Blue Star Sweater and Brown Pants ca. 1943

In front of the train at Disney's California Adventure

 So this is a dual post, of something I finished in December but only just got to posting. In fact, I have three new dresses to post too, but for now, these are the pictures I have, so let’s stick with, MY PANTS! And my sweater. Pants first, they take less time.

SIMPLICITY LIES. They say 12. They do not mean size twelve. They mean, “This only fits anorexic twelve year olds.” At least this pattern didn’t fit me, so I had to modify it, which I realized I am incredibly bad at. Probably didn’t help that this was my first foray into machine sewing in about 4 years, so I had to keep redoing seams over and over. In any case, after a lot of hard work, I finished the pants, which hit me right at the start of the rib cage, which is perfect for the thing I really wanted to highlight here, the sweater!

The sweater is made from a real vintage pattern I found online from a website in New Zealand (little plug, http://www.vintagepurls.co.nz/), and unfortunately I did not recognize the yarn weight or the needle size, so it was all about math and reworking the fair isle pattern to fit my new reduced number of stitches. The puffy sleeves took the longest, to be sure! Especially because the sweater itself hits so high, and I have arms which are long and awkward (I do believe I was made to brachiate through life), the sleeves took more yarn and more time than the rest of the sweater!

On a Pacific Electric Red Car at the Orange Empire Railway Museum

The sweater seemed to go over well at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris, CA (Dear Deceptive Boyfriend, I have since realized Perris and Paris have little in common), where they were doing a night-photoshoot of all their Pacific Electric streetcars. For those of you who know my dearest darling Cisco, you know he loves streetcars, so we showed up in vintage clothes for this event, and ended up being the only ones who did so. So now he and I are on the cameras of photographers all across SoCal, and I got my first foray into the life of a model. My cheeks hurt by the end–now I know why they all look so angry! It hurts to smile for long shutter exposures OVER and OVER again. Of course, my fantasy-oriented brain turned me into Heidi Klum and I managed to survive the ordeal by being a perky little fashion-opinionated German woman in the deepest recesses of my mind. So the event was great!

I have no doubts that I’ll be spending more time at the OERM, most likely in more vintage attire. And thus, you will see many a picture! Keep checking in, I do have three more dresses to upload, and soon, I’ll have even more! Thanks for stopping by!

~~Andrea~~