I have been binge-watching Poirot, a British murder mystery series, wherein actor David Suchet gets to explore and reprise the role of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective over the course of seventy episodes, from 1989 to November 2013.  Each episode is interesting, but Poirot's character arc over the whole series is quite interesting, too.  Amazingly, when you consider how many years the series ran, how many production teams and writers came and went, and even a change of studios and format midway through, there's is good continuity and a consistent timeline.  The earliest we see of Poirot is in the late 1920's, when he arrives in England as a refugee from WWI Belgium, and the latest we see is in the 1949, when he dies.  However, most episodes are set in the world of 1936. 

I like going to thrift stores and Vintage shops just to walk around.  Secondhand shops are my happy place!  Often, I am shopping for ideas, styles or techniques that I can use in my own work.  Here's a dress I found in September 2019.  The designer is Calvin Klein, and it's a bit fancier than the ready to wear stuff you might find at the mall.  There are lots of nice details, which I took pictures of because I didn't buy the dress. 

Years ago, someone gave me a few yards of barkcloth, which I've been holding onto, waiting for the right project.  When I first rubbed off the vintage dress from Red Fox Vintage, I knew I wanted to make it up in that barkcloth in the end.  So I have!  This post is mostly about barkcloth, a little about sewing, and then pictures of the finished garment. 

More recently, I made myself a half-way decent sloper!  (No, I haven't blogged about that yet.  The problem is that the pics are boring.  Well, I'll probably get around to it eventually; in the mean time, here's the Cliff's Notes: it was easy to make the sloper bodice and skirt, though I took extra time following a book's instructions.  The sleeves were what Angela Clayton might call a "circle of hatred".  But I got something workable in the end.)

Since my new silk dress is made of kimono fabric... I think a Japanese restaurant is a nice backdrop for showing the vintage Asian look of the dress!  Add bouffant Sixties hair, little white gloves, and Whiting & Davis* purse for the full retro look! 

Right off the bat, look how much nicer it looks with the waist cinched, as contrasted with the square silhouette it had mid-construction.  

I have decided to call this pattern my 60's Tabard Dress.  (Ignore all the pictures of the pattern where I clearly wrote "50's Tabard Dress".... the pattern I'm replicating is from the 60's, so 60's Tabard Dress it is!)

​In its construction, I took over 86 photos, but I'll only be highlighting the especially interesting parts today!  

August was a busy month for me, sewing-wise.  I made two shirts for my brother, a sloper for myself, and a silk dress for myself.  I'll be blogging about them all out of order, though.  I'll start, today, with the silk dress project, because I'm most excited about it.  Then, once my brother gets and models his new shirts (linen and cotton ikat), I'll post those project diaries!  Then I'll get into the nitty-gritty of drafting/draping sleeves for my sloper, because that was a bear of a job, and I need time to sort the pictures and write something coherent. 

Today is the first of three posts about the silk dress project.  It starts with a challenge: to look at a picture of a dress, pattern it, and make it. 

Working on the Red Fox Vintage dress again!  To refresh your memory, here's a picture of me in the quilting cotton version of this dress, after a day of wear.  The benefit of making a test garment from such an unforgiving fabric is that it highlights all the pattern problems so I can fix them.  In this case, there are three big issues.  Look at the creases and shadows to see:

• skirt back is sagging at the waistline -- needs to be tugged upward there;
• skirt front -- same problem as skirt back;
• poorly drafted sleeve doesn't have enough height in the sleeve cap...
  • possibly a related issue, the bodice back near the top may be too broad, which warps the shape of the armscye.