Outift Post: Vintage Modern Chic

Today was a beautiful day! It was perhaps a bit warm at mid day for my outfit today but I'll take what I can get.

Sweater: Banana Republic
Shirt: New York and Company
Shorts: Banana Republic
Shoes: Target
Hat: Forever 21
Earrings: Banana Republic
Necklace: New York and Company

I love this sweater! It is such a great color. When I saw this sweater in Banana Republic, I had to have it! My mind went straight to this Zooey Deschanel picture.

Too bad they didn't have matching shoes! Those are so on my wish list!

To top it all off, my lipstick stayed on great today. :) And I remembered my hat. I got a couple of compliments on it. What more can a girl ask for?

A missed opportunity

Today, I managed to walk out of the house looking cute and modern and even wearing heals! (I don't wear heals often during the week as I have to walk to school and all over campus all day.) All day, I walked around feeling chic... until I happened to think that today was a great day for a hat with nice hat weather..... and I had the perfect hat to add the right bit of vintage to my chic outfit. bummer.... The next time I went out was to the gym so no hat today. :(

But I've already decided what I'm going to wear tomorrow and it will include a hat!

On a side note, I've decided on my next sewing project-a circle skirt. I have two days off next week and what better to do with my time off than sew! So excited! I hope to be able to whip it up and wear it on Sunday.

Renaissance Festival

Saturday my hubby and I went to the Renaissance Festival and I wore the dress I made! It was such a blast and much more enjoyable than my last visit when I didn't dress up. We arrived just as the fair opened and there were tons of people in costume there to greet us. My husband got a little flack for not being dressed up but I only had time to make one costume.




The first thing we did was make sure to get some pictures of my outfit so we didn't forget. I was really happy with the way it turned out. I got quite a few compliments on it throughout the day and that made it all worth it. I wore my snood, which worked out great as it was still pretty hot here. It stayed in all day with just 3 bobby pins and having my hair off of my neck was so nice!


Not ten minutes after we arrived, I was serenaded by a minstrel, who sang me my own personal love song. How cool is that! I was a little embarrassed but I got over it.


My husband was super excited to play with weapons! There were several places selling swords and he seriously considered buying one. He did test quite a few of them out though. Also, there were several booths where you could throw weapons and that was an opportunity no man could miss. He threw axes, knives and gladiuses (gladiui?). Archery and spear throwing were also on the to do list. I got to step behind the camera and take some shots of my own.


We saw a pyro juggler and a pirate stunt show, but didn't get to make it to the jousting. :(


There was a lot of fabulous merchandise too! Some, like this blacksmith, even worked while you watched! I ended up getting a chain mail necklace (which I forgot to get pictures of) and a psaltery, which is a stringed instrument kind of like a cross between a harp and a guitar.


Another highlight of the day was seeing a wedding party go by. The bride and groom were so cute driving by in their Renaissance finery!

We also sampled the honey mead and did a wine tasting. Between being an alcohol lightweight and not drinking enough water that day, I did start feeling a bit under the weather and ended up changing into street clothes for most of the afternoon, but I didn't let it ruin my day!

Thanks for reading! I promise to get back to more vintage posts for a while.

A Little Treasure

One of my good friends was helping her in-laws clean out their garage and found me this little treasure.

Don't I have such a nice friend!

It is a Maytag Washer manual in mint condition with the most adorable illustrations! I tried to look online to date the manual. One being sold on Ebay was listed as "1930 +", but the illustration looks later than that to me. The woman reads very 50's housewife, which is more in line with another source that dated one of the models for the manual at 1946 and another at 1945.

I love the rick rack she's wearing in this shot.

Laundry is fun!

Illustrated directions make housekeeping a breeze.

A striped apron with a bow.

A warranty- but you might not have to use it as my research turned up people still using the models in the manual today.

I want to make scans of the book to post, but that'll take a special trip to the library to use their scanners when I know I can take good care of it.

Sewing is fun!

Here are some long overdue photos of my Renaissance dress. I've been working long and hard and it's coming together!

The dress!

The collar turned out really nice but it was way more complicated that I thought it would be.

Here are the sleeves, which I finished tonight. Tomorrow, I'll tackle attaching them to the dress. I read over the pattern directions and it looks kind of complicated.

So pretty! I'm totally in love with my fabric choices.

Besides attaching the sleeves, I have to put in grommets for a lace up back. The pattern calls for a zipper but I didn't want to do that. I'd like to be mostly period. Last, of course, is the hemming, which will be interesting. I'm going to have to enlist my hubby's help and I know it took a long time the last time I hemmed a dress with this much fabric. Hopefully, I'll be mostly finished by the end of the weekend, but I'll have some time during the week encase I run into serious issues tomorrow.

Hope you are all having a good weekend!

The pretty scarf dress

I bought this dress a couple of weeks ago at The Look, a local vintage store. Today it was finally cool enough for me to wear it without having to worry about soaking it with sweat.


I love the print on this dress. It's so fun and sporadic. It has a sweet neckline. Fabgabs has a similar dress in her etsy shop and she calls it a scarf detail. No matter what it's called, it's cute! It came with a matching belt, a trend I wish would come back! I believe that it is a 60's dress and it looks handmade.


Dress: vintage
Shoes: my honeymoon shoes from ME

I did my hair in Allie Hamilton pig tails. You can see a great youtube tutorial by Classic Retro Glamour for it here. It's super easy and I can wear it bang up or bang down. Plus, pig tails are so fun.

It was super bright, so I was a bit squinty.

I heart these shoes!

Snood!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I've been super busy sewing my Renaissance dress. I don't have any pictures for you yet, as I've been working up until bed time every night for the last few nights. Tonight I'm taking a night off from sewing. I'm feeling pretty good about finishing it on time, but I'm dreading the hemming... It'll just be tedious.

But I did get my snood from Arthelia's Attic today. Woot!



It came beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a bow. There was also a cute little bag of candy!

Isn't that a cute business card!

The snood itself is soft and very comfortable to wear. It fits me very nicely and I'll probably secure it with just one or two bobby pins.

The bow's not supposed to be poking up like that, but that's what I get for rushing.

The color (dark mulberry) ended up being a bit more purple than I thought it would be, but especially without the bow (and I wasn't planning on wearing the bow with my Renaissance dress anyways) it matches quite well. Plus purple pops really well against my hair. And it matches my new dress that I bought a while back (when I bought the green hat) that I've been meaning to wear to show you.



I don't have quite enough hair to really fill the snood out yet, but I'm growing out my hair and can always make a hair rat until then. I also didn't do anything with my hair (and I'm not wearing any make up *gasp*) but I wanted to go ahead and show you guys.

Sanity Update

So, I did go ahead an buy sewing stuff to make a Renaissance dress. I guess the answer to my last question was "yes, I am a bit crazy." So far I've cut all of my fabric and have started sewing the main part of my dress together. I don't have any pictures but here is the pattern I'm doing:


I am doing view C, but with green instead of blue. (I hope it doesn't end up Christmas-y.) Today was scrapbooking day, so I didn't work on it, but hopefully I'll be able to give you guys a better update and pics tomorrow.

Am I crazy?

On the high of my last sewing project and the impending Renaissance Festivel (it actually starts this weekend, but I won't be going for a couple of weeks), I have taken it upon myself to make a costume! But I've never actually made a complete garment before and I only have two weeks!

I know something like this is totally out of the question,

But I was thinking something more along these lines would be possible.




I am particularly drawn to the last one as the laces would make fit much less of an issue, but I like the others too. So my question to all of you sewing type people out there, am I crazy? And which of these do you think would be the least crazy?

Oh, and I will also probably be wearing a snood, as my hair is way to short for the period. (And it's a good excuse to get one!)