I'm back! My new tattoo and the 'Cadallic fin' dress

 I'm a bad blogger. It's been ten months since my last post. It's not that I didn't have anything worthy to write about, I just took a vacation from the intertubes for a while. The main reason for being abset so long is that my youngest brother and his girlfriend moved in with us and they took over the computer room as their bedroom. I could get into the room to blog but only if I stepped over mountains of suitcases and squeezed between their bed and my computer desk which was only about a 4" gap, heh. They moved into their own place a few months back. I am sad to see them go but it's nice to have our room back. I only meant to be gone for a few weeks, a month maybe but after stepping away from the computer I got used to being away from the computer.

 My last post was the end of July. Since then I've done gobs of sewing, drafted a few new 1950s dress designs and have become mad obessed with collecting 1930's patterns and bakelite jewelry. I got new ink back in October for my B-day, bought a new pair of Fluevogs and have become hooked on 40s big band music. (I've always liked big band/swing it was just never my go-to everyday kind of music if ya know what I mean.) I've sewn dresses from at least six or seven vintage patterns which I will blog about in separate posts. But enough about that, on with fluff!

Here is my most recent self drafted dress design. I call it the 'Cadallic fin' dress. This one is inspired by late 50s Cadallic fins (duh) and the saucy dresses from mid 50s Fredericks of Hollywood catalogs.

I call it the Cadallic fin because of the shape of the pointed 'fins' on the bust. I had to add a lot of boning to get them so stand up just right.

This pattern was a challange. I wasn't sure if I wanted to make the white liner part a whole dress and add the blue gingham as on as a separate overlay or to just sew the white part into the front of the blue dress as a type of liner/facing. Then there was trying to figure out how to get the black 'collar' of the dress sewn in correctly. I couldn't decide if the center front of the dress should be connected as all one peice or if there would be a waist seam.

There was a lot of seam ripping on this dress. I took the thing apart and re-made it twice. In the long run I found that there had to be a waist seam at center front to get the black collar to lay right. I just have to be sure to line up the bust and waist collars just right when I sew them together. (Which I learned the hard way. First time I was off about a quarter inch. Oh the frustration!)

I also made one out of this gorgeous black sparkly leopard flocked mesh with a pink chintz liner:

Here are a few pictures of my latest ink. I got a pin up witch to complete my Halloween themed sleeve. Sorry the pictures are a little our of focus but it's hard to take a picture of your own arm.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I will post about my latest vintage pattern project  - McCalls 3119, a dress from 1939 that I just adore. My new favorite dress!