Announcing: The Vintage Playsuit Sew Along!

A few months ago, I mentioned the possibility of hosting a sew along here on the blog. And the day has finally arrived to announce the opening of The Vintage Playsuit Sew Along!

This is going to be a choose your own adventure type sew along. We'll each pick a vintage playsuit pattern and sew them up together. At the end of the sew along, we'll all have cute playsuits to wear this summer!

May is going to be the inspiration month where we'll talk patterns, materials and planning your playsuit.

June will be the sewing month although you are free to start sewing as soon as you have all of your materials! As a mini sew along within the sew along, I'll show you how to draft and sew up your own gathered dirndl skirt with a button placket. This will be kicking off in June.

For this sew along, we'll define vintage as 1920s-1960s but mostly I'll be focusing on 1930s-1950s because that's what I like.

While at least one piece of your playsuit must be you-made within the sew along time frame, feel free build your playsuit around a you-made or ready to wear piece already in your wardrobe. This is a great opportunity to rescue a wardrobe orphan or skip making a more challenge piece like shorts in favor of purchasing.

<center> <a href="http://star-spangledheart.blogspot.com/search/lable/VPSA" target="_blank"> <img alt="The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart" src="https://www.flickr.com/photos/girlwiththestarspangledheart/14044524736" title="vpsa-002 by Stephanie Lynn, on Flickr" /><img alt="vpsa-002" height="320" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7385/14044524736_cc27ef9531_o.jpg" width="197" /></a></center>

So, grab a button for your blog and start planning your playsuit! Join up with other participants on the Flickr page and comment on any pin in the Pinterest board to be added as a pinner.

HSF#8: UFO

This challenge for HSF is a UFO or unfinished object. I didn't have a whole lot of UFOs to choose from but I did pick one to finish. I finished the beading on my Renaissance court dress forepart.

(Please pardon the messy sewing table)

The Challenge: UFO
Fabric: none
Pattern: none
Year: Late 1500s
Notions: glass pearls ($9)
How historically accurate is it? oh, probably not very. I do know that foreparts could be pearled (with actual pearls of course) but I did no research as to patterns or designs. I just made one up that looked nice to me.
Hours to complete: 4 or 5
First worn: not yet
Total cost: $9

 I started pearling this way back in January as part of the Make Do and Mend Challenge since I was doing a major over haul on my court dress but then I ran out of pearls and it sat in the UFO pile for a while. It is now done and ready to wear! I still have more trimming to do on the dress as a whole but faire season is still months away.

I did have one 40s UFO that I started working on but then I didn't have a zipper in my stash that matched and with vacation just around the corner, a trip to Jo-Ann's is out of the question this week. Oh, well. I did get some non-historical UFOs finished too so this challenge was quite inspiring! :D

More on Facial Care: Witch Hazel

I'm still working on discovering my perfect facial care routine. Today, I share my experience with witch hazel.

Spring has sprung

Easter is the perfect opportunity to wear one of your louder hats (just so long as it's warm enough! Last year was quite chilly!).

This year, I opted to build an outfit around this stellar floral 50s topper!

A classic circle skirt and a pastel green sweater were just the ticket to balance the loudness of the hat.

Other outfit details include coordinating brown ribbon, vintage beaded white gloves, pearl earrings and a great pink lipstick.

I also wore my largest crinoline for perfect twirl-ability!

I had loads of fun with these great white beaded gloves!

I actually really like how this hat looks like with a pixie. I can't imagine how loud it would be with a mass of curls exploding out from under it. If I had longer hair, I'd probably style it with a low bun and maybe some curly bangs.

Did you wear a fabulous hat for Easter? Do leave a link in the comments so I can see your Easter hats!

Trying New Things

Sometimes it's good to try new things.

 As a seamstress, I generally prefer to sew my own clothes. They fit better than off the rack. Plus I can really customize my pieces.

But when eShakti contacted me to see if I'd be interested in reviewing something from their site, I said yes.



This great embroidered skirt jumped out at me as too cute to pass up! Especially since my summer sewing theme is non-traditional nautical.

Generally, I have to stick to purchasing very full skirts online since I have large hips. One of the great things about eShakti is that they do custom sizing so I was able to know that this skirt would fit my waist and my hips.



They also let you do other customizations like change the length, remove embellishments and opt in or out for pockets. (Although, I can't see why you wouldn't want pockets!)



I just adore my new skirt but they did excellent in the customer service department too. My emails were answered quickly and the shipping was super fast! In fact, my skirt arrived before they sent the email letting me know it had shipped.

Looking for more eShakti goodness? Find them on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.



To style this skirt, I made up a blouse in dotted Swiss from Butterick 7641.



I couldn't find any nautical buttons I liked so I went with flowers instead.



I went pretty light with the jewelry and just stuck to these nautical earrings.



I also tried something else new for this post. As you all know, my husband is a professional photographer and most of my blog photos are by him or done with a tripod and a remote.

But these photos are by my friend Charity of Charity K Photography. She and I had an amazing photoshoot downtown.

It's easy to get stuck in a rut with photos for blogs. The same poses in the same locations. It was so nice to spice things up and work with someone new. We had so much fun finding cool locations and trying out new poses together.



Charity is a great photographer and it was quite inspiring to work with her. We were able to be so creative together and these gorgeous photos are the result!

Maybe it's time for some new things in your life! I can see more eShakti and Charity K Photography in my future!

Disclosure: The skirt was sent to me by eShakti.com for free in return for a review. All opinions are my own.

Photographs by Charity K Photography http://www.charitykphotography.com/

A Pear-fect Outfit

We all have our vintage wardrobe wish list. One of the things that has been on my list is a hat with fruit on it!

Generally fruit bearing hats have cherries and are quite pricey due to the popularity of said cherries.

So when I spied this darling pear hat over in Poppycock Vintage's etsy store, I had to snap it up.

Originally, I had planned on saving this hat for Easter to wear with a green sweater but when I pulled out this vintage dress to wear, the pear-ing of hat and dress was too perfect to pass up!

The hat is made from a green straw type material and is decorated with some netting and the pear.

Given the extra awesomeness the pear adds to the usual fabulousness of hats in general, my husband naturally thought it was very silly. *sigh* Men.

But hats and fruits and blooming flowers have me all pumped for spring, which has mostly arrived here in Ohio.

And Easter is coming up this weekend and I now have to pick out a new hat to wear!

A Spring Wedding

This weekend we kicked off the spring wedding season by shooting my niece's wedding. (It's my husband's niece and she's actually a bit older than me. There's crazy age difference between my family and my hubby's family.) So I opted for a great floral since it's finally decided to be spring-y.

This dress is Simplicity 8398 c. 1950 which I made last year.

It's a great full skirted dress that is ridiculously fun to wear with a crinoline.

One thing I really like about my new hair is that it really showcases earrings! Must have more confetti lucite earrings!

It was still fairly chilly outside so I did have to wear a jacket but inside this dress was great. Can't wait for late spring to arrive!

Per usual, I helped with the lighting testing. We had some new video lights (which I will be, um, borrowing for youtubes) and they helped a lot.

At the photography conference, we also bought a new lens which I love!

Overall, it was a great day. Although I did keep asking myself why I didn't put pockets in this dress!

Photos courtesy of Will Thorpe willthorpe.com