Edith Head : Costume Designer Extraordinaire

You must have heard of her , if not then you would certainly have seen some of her marvelous creations.
She was born in 1897 and sadly left our presence in 1981.
She won 8 Academy Awards for Costume design and was actually nominated for 35 of them.
Never really having any formal training in art she was a teacher and offered to teach Art at Hollywood School for Girls and took night classes at Chouinard Art College where she met her first husband. She took a job at Paramount as a costume sketch artist in 1924 and started designing for silent movies. She divorced her husband in 1936 after a long separation and met her second husband and married him in 1944.
She worked at Paramount for 44 years and moved to Universal Pictures on March 27, 1967.

She designed beautiful clothing for some of America's most beautiful and famous leading ladies. My absolute favorite would be Grace Kelly. Never has there ever been another woman with her style.

 Grace Kelly above a sheer gown she wore in Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart

Great movie, great fashion. 1954.

Grace Kelly "To Catch a Thief" 1955 with Cary Grant 

Another one of my favorite actresses so full of style and charm and beauty was Audrey Hepburn and here is the beautiful gown she wore in "Sabrina" 1954 with Humphrey Bogart and William Holden.





Below we find the dress that Elizabeth Taylor wore in "A Place in the Sun" 1951 with Montgomery Clift.

The bustline was covered with fabric daisies and this style was what all the girls wanted for prom that year.

Look how stunning she is in this dress.

I love the suit below that Edith Head made for Lucille Ball in "The Facts of Life" with Bob Hope in 1960

Edith's illustrations are fabulous.

Below we have a very sombre looking Bette Davis in 1950's "All About Eve" she starred with George Sanders one of my favorite actors.

She did the costume design for Olivia Dehavilland in "The Heiress" (below).  Olivia won best actress that year for her portrayal of Catherine Sloper a painfully shy girl whose emotionally detached father doesn't hold back his disappointment in her.

And here she is "Edith Head" a very talented woman who paved the way for women costume designers in Hollywood.



Tutorial: Baby's Flyaway Jacket

I bought a book a few weeks ago, I posted about it, it was called "One Yard Wonders" http://dressedtothe9sconnie.blogspot.com/2011/02/add-another-book-to-collection.html


Great book full of patterns and lots of inspiration. There was this little pattern for a baby's "Flyaway Jacket". The jacket is not fitted and would be beautiful over a little outfit of similar colours add a bonnet and you're all set.

My idea was to used some of my many decorators fabric books and create a selection of like fabrics that compliment each other.

I found some beautiful fabrics that looked lovely together and tore the fabric book apart , washed the pieces and pressed them. I took the four pieces and sewed them together.

Seams pressed I folded the fabric in half and laid the pattern piece on top of it and pinned it down.
This pattern piece as you can see gets put on the fold at one part and not on a fold at the other end.
Cut fabric along lines of pattern piece.

Do the same for a piece of flannel. I pre-washed the flanned to allow shrinkage and I thought the crisp white would make a nice contrast.

Pin pieces together and sew leaving opening along bottom of back about 5 inches.

After trimming and clipping seams turn right side out a press very well.  Turn seams in on opening at back and close up the 5 inch opening.

I sewed up the sides and sleeves on the outside and left a small opening about a 1/2 to 1 inch at both ends, I just thought it looked nice.
Add a decorative ribbon and a snap and you are all finished.

Fairly easy right?

This pattern said that it fits a newborn but I have to say it is probably more like 2-6 months depending on the size of the baby.
It was fun to make and will make some more for my Etsy shop, I already have 2 more in the works.

Hope you enjoyed that.

Toddler Dress from Two Sweaters

I bought a sweater last fall from Forever 21 , just a nice orange casual sweater. I didn't even realize it was made with wool (who would have thought), normally wool makes be itch but this sweater didn't. I wore it and then it went into the wash. It made it through the washing (I wash everything in cold) but when it came to the dryer? well? mmmmm...Not so good.
Of course it shrunk and it shrunk quite a bit. So I thought ...Okay.. I can make something out of this, I love shrunken wool .

I found another sweater in my studio one of my hubby's sweaters ( believe me when I say I have tons of things that I don't throw out). This sweater was a nice charcoal colour and it went beautifully with the orange.
Now to find some fabric to make pockets on the front. Should they match? Should they compliment each other? I found in my trusty dusty designer fabric books some lovely orange patterned pieces. Quite small but perfect for pockets.

Here is the dress laid out to see what it would look like. My first draft.

My thinking was to make the top part of the dress from the orange sweater and the bottom part with the lower half of the charcoal sweater. In my mind it seemed quite simple its not until you attempt to do it that it becomes a little more difficult.

The above fabrics were my first choice for pockets but not what I ended up using.

I cut the bottom part of the charcoal sweater to the size that I thought might work for a size 4-5 for a little girl.

I sewed up the sides of the skirt but my thoughts were that the ribbing at the bottom had to go, too tight. I cut the orange sweater up , a front , a back, and two sleeves. I wanted the sleeves to be 3/4 length , I cut a slit in the front piece in the centre so it would be a little more loose. I found a great piece of fabric and cut a 2 1/2 inch square that I then frayed and sewed to the bottom of the slit I had just cut. I ended up sewing it on a little crooked so trimmed it to make it look more even.

The next step was to sew up the sides and the shoulders and sew along the slit edge at the neck (leaving it slightly raw) just to stop from fraying. The sleeves were added next. My cutting was spot on because the sleeve fit the armhole perfectly.

Now to sew the bottom and top together. My machine stopped working so I had to dig out my Mom's 75 year old Singer. STILL SEWS LIKE A CHARM!

I also trimmed off the ribbing on the bottom and hemmed up about a half inch by machine.

Buttons were found in my button box and a small organza flower that I made was used at the top.

SO VOILA!!! Here it is the finished product. I'm pretty happy with it. I hope you are inspired to dig out those old sweaters and come up with a design of your own. Happy sewing!

Clothes From My Past

I remember when I was a little girl my Mom had this dress in her closet. I think it belonged to my Grandmother but my Mom is gone now and I can't ask here again but that is what I remember.
I always loved this dress and whenever I came across it going through her closet I would run my hands over the fabric and think about how pretty my Grandmother must have looked in it. I never met my Mom's Mom because she passed away of breast cancer when my Mom was 8 months pregnant with me.
When my Mom passed away 5 years ago I had to clean out her apartment and I found the dress in a box and put it in with my things to take home.
It sat in a box at my house for awhile until one day I decided to dig it out and try to wash it.
It was silk so I was nervous and it had probably been made in the 50's. It had no label so it seemed to be handmade from a pattern. It had gone very dingy and yellowed but I had hope.
I washed it by hand in a mild detergent taking care not to harm it. My heart sank when I put it in the water and it seemed to shrink before my eyes but I trodded on.
I washed and rinsed and hung it to dry and the next day it was so wrinkled I hardly recognized it except for the pattern. I wondered if ironing it would do any good at all.
I think I spent an hour and a half if not more ironing that dress that day so that every wrinkle was gone and every seam pressed to perfection.
There were a few areas that needed a stitch or two and as I went on I realized this dress was looking pretty darn good. So here it is, that dress from the 50's, washed and pressed with love and the added bonus was that it actually fit me. Who would have thought?

Handmade Blessing

So a few weeks ago I went to a baby blessing for a very dear friend (since most people don't have a shower for a second or subsequent babies we called it a baby blessing) Everyone was asked to contribute to a stroller and or make a gift.I decided to make an asymetrical repurposed baby cardigan.

I took 3 old sweaters of mine, one blue , one blue stripes and one red. I cut up the 3 sweaters using some parts of the edge of the sweaters as edges. The back and pocket are red, the sleeves and pocket trim are the striped sweater and the front panels are blue. I added trim from some old fabric I had, sewed on 3 buttons and made 3 button loops. I also cross stitched around the cuff with red embroidery floss and added a label. Then I cut out two pieces for the hat and a few long thin strips and sewed together a hat.