Fashioning spring?

Does it already feel like spring where you are? Here in the Netherlands, we had a couple of nice days in March but the rest of that month was miserable. It seems to be warming up now though.

As you may know, I'm not really into planning my sewing. Of course, I have a long list in my head of things I would like to make. And if wardrobe needs make themselves felt, the items to meet those will jump the queue. But I don't try and commit myself to certain goals. For me, that takes too much of the fun out of my sewing. Which can make things complicated. Some things I love in theory end up spending a LOT of time on that mental list...

There are a couple of those which beg for attention again this spring.

There's the striped dress with the pleated tiers. I've got fabric and buttons and the pattern shouldn't be difficult. The only thing holding me back (apart from, so far, the weather) is the fear of having too many shirt dresses. Which might be silly because I love them.

Then, there's the idea of a spring suit. In vintage magazines, they always suggest that ladies carefully pick out a stylish suit for the warmer month and wear it for the first time on Easter day. I like the idea but I don't have summer-weight wool in my stash (and let's not even start about silk suiting) and I rather doubt I would have much of a chance to wear such a thing.
However, since last autumn, I have a fabric in my stash that might be suitable. It's linen but a bit heavier than usual and in a grey and black herringbone weave. It would be cool to wear but looks like a sporty wool fabric. Not very summer-y but I'm not sure I care too much about that (not for every single item I make, that is). I've been turning the idea around in my head for a while. All the most sophisticated 1950's style suits have narrow skirts but this fabric is linen so it would crease rather noticeably. And I'd like my spring suit to have some kind of extra interesting feature.

And then I remembered this from my Pinterest board. I found this picture of a grey jersey suit by Pierre Balmain in the magazine Margriet from 7 October 1950 (this was a weekly). According to the text, the panel on the skirt can either be worn as a simple, straight wrap-over or draped and pinned into the jacket pocket like this. I'm not so sure I could get that to work (I've often wondered about 1950's jersey. It's often treated like a woven. Here, some stretch would help with that drape but I wouldn't like to make that clean-cut collar and those pockets in a spongey, stretchy material like that) but I just love the look like this. And because all of the drama is actually in the skirt, I could make a much tamer pair of trousers to wear with the jacket for a very different look.

And then, there is my continued interest in draped and gathered 1940's styles. I have found some fabrics which should work for that. 

Now, I'll just have to decide between this dress from EvaDress (a shorter, daytime version), a design from my late 1940's Lutterloh book, something (even more risky) from my issues of the magazine La Femme Elegante from the late 1930's or drafting my own using one of these two Studio Faro tutorials. Oh, or giving the two repro Vogue patterns I bought years ago another chance. I tried one years ago and it didn't work out but maybe I should just have sized it down...
And all but one of the options would even count towards my Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge.

Speaking of which... If you take part in pledge or follow the posts about it, you've probably already seen this: Marie published the stash interview with yours truly on her blog yesterday. 
These interviews with participants are a new feature in the blog posts about this year's pledge and I was more than happy to take part. 
Reading blogs about (vintage) sewing, I sometimes get the impression that we all seem to be sewing with vintage patterns from the same, mostly American, companies (with the notable exception of the Lutterloh system). While this makes a lot of sense for American seamstresses and bloggers, it doesn't really for anyone who lives in a country which, back in the day, hardly imported those and instead produced its own patterns. 
Maybe it's my inner history geek taking over, but I love the designs and the social history I find in the magazines in my collection. 
I more than understand a stash like mine isn't for everyone. You have to be willing to do some very careful tracing. And be able to sew with little to no instruction. But I love it and I hope you will enjoy this little look in the stash.
Of course, I will continue to share the contents of one magazine or another, every once in a while. 

Highest recommendation

This one goes out to the lovely people from the Claymore Guesthouse in Pitlochry. We stayed there for one night towards the end of our holiday in Scotland. It was a very nice place to stay, in a pretty town, in a very beautiful area so it was a bit of a pity we couldn't spend more time there. 
However, when we left, I made the mistake of not checking the wardrobe. Where I had hung my lovely tweed jacket...
I didn't find out about it until we were unpacking in Edinburgh, late that afternoon. I called the Claymore Guesthouse and they had already found my jacket. They offered to send it my home address, in the Netherlands!
Needless to say, I was very grateful. I think this goes above and beyond the service you would expect from a hotel or guesthouse.

Today, the package with my jacket arrived and I'm really happy to have it back. This was one of my very first successful more complicated self-drafted garments. It pre-dates this blog by a few months, this picture (which is on my Burdastyle page) is from January 2009! I haven't worn it that much because it's a bit too warm to wear indoors and its double breasted relative made a better option as a light coat (especially when cycling). I've always loved it though and really enjoyed wearing it in Scotland. In fact, I was looking forward to wearing it a lot more this coming winter...
And now, I can and will.
The Claymore Guesthouse was already on my list of places we'd like to stay again on our next trip to Scotland, and now, of course, it tops that little list. 

I'm back!

Hello!
I'm back in the Netherlands after two wonderful weeks in Scotland. We were extremely lucky to have great weather for all but two days (in fact, the first week and a bit were so warm and sunny, we thought we would run out of summer clothes. E did. The two souvenir t-shirts he bought have been worn already).
I always thought we would like Scotland as a holiday destination but oh my, 'like' doesn't even begin to describe it. I fully understand it may be a bit harder to love the place when it's shrouded in its more usual garb of fog and rain, but what's not to love about a country where the rich history is served up in thick slices and every turn in the road reveals a whole new, stunning view?

There are things I will blog about later and in more detail but I thought I'd share  some little tips now:

First of all: If, like me, you like history and enjoy exploring castles, ruins and country houses it's always worth checking (even before you travel) if there are any package deals available which will save on your admission fees.
In the UK, the vast majority of historic sites is cared for and run by large charities and as a member you don't have to pay admission. On previous holidays in England, we've had short-term memberships of the National Trust and English Heritage, depending on the sites we wanted to visit. 

This time, Historic Scotland was the obvious choice, since the castles at both Stirling and Edinburgh (both major tourist destinations we were planning to visit anyway) are in their care. They offer an 'Explorer pass' for tourists and/or occasional visitors but we opted for the full membership.

That way, we also got to see other sites, like the amazingly located Kilchurn castle (this is actually and unmanned property so you don't have to pay admission but there are many other castles where being a member will save you money).

Oh, and even if you don't want to join, it's worth taking a look at their free app. It helps you find historic sites near you and you get the latest news about those. 

Like events. I didn't expect much from those but we were very impressed with the, rather modest, 'meet the redcoats' event at the grim little tower house of Corgarff. This was not some silliness for children but a very interesting display by nice, knowledgable and skilled reenactors (costume post in the coming week).

Secondly: It's hard to visit Scotland and not see or do anything related to whiskey. E likes whiskey, so I had in fact planned on visiting a couple of distilleries.
I can recommend it though. Although the vast majority is now owned by big companies, plenty of them are still at their historic sites and there is still clear craft and skill involved in the production of this stuff. And that is something we can all relate to.
In a lot of hotels and guesthouses (especially in the Speyside region) you can pick up booklets with lists of distilleries which are open to visitors (including opening hours and cost of a tour). At some large ones, tours are free but if you're not obsessed with whiskey, a tour at a small facility is much more fun. 

This is the Dalwhinnie distillery, located in the middle of nowhere (Ok, next to a very small village) on a kind of plateau in the Highlands. If you go there, you can sign up for another club called 'friends of Malt Whiskey' (which is free). This basically means you can do the tour at the other distilleries which are owned but the same company for free. We did this and ended up visiting several. 
Out of those, I would recommend Royal Lochnagar. A small distillery next door to Balmoral palace with the most enthusiastic, nice and knowledgable tour guide of all. Of course, there are more guides than just the one we met, but they limit the amount of tours each guide does per day to three to allow them to be spontaneous and personalize the tours. Which has to be a good thing.

Other than visiting castles and whiskey distilleries, we've also had a great day climbing with a guide, we hiked and explored nice towns. We will definitely go to Scotland again. We realized, while on the way, that we could even travel to all the same places again and yet see all different things. And then there are still so many places we haven't visited...

Freeform retro top

And this is the other project I made using instructions from Studio Faro's blog. It's called 'retro shrug' there, even though it is always pictured as a wrap top. 
Now, this is a design I have certainly seen on the internet before. I've seen pictures of it before (I believe it's out there as repro pattern or something like that) and I've looked at them and tried to figure out how this would work. I didn't manage so I was quite happy to try this tutorial and see how it should be done.

To be honest, this green top is my second version.

This is the first one. When worn tucked in, as suggested in the tutorial, it looks fine. It isn't easy to get it in position though and it doesn't really like to stay in place. 

In its untucked state, the issue is revealed.

Some of the pictures I've seen of tops like this didn't show it tucked in. Instead, it was pinned down at waistline with a brooch and the points fell to the front like those of a vest. 
In my top/shrug, the points fall to the sides (I know it's hard to see. E helped me to re-take the pictures of these tops and even though he did a great job overall, he didn't really mind the light with these). The fit is pretty similar to what you see on Studio Faro's dummy, I followed pattern and instruction exactly and I don't usually think of myself as having a large waist circumference. 

So, I decided to make another version with one crucial change:

I know my sketch isn't easy to read but just consider it an addition to the tutorial: In the original pattern the 'center back seam' was 24 cm. In my new version, it's only 19 cm.

The larger amount of fabric from the back which is now used for the waistline means that the points will fold to the front without trouble and you don't have to tuck the top in. It has a tendency to gape at the neckline, so I've pinned it there with a hidden safety pin.

When I asked E which top he preferred, he said he thought the first one was a nice shrug and the second one a nice top. He didn't even really consider the two as being the same kind of garment. And, in the role they will get in my wardrobe, he's absolutely right. 

P.S. I know styles like this add a lot of bulk around the upper body. I don't mind that. I think it can provide really nice looks when properly styled but I realize it won't be everybody's cup of tea. 
If you're kind of interested in the look but not sure about it, make sure you pick a really soft drapey jersey for it and remember that the look is less overwhelming when you wear this thing as a shrug than as a top. That may also make it a lot easier to give it a place in a wardrobe with less vintage influence than mine.
And if you are unsure about the look and/or fit you want to go for (It's a two seam garment, so the length of that back seam really makes a difference. I actually really like my first try as a shrug, the second one, not so much), start with the shorter back seam. It's easy to close it up further later on if you decide you prefer that than to have to unpick that serged seam.

The retro wrap

After the gathered dress fiasco (and I really appreciate your nice comments. However, I'm just going to walk away from this one. Because I don't usually do that, I'm going to call that a learning experience in itself) I needed a bit of a palate cleanser. 
And I thought about some of the nice things I had found on the well-suited blog.  This top in particular:

The retro wrap top was a pattern puzzle last year, inspired by this image of a vintage pattern from Red Point Tailor's Pinterest page. In this post, Studio Faro tells you how to make this pattern. It's kind of a free-form pattern, so no slopers required.
I'm a big fan of both vintage and odd patterns, so it's obvious why this particular project attracted me. 

I drafted it as instructed (the narrowed sleeve version) and used a nice viscose jersey from my stash (with 4-way stretch, which is really important for this design). I had only one meter of this fabric, so I cut 10 cm off the sleeve so I would have enough fabric for the waist tie.
I don't mind three quarter length sleeves and having one's sleeves at less than full length is period accurate for the 1950's anyway.

When seeing the finished top, I think the original sleeve length would have been too much for me. It may have to do with the size, which is given as 'fits up to a size 12'. I don't know what an Australian size 12 is, but I suppose it's close to either a British or an American 12. Which would mean a bit bigger than I am. Because it's a one-pattern-piece garment, the relation between length and width can be complicated. I am wondering how someone with a substantially larger chest would feel with this front length though. For me, the ties pull the front edge taut, making the wrap feel quite secure. On a larger bust, it might be too tight.

By the way, I apologize for the (lack of) quality of the pictures. I'm a bit out of practice with self-timer photography and the light was difficult too. 

As a result, you can't really see the fabric in these pictures but I really like it. It's a very fine stripe in brown and beige. The stripes are way too narrow to bother with matching them, but somehow, they do so on their own here on the sleeve curve. When worn, I think this makes for a really nice detail on the back. But that may be entirely down to my sewing-geekiness. 

And you may have noticed in the vintage pattern illustration that you are also supposed to be able to wear this top the other way round. So, of course I had to try.

I didn't find it as bad as Studio Faro, but it kind of feel like the top is trying to me. That's not the only issue though. 

In the pictures above, I've pulled the top to sit on my shoulder kind of like in the illustration. 

However, if you do something crazy like moving around, it slides down and ends up looking like this. 
I don't think I will wear the top like this. Even though it has an odd kind of Japanese pattern appeal...

All in all, I'm really happy with this top. It's also the first waist length item I've ever tried which stays in place when you sit down and stand up again. That's a really big plus and contributes a lot to its wearability.
I've made another vintage via Studio Faro top but I think this post is long enough already, so that will have to wait till later. 

P.S. You may notice I've got a bit of a 'sweater girl' look going on. Which, by the way, I think is quite right for this design. And it's the result of wearing my new bra 

Sewing-related and out there

This week, I came across some sewing-related stuff which I thought was just too good not to share.

First of all, there's a magazine. I had been sent a gift-card for a specific chain of  magazine (and some books) stores. On Wednesday, I passed by a store and decided to see if there was anything interesting.

I quickly realized just how critical I've become about magazines... I found all the fashion glossies too shallow, the sewing magazines too frumpy and the art magazines too presumptuous.

And then this caught my eye, awkwardly positioned between the aforementioned categories: Cut magazine, with the subtitle "Leute machen Kleider" (which is German for "People make clothes"). Unfortunately, it's only in German, but it was just to interesting not to take home with me.

It has some kinds of article you could also find in a normal glossy, like an interview with a designer, glossy photoshoots and information about the places to go in a city (in this case Vienna).

But there's more. The contest is for a sewing machine. 

And there are three patterns included, with extensive instructions.

Illustrated like that, the sewing projects should be within the grasp of a beginner sewer. And these might get into the hands of people who wouldn't want to be seen with a regular sewing mag...

Don't get me wrong there, I've always sewn from magazines until I learned to draft my own patterns and I think they are a great resource. But let's be honest, they don't necessarily look very cool...

Apart from the sewing, Cut also contains other craft and DIY projects like how to create the marbled paint effect and things for the home which you can make from copper tubing and a nice spoof ad on the back cover. 

It is a 'maker culture glossy'. On their website, they claim to be the first such magazine in the German language and I believe them. In fact, it's also the first magazine of its kind I have seen for sale here in the Netherlands...

And then, of course, there's the world wide web (is anyone still calling the internet that?). 

I wasn't really looking for anything, but this week, I came across a blog I should have known about long ago: well-suited. It's all about patterns and drafting. Showing a strangely-shaped pattern every week and how to it can be made based on a normal sloper. What's not to love? 

A lot of designs are not really what I would make but I don't even care, it's just intriguing to look at. 

Can you believe I found both these things on the same day? My known sewing world just got a bit bigger and quite like it.

Listing

Well, that post about pattern making classes brought out a lot of people! I had no idea my blog had so many readers from this very country.
As a result, I thought it might be a good idea to sum up the available sources of education. I only have real information about institutions here in the Netherlands. In the comments to the previous post, Jo Ashcroft and Belle Megan told about their experiences with courses in New Zealand and the UK respectively. If you live anywhere near them, I recommend checking those out. I would also love for any one who has anything to add about pattern making courses to do so in the comments to this post.

To start the line-up, I googled the City & Guild course mentioned by Belle Megan and found this site. Not being a UK resident, I don't really know anything about this but there seems to be a wide range of courses available, in all kinds of fields. Even including pattern making.

All the following links are about Dutch institutions, most of which don't have an English version to their website.

First up are the esteemed members of the arcane sisterhood of Dutch sewing teachers (no offense, really):

- Ensaid
- Dankaerts
- Rotterdamse Snijschool

All three have been around for decades (I'm pretty sure all of them were already there in the 1950's…) and they all offer both professional courses which teach seamstresses of many different skill levels as well as hobby courses. At all of them, pattern making is a part of the professional courses.
Rotterdamse Snijschool teaches at its own venue in the city of Rotterdam. Both other institutions work with a system of teachers who are graduates of their own top-level course. Those are independent entrepreneurs teaching from the system's curriculum in their own studios. Exams are usually held annually in one location.
Because Ensaid and Dankaerts teachers work independently, you may be able to find one who will teach some pattern making even if you don't want to do the professional course.

Then, there are two different institutions, both of which are located in Amsterdam:

- Akademie Vogue
-  Meesteropleiding coupeur

The first one is an independent institute for fashion education which has been around in one way or another since 1937. Nowadays, it allows students to pick from a wide range of courses, some of which can be combined for specific diplomas. The focus is mostly on styling and design but there is a separate course in pattern making available. Sewing is not taught separately. 
The Meesteropleiding has only been around since 2011. It is designed to be a hard-core sewing and pattern making education, which produces highly skilled craftspeople for the sewing studios of theatre companies and couture houses. They also offer short courses, some of which seem to be geared towards the enthusiastic amateur and some of those include pattern making.

As far as I know, those are all the institutions (outside of the regular MBO and HBO educations, that vocational education and college of the non-Dutch) which teach pattern making in the Netherlands.
From this little line-up, you may already have noticed that if you live outside the Randstad and you are looking for a course, you are likely to find only Ensaid and/or Dankaerts courses near you. 
Of course, there are also sewing and pattern making teachers who are not connected to any institution. Of course, the problem with those is that there is no way to know how good they are and what they can teach you before you try out their lessons. 
The Rotterdamse Snijschool and the two institutions in Amsterdam have annual open days and I think any teacher should allow potential students to try out a lesson before they commit to a whole course (if you even have to do so. Some teachers allow students to pay per lesson). 

I hope this is helpful and if you have anything to add, please comment.

Lady in red

So, I finally got around to re-trying that red bra last weekend. I'm grateful for all the good advice about cutting and re-tipping underwires but I didn't use it for this bra. Close-up and as a result of all the tweaking I had already done to try and make it work, it had several other little issues.
So, I got another meter of red lace and tried again.

I changed the pattern, to give it most space for the wire and made the various joining points easier to indentify so I would struggle less with "what goes exactly where" (millimeter-wise).

Before I got started on the bra, I made a lacey thong in red. I like have two pairs of matching panties with a bra. I have already blogged about the first pair here.

Then, it was time to try that bra again. I stuck with the unusual design I had originally made: A strong, low band made from 3,5 cm wide elastic covered in the red lycra, half fabric, half lace underwired cups and no bridge. 
This time, all my precise marking made sure the hole in the middle turned out perfectly. 

 Unfortunately, all the elastic from this set was bought in the same lingerie supply shopping spree (with Melissa at Kantje Boord) as that for the sage green set. And I had made the same mistake of not buying anything for the shoulder straps. For now, I've used a bit of the satin edge elastic as a temporary halter strap. 
I make stick with a halter strap. In this cup design, the straps are attached pretty near to the center of the top of the cup. This means it's not pulled out of shape by a strap going to the neck instead of  straight over the shoulder. And I like the completely open back the bra has this way.

Photographed like this, the bra looks absolutely fine. Unfortunately, it's less good when worn. The are still some weird lines in the lower cup which I don't want. I'm pretty sure I know what's causing them though. It's not my pattern, it's not my sewing, it's my choice of materials. The red lycra is fairly thin, quite stretchy and very drapey. In that lower cups, I've used non-stretch net to stabilize them. I made sure to cut the lycra a bit smaller and to stretch it over the netting stuff (a bit more so than with the first try) but apperently not enough. When the cups get filled, i.e. in wearing, it shows. I'm annoyed by it but I don't think I could have prevented this, other than by simply not trying to use two materials with such different behaviour in the same piece. It's not so bad that it makes the bra unwearable.
Maybe I'll just use padding again in the next bra. The stability of the stuff prevents issues like this.

P.S. I know a lot of us occasionally make lingerie, and even more would like to try. I have this link for all of those. 
Fellow blogger The Perfect Nose is unhappy with commercial bra patterns and wants to draft her own. Unlike me, she has the ambition to do this not only for herself, but for everyone. Oh yes, she wants to put a new, independent, bra sewing pattern into the market. And to do this properly, she has put together a survey to try and get a benchmark of the sewing community's sizes and wishes for a bra pattern. Of course, the more people enter this, the more useful the information. And she's offering a nice "thank you" for it as well.

Bra success!

At last! Victory comes to those who, eh... DON'T GIVE UP ;)

As I've shown you before, I changed my bra pattern. Fortunately, I still had enough fabric, lace and assorted elastics and I thought I had found an underwire which would do. I continued sewing the new bra in little bits of time I could find for that purpose last week. In the end, it looked promising but I wasn't happy with that rather deeply curved wire. It seemed to leave and un-filled area below my breasts and fit just a bit too close at the sides...
So, I did something which is very new to me: I turned to the internet for supplies. More specifically, I googled Dutch sewing supply webshops (as awesome as Kantje Boord is, it's isn't really around the corner from where I live. It would take me half a day to get there and back. A great trip with a fellow enthousiast, but not that easy to fit into a busy week). The ones I looked at in detail were Danglez.nl (Melissa recently bought from that site and was happy with both the supplies and the service) and lingeriestoffen.nl. Both offer a wide range of lingerie supplies and, which was quite important to me, both sell underwires not just by circumference and cup size. Oh no, they tell you both the length of the wire and its diameter. Great! 
I ended up ordering from lingeriestoffen.nl because they sold wires closest in size to measurements I took from both my pattern and my existing bras. And because they charge a flat rate for shipment (as long as you don't order items which can't be packed flat, like foam cups), I splurged on some other lingerie stuff as well. 
I ordered on Friday evening and the package was in the mail today.

Look at all my new goodies...
I bought two different sizes of normal underwire, both close to what I thought I needed, to find out which of their sizes works best for me. I also bought a push-up wire, or more specifically, an underwire for a bra which is cut low at the center front. And black picot elastic, black bone casing, 6 spiral steel bones (I should have bought 8 or 9...), 1 meter of solid plastic boning and a piece of skin tone padding. 
The padding is for another bra, the rest of the stuff is for a lingerie corset I plan on making. 

But let's get back to that bra. As soon as I got my hands on the new supplies, I tried the underwires. The smallest normal ones fit just right into the casing and, more importantly, the bra fit really well with those in place (the bigger ones are just 1 cm longer. I think those may serve well in a bra with cups made from that thin padding).
So now, I finally have a me-made, me-drafted bra which fits well. In profile, the bust shape is different to what I'm used to. Definately a bit more pointy. I'm not alarmed by that because I know I'm used to bras with moulded foam cups and those things are positively globular. I think this bra follows the natural shape of the breasts more closely. 
And of course, I've been reading a lot of 50's magazines and in those days, the ideal shape was seriously pointy (not that they talk about such 'unmentionables' in magazines for good honest Dutch housewives...).

I think I should get back to sewing outerwear now but I'm already planning one or two other bras and, of course, that corset.... 

As seen

 This week, I finally made my way to the Fabolous Fifties Fabulous Fashion exhibit at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

To be perfectly honest, I was a little bit disappointed with the (lack of) size and scope of the event. Sure, there were lots of nice things, but I'm pretty sure the museum has more and the choice the create themed rooms sort of blurred the developments during the era. And although I loved the fact that they paid attention to the importance of home-made fashion and sewing patterns in the 1950's, I thought it was really odd to show only Vogue and Butterick envelopes. Instead of Marion and any number of Dutch ladies' mags, that is (I think some kind of endorsement deal may be behind this). 

That all said, I may well hyper-critical because this is an era of fashion history I know well, and love.  

What I wanted to talk about in this post is how well some garments in the exhibit tied in with things we, in the sewing blogoshere, all know and love. My apologies for the poor quality of the pictures, I didn't bring my camera and used my phone (the Gemeentemuseum allows you to take pictures, as long as you don't use either flash or a tripod).

Of course, there were some designer favorites. That satin one, second from the left, is a Dior, the tule an lace number right from it Balenciaga.

But let's get on with the issue at hand. This dress reminded me of the Vintage Vogue 8728 (a reproduction) dress Erin was obsessed with about a year ago. It's not the same, but the two share some characteristics.

And who can look at a selection of vintage bathing suits without being reminded of Peter's quest to make one for his demanding model-cousin?

Here you can see what I told about attention given to sewing. In this room there were eight dresses, four in each window. Some were designer originals, some were copies made by licenced companies and some were home-made using designer patterns. And paper pattern stuff is used throughout as decoration.

In this picture, from left to right, the first one is home-made, the second one is Givenchy and the third was made by a Dutch company which had bought a licence for this design. I don't remember who originally designed 1 or 3 or what 4 was.

This dress was in the other window of the 'couture and home-sewing' room. Again, I don't recall the provenance of this particular garment, but its design must have started as a creation from some French designer. Just look at that bodice, those unusual... disappearing lapels. Who ever said Pattern Magic is always entirely original?

I had a lot of fun with this little 'see and recognize' game, almost as much fun as I had collecting inspiration and thinking up myriad ways in which this exhibition could have been even better... I hope you enjoy it too!