Saturday, May 1, 2021

#thevintagefashionchallenge Day 1: Hello!

The Vintage Fashion Challenge is an Instagram event hosted by
@iliveinmylab, @makethislook, and @tinyangrycrafts.

I'll be investigating individual patches on the Crazy Quilt and telling their stories, both on IG (short form verbiage) and here, longer posts with links.

Here's my intro video that I posted incorrectly on IG:


A post shared by anne m bray (@annembray)


For Day 2 (which I combined with Day 1 on the IG post) I actually donned an entire vintage outfit!
See it, next post.

Here is one of the pages I was waving around in the video from my Otis Fashion Textile Class Binder:

I'm going over some of the original pencil in ink, as my instructor suggested in 1985.

Stories
1) The African knockoff print
I still have the top I made out of this! It was hanging behind me in the above video. Lou decided it was a lovely cat napping station after I left it on the bed. (Sorry, no documentation).

I think I bought this yardage at my favorite fabric shop in Poughkeepsie, NY in the '70s.
The top was sewn in 1973.
Here is a post that goes into details.

2) The Vintage Floral
This one I bought at Pilgrim Mills in Providence, RI. There used to be a lot of fabric mills in the Providence area and Pilgrim was an outlet for mill ends. Sewn in 1981, it started as a retro boatneck fit-and-flair dress.
I recently found an old slide with me wearing the dress, but since I'm already so late in posting this, I'll come back and add it later!

Other notes:
Did a full rendering of this print in gouache, plus a colorway for an Otis class. Another thing to hunt for.
I refurbished this into a skirt (currently lives on Mending Mountain).

On the quilt, not sure if any patches have lasted.
This one, in the upper left corner, I covered - look how faded it got!

3) The Couch Fabric
This covered a love seat that my parents gave me when I moved to Manhattan in 1977.
It was my paternal grandmother's, I still have it (in storage in the garage).
Again, a photo search for another day!