a hot day although these days I tend to wear  tank tops only in the garden.  I do like to get a tan while I am gardening.

Second I made a 'shell' top from this gorgeous 'countryside' border print.  I have had this short length of fabric in my stash  for ages, but have no idea where it came from!  I had just enough to squeeze this shell top made with Simplicity 8061.  The pattern has several different necklines and now I have nailed the fit, I will make some more!

Last but not least I made this loose shirt in a gorgeous yellow print slinky fabric from More Sewing.   This is really loose, and lovely to wear on those really hot days.  It is made from McCalls M7629.  I have some more 'slinky' fabric in a dusky pink print to make another.

Both pairs of shorts are from Lands End.  I ordered the dark blue pair when I received an offer, and liked them so much I ordered the brown ones, which by then were in the sale.  Bargains!  They are smart enough and long enough to wear outside the garden!

Jackets!

I have been wanting a casual jacket for ages.  Something a bit smarter than a cardigan, but easily thrown on and off, and won't get creased and dishevelled looking.  I found a likely contender in my vintage sewing pattern stash.  Vogue  1772, a DKNY Vogue American Designer pattern from 1996.  

I have made it before but in the fabric was too light and I didn't line it so it didn't really work.  I decided to use up some red ponte I had in my stash already.  

This time, I decided to line it as it would be easier to slip on and off without catching on clothes I would be wearing underneath. The jacket has some great details,  princess seams and some cute little darts at the waist.  Hard to see in these pictures. It looks really smart in the picture on the pattern, but that one is made from woven fabric, and I was making mine from fabric with a little stretch for a more casual look.    I decided to keep it even more casual by omitting the buttons.    For fitting, I graded the pattern out to the hips, and I had to narrow the shoulder seams.  

I am wearing it here with a t-shirt I made from some fabric left over from a dress.  (I had to use a red band to lengthen it as I didn't quite have enough fabric!)  The jeans are from a local charity shop.

It goes well with my latest dress make, another shirt dress, a combination I wore to my niece's wedding back in May:

Next I decided to make a hoodie from another vintage pattern.  I had some grey tracksuit fabric with a lovely soft fleece backing, which I thought would be perfect for this 1990s pattern, Style 1041.

And here it is:

I really love this jacket!  I put in a black zip and top stitched in black to match.  This really is a 'slip on and off ' jacket that I will get a lot of use out of this one, especially at this time of year when the weather is a bit dull and cool.  Hard to think that this time last year we were basking in Mediterranean temperatures!