NewVintageLady: Make and Mend vintage cotton dress reconstruction pt 1

Make and Mend vintage cotton dress reconstruction pt 1

Brian out for a hike at Griffith Park.

Good morning lovely people.

I know, there is supposed to be a Vintageville episode today. It's not finished, so I'm switching them. :)

I'm going to keep working on some MnM projects until I get tired of it. What the hell, right?

You all I'm sure remember my bonus dress from the vintage fabric stash I got a few weeks ago. Well, after a few hours of painstaking seam ripping and a couple of cross eyed instances, I finally managed to get the pieces apart.

I then pressed the pieces and overlocked them. It was an odd thing to press and iron old dirty fabric.

In order to remember what piece went where, I tacked some labels to the pieces so they would stay there after their wash. Best. Decision. Ever. Me.

Now it's time to wash. Remember what I said about dirty?*yuck*

I soaked the cotton overnight and man, did it make a difference. Yay Oxy Clean!

After a hand wash I hung the pieces up to dry then pressed them again.

HUGE color difference. The pieces are bright and vibrant and just alive again. Oh clean, you are such a seductress. From here I had to think about how I was going to proceeded with these clean pieces. Was I going to just construct the dress again? As I've said before. It was poorly made and pattern matching was not given the attention it needed.

Here are the original front pieces. They don't match at all and toiled over whether I was going to re-cut it or not. That's when I had an idea!

Mama loves her color blocking.

I wanted to add some fancies to this dress like piping or perhaps a metal zipper down the front (like those cute day dresses from the early 40s) so I looked through my stash to see what I had that would bring out the greatness of this delightful print. That's when I decided to make the back of the skirt in this turquoise fabric, and use a panel from the print fabric to re-cut the bodice.