Sew sorry....

The other day my Hat Net buddy Marie sent me a link to a class that was being taught out in California. The class was going to be on making the "One Hour Dress Pattern" from 1924.

Naturally I scoured the web trying to find said pattern, and with hardly any effort at all, I found the pattern available for download.

Isn't it just adorable?

The following page had a certification of an event where the one hour dress was once sewed in public in 34 minutes!
Wow!!!
The finished dress apparently looked like the black and white drawing of the dress as modeled by Mary Brooks Pickens, of Women's Institute fame.
Pickens wrote lots and lots of books on sewing in the early decades of the 1900's. Her books are collector items now. Her designs are always designs that are self drafted; you measure yourself and plot the lines and cut accordingly.

I loved how cool and fresh Mary looked in the One Hour Dress. There were loads of variations as well, different sleeve finishes, skirt finishes (pleats, tucks etc.)

The pattern called for 3 1/4 yards of fabric.
Obviously the thing to do was to find some fabric that was very inexpensive, in order to make a test run at the design. The trick would be finding a fabric that I liked well enough that if the dress turned out well I would actually want to wear it, yet cheap enough that if it didn't turn out well I wouldn't mind disgarding the experiment.

Knowing that Walmart has fabric for $2 a yard, I decided I would give it a try.
Now buying fabric is tricky for me.

I happen to be related to people with strong opinions about fabric designs.
For instance, no one in my family likes polka dots.
(I think polka dots are fun, but it takes a degree of silliness to really pull them off. My family doesn't do silly, we do dry humor, sarcastic humor, and snarky humor. The cats do silly. But they refuse to wear polka dots, being boy cats and all)
So polka dots are out.

I love gingham. It just draws me, it is always so fresh looking and cool.
Bernie strongly dislikes gingham anything.
Go figure.
I have to admit, gingham on any one over the age of six does look a tad juvenile.
(More about that issue later.)

Now Bernie does like stripes.
I don't, except on him, but I am trying to cultivate an appreciation of striped shirts.
This pattern said it could not be made with striped fabric, or one way designs.
I'm not sure why the stripes wouldn't work, but whatever.

Daughter Laura dislikes any abstract all over design.
She inevitably says the design looks like a medical slide of some hideous disease.
It is hard to want to wear a fabric once someone has said it looks like a blood slide example of a communicable disease.

We all like floral, provided they are not too big, or too small, or too fussy, or too old lady, or too childish.
And especially if the floral doesn't look like upholstery or drapery chintz.
Which is pretty much the only kind of floral out there.
Someday, I hope to find a floral that hasn't already been used as a bedspread in a department store ad.

I personally love plaid.
Just not in summer.
And not if I am feeling fat.
Which I do right not.

So if you skip polka dot, gingham, stripe, floral, abstracts and plaid, that pretty much leaves you with plain solid colors.

The pattern came with several pages of styles from 1924. Apparently in 1924 everyone had a figure like a skinny snake.
No hips, no bosoms.
A perfect 34-34-34 I guess.
Awhile ago on Dressaday there was an essay on body types.
The perfect 34-34-34 is called a cylinder or tube shape. Flat fanny, flat chest.
And the One Hour Dress is just the dress for them

Me...well, one part of me is 34 if I have had lunch. I have what the essay called an hour glass shape. An hour glass figure has at least a ten inch difference between waist and hip, and waist and bust.

Think 1950's style with full skirts, and belted waist, and that's me.

An Hour glass, wearing a tube style takes on the contours of a brick.
Ick.

But...the picture of the girl with the umbrella!
The hat!
The fabric floating in the breeze!
ONE HOUR OF SEWING!!!

As I drove away from my house on my way to Wal Mart, my common sense dryly noted:
"You know this is never going to work on you."

I told my common sense to stay out of it.

Walmart shopping only took one hour.
(I did get three compliments of my Sally Victor panama straw hat...so it wasn't a total waste of time.)
I avoided the true gingham, and went with a light blue cotton gingham like print at $2 a yard. I got four yards, so I could whip up a hat to match.

And I got thread, bias tape, and cute little white buttons with blue stars impressed that matched the fabric.

Door to door, I spent two hours getting fabric.
I washed the fabric, and at 3 pm started to work.
At six pm I stopped.
I think I should have just cut a hole in the middle of the fabric and pulled it over my head and declared it done.
It looked like a poncho that went down to my ankles.
The directions were crystal clear right up to when it said to tack the side cascade to the back.
(That's the little ruffle on the side.)

I for the life of me can not figure out how that could be done.
Near as I can figure, the dress has no seams on the sides. Just a panel in the front,and a panel in the back, and the back panel extends under the front panel and is tacked to the waist band, sort of like a wrap skirt.

Maybe in 1924 walking was different than now.
All I can say is if I ever want a light blue ginghamish poncho to wear and want to flash my thighs, this is the dress to wear.
And NO, I am not posting a picture of me in it.

Sigh.

Every summer I come across a new "Quick and Easy" pattern modeled on a starved person, and I think "Maybe it will work."
It never does.

Last summer I made the pillow case dress, the one where basically you make a tube and run cording around the top hem and the cording becomes the shoulder straps.
On me it looked like a poverty picture: the guy wearing a barrel with ropes over his shoulders to hold the barrel up.
Not a pretty look.

I am still looking for an easy summer dress pattern with sleeves. I have perfected a fitted top sundress with straps and full skirt, but I always have to drag a sweater along for upper arm coverage and air conditioning defense.

I noticed Erin over at Dressaday is a huge fan of the Duro, the style pictured in the pattern below. She says it is an easy two hour project.
I decided I would give that a whirl next.

Kimono sleeves and I don't usually get along...so it is an iffy project on that count.

Erin loves to mix and match fabric wildly on her duros.
I'm just not brave enough to do that.

The problem with summer wear is that it needs to be cotton, and NOT lined with polyester.
Around here you can get all the cotton and linen sheath dress and even 50's style dresses you want, but they all are completely lined in man made fiber.
One trip across a parking lot when it is 94 degrees out with 94% humidity wearing a polyester lining? Instant heat stroke.

That's why I like to make my own dresses, so I can line them with a batiste or light cotton.
Plus my torso is a full three inches longer than standard, so store bought dresses always are waist banded around my lowest rib, rather than beneath it.
Not a comfortable design element to say the least. (Tug, tug...)

The other problem with summer wear is that I just fall in love with summer designs that are not polka dot, gingham, stripes, plaid, floral or abstract.

I fall in love with fabric like this:

Every time I look at that fabric I feel happy, and young.
The room feels cooler, and it feels like something fun is just about to happen.

I started cutting out the apple fabric for duro last night starting at 7.
And at 7:30 discovered I was 1/4 yard short.

While I took an aggravation break, I talked with Laura, who shared with me an article she had found in O magazine, which included an interview with the over 50 actress Ellen Barkin (of Ocean's 13 fame.)
Ellen was asked for tips on fashions for the over 50 set.
Some of the tips I approved of: NO strapless, cover the knees in skirts.
Then she said don't wear hats, as they look like you are trying to draw attention to yourself.

(Right. Why don't we just wear burqas then. Wouldn't that be much better? If everyone would just "get it" like they do in the horrible Middle Eastern countries, then that problem of being "noticed" will be solved forever. Especially if we wear that face covering too!)

Laura and I talked about growing up and growing older; she is turning 29 this coming Sunday.

Growing up and growing older is challenging at any age.

Older and wiser is good. It's the rest of it that is hard.

After that call I realized I was irritated with myself for being so ridiculous as to think I could make the one hour dress work.
I was annoyed that the Duro fabric layout didn't work, and I can only hope Jo Ann fabrics still carries the apple fabric I bought last August.

And I was depressed to realize that even at age 53, part of me still wants to wear gingham, and dotted Swiss, and eyelet, and fabric with whimsical prints of apples and alphabets and cats and things like that.

Even though I have eye crossingly expensive pantsuits and skirt suits in charcoal, blue grey, dark brown, deep navy, beige and black, and skirts and pants in those same subdued colors, and tasteful sweaters and blouses of solid neutral shades, all of which I enliven with expensive silk scarves, deep inside I want to wear a dress the fluffs out in the breeze, with a wide ribbon tied in a bow, and maybe even a parasol.

I know that as I age I should dress in more and more subdued classic styles, and that making a dress with aqua cotton fabric with green apples dancing about is really just going to make me look rediculous.

It's just that I inside I still feel young.
I still imagine myself as a young girl, with a cylinder shaped body, and a happy attachment to clear bright colors.
I'm not worried about people noticing me.
I'm five feet nine inches tall...people have ALWAYS noticed me.

(And believe me, having people say "Boy, you sure are tall, how tall are you? does not feel like a compliment. It feels like they are wondering why you are such a freak. I have bit my lip more than once to avoid saying "Boy you sure are short, how short are you?
I happen to know that would be considered rude. I'm not sure why asking how tall I am isn't likewise considered equally rude, but it apparently isn't because Laura and I get asked that all the time. Which is probably one reason I started to wear a hat, just to change the subject a bit.)

I'm not sure how to end this post.
On the way to work tonight I will be trying to get enough fabric of the apple fabric to finish cutting out the dress. If the dress shape works on my figure, I will wear it around the house, and will enjoy wearing it while sipping ice tea or mojitos on the patio in the evenings with Bernie, who has enough sense to notice and tell me I look nice when I am happy.

And helps me to remember that sometimes it's still OK to be a little girl at heart.

Update: Joanne's was out of the fabric. If you are near a Joanne's fabric store and see the fabric, would you let me know?