By Gum, By Golly - Knitting, sewing, & living a DIY life with vintage flair.

Finished projects for a fabulous weekend

Last weekend I traveled to the Washington, D.C. area to visit my mom and step-dad, for my mom’s birthday. You may already know this part from her blog post, or various Instagram and Facebook shenanigans, but I also got to hang out with none other than Rochelle from Lucky Lucille, who came down to visit, too!

It was AWESOME. All kinds of awesome. All the kinds of awesome that can exist in a land where you finally get to meet one of your closest friends in person, jump in like you already known each other’s insides and outs already (because actually you do), and act like the loving friends you have been in your hearts for ages.

Well, and act like complete goobers. There’s that, too.

Rochelle gave a preview of some of our weekend activities, and today you get the first of our outfit posts from the weekend! It involved a big red wall recommended by my mom, really cold weather, a lot of wind, some hand sewn and knit vintage-inspired items, and more silliness than you can possibly imagine. Seriously, for all the decent photos, there’s like 10 more of us making ridiculous faces or poses.

My outfit consisted of two recently completely projects that I made specifically to wear in honor of my mom’s birthday. My mom taught me to sew, and taught me to knit, and if there’s anyone around whom I’d design and create an entire outfit, it would be her. My mom is the the best.

Now remember when I knit my Dragonflies Jumper in fall? I polled my readers on what color my eventual-next-one should be and a lot of you said purple. And hey, I listened! So you get to see my deep violet-hued Dragonflies cardigan.

My mom and I both gravitate towards red, but growing up I always remember her favorite color being purple. While this outfit was actually based around the dress first and a fabric we both loved, it seemed the perfect match to me that it should get a purple cardigan to top it off.

This was the project I knit during the Ravellenic Games on Ravelry, and I completed it during the Olympics. How it differs from my pullover version: I shortened the length of the body for a cropped fit, knit a gradual v-neck instead of a crew neck, and went with 3/4 length sleeves. (There’s tons more specific notes on my Ravelry project page, as usual.)

I’m actually trying to find a good length for cardigans to wear with dresses and skirts and this one’s a bit short, but still nice.

I finished it off with the only purple buttons in my stash, beautiful vintage ones which happened to be perfect!

The dress is technically another (first, second) version of Emery by Christine Haynes, although it’s getting to the point where I’m just using the bodice as a block and going bananas with everything else.

This one also has a square neckline and a wider skirt like my Valentine version, but I drafted kimono sleeves, which I’m likely to repeat about a thousand times more as I love them that much! It’s one of my favorite types of sleeves–no setting in, a very 1940s look, easy to fit under a cardigan without tugging, but also perfect for hot summer days. A well-fitting bodice with kimono sleeve has been on my list for ages, and I finally have one!

This was about two-thirds of my attempt to re-master a somewhat-oversized 40s dress I sewed a couple of years ago but still love, and with one more change I’ll be there. So expect to hear more about that in the future.

I opted to move the center back zipper to the side because the fabric print was just small enough I felt I could easily mangle some of those skeleton faces or vertical lines when matching it along the center back seam. So no seam, no problem. (Although watching me try to wiggle this off over my head is pretty amusing!)

(There’s no wrinkle above the waistline in the back, by the way, just standing funny. Because it was about 25° F out and I think my teeth were chattering at this point!)

Speaking of fabric placement, I spent a long time getting the bodice just right. I’m particularly happy with the motifs under the bust nipped in by the vertical darts (because that could easily have looked crappy), and the lovely centered motifs right under the neckline.

The only thing I’ll change in the future is bust dart location. I moved them down from my previous versions since they’re pointing higher than my apex, but there must be something about the fit with the kimono sleeves that made that adjustment like I didn’t even do it. Oops. So, they’ll get lowered again in the future.

Wait, I haven’t mentioned being goobers lately. We were crazy. Taking photos together was such fun. And hilarious. I have no clue what we were doing in either of these photos!

Isn’t Rochelle’s outfit awesome? You’ll get to see more on her blog soon!

Wait, I mentioned it was windy, right? It was windy. I probably spent more time holding down my hair or dress or laughing at them trying to take flight than posing for Rochelle’s photos.

Anyway, the dress fabric is Cartas Marcadas by Alexander Henry, and I affectionately call this the Loteria dress. The yarn is Wollmeise DK in Petit Poison Nr. 5.

There will actually be a second of this dress at some point, in the gray scale version of this fabric. It’ll riff off a ModCloth dress that my mom showed me that started this whole outfit!

I can’t tell you just how. much. fun. it was taking outfit photos with Rochelle! We even had matching Luxulite jewelry for the occasion.

It was amazing spending the weekend with her, and so much fun for her to get to hang out with my super crafty mom, too.  And while we didn’t take nearly as many photos as we would have liked (we were too busy having fun!), there will be more to see this week on both of our blogs. 🙂

My outfit details

Loteria dress – made by me
Dragonflies cardigan – made by me
Chelcea Crew shoes – ModCloth
necklace – Luxulite
Kate Spade purse – eBay
patent leather belt – Target

Stay tuned!