Me-Made-Mittwoch #10!

Here is one of my "Classics". The blouse and skirt are both from a travel set from 1953. You can read a little more about it HERE on this blog, or a little more about it in my BurdaStyle studio HERE. They are both made of fancy silk fabrics and a treat to wear. The pattern for the sunhat comes from the June 2009 issue of ANNA. As much as I have fallen in love with hats, I'm not sure I will wear it today. I like the shape, but not the fabric I used. It is too "country-side" for the city :-) I think I will make it again in about a dozen solid colors though.
I took the picture yesterday evening, and yes, of course I ironed the skirt today before putting it on...

Cat-and-Kascha came up with this idea, and you can join us anytime!
And if you want to see the other me-made-Mittwoch outfits (Mittwoch = Wednesday), click HERE.
Have a lovely Wednesday everyone! I will be terribly busy again, but I am looking forward to visiting your blogposts this evening!

My 10 Piece Winter Travel Set: 7 down, 3 to go!

Oh people, I am excited - my ten piece winter set is slowly but surely coming together. I can already combine a few pieces differently and come up with several outfits!
UPDATE: I posted a full tutorial for this blouse HERE.
Here are my pieces number six and seven:

 A dotted blouse and black shorts. The blouse pattern is made by me - I will share a little how-to on this blog hopefully by the end of this week! - and the shorts are actually the Karl Lagerfeld skirt from BWO 10/2010, turned into shorts.
If you want to look at a few more pictures and get some details, click on the little "read more" button right underneath...

You know what I did last Sunday?

Yes, we are all excited about spring kissing our cheeks. But I am behind schedule with my winter set. Luckily it is a Fall-Winter-Spring set (a travel set with 10 interchangeable pieces of clothing), and this was the last really wintery item on the list. It makes the hopefully short return of the 1-digit-temperatures more bearable:

Oh, don't say it... I know it. Santaclause, right? So what? I like the little bit of Santa-ness of this jacket, and I know I will love it when the next winter comes around. Somehow it's more of a before-Christmas garment.
I once bought a really great coat in the middle of summer, and it made the arrival of  winter so much better! On that note, this jacket has built in make-me-happy-power for next October.
I came up with the pattern myself. It's basically a circle. If you want to see how I did it, read on...

New Coat, Old Pattern - from 1935!

It would have been much easier to come up with a 10 piece winter travel set if it didn't include outer wear. The set from 1953, which inspired me to do my winter 2011 version, included outer wear, so I couldn't cheat out of it either. The coat had an almost impossible list of requirements to meet:

• Well, logically, it has to work with absolutely all the other pieces
• I have to be able to wear my cold, cold weather faux fur vest or knit jacket underneath without the armholes tearing
• It had to be elegant enough for me to take it to the opera without leaving it self-conscious next to all the fur coats while waiting for me to come out
• While at the same time being sporty enough for a snowball fight

Well, look: this one actually does that all!

Click that tiny little "read more" button right underneath, if that's what you want to do...

Me-Made-Mittwoch #3!

Since weeks I say I'll re-organize my closet TOMORROW, which is why I just throw things in wildly. For the first time now, I actually couldn't find a skirt I was looking for. Which is why I ended up with a combination I wouldn't usually have tried. Somehow it works. Let's call it the refashioned menswear look. Or whatever.
For new English speaking visitors: Mittwoch means Wednesday. Every Wednesday, the participants wear self-made clothes. Here are the other outfits!
And here is Cat-und-Kascha who came up with this great idea.

The top is part of my 10 piece winter travel set, I called it a Shirt-T, because it is a long-sleeve T-Shirt with a refashioned mens shirt (collar and cuffs) blogged about here, and the skirt was originally a pencil skirt so tight at the hem that I couldn't board one of those old fashioned cable cars we still have here in Vienna. I used the small part of a tie as belt, and the wide part - well, you can see that yourself. :-)

A Paper Doll gets dressed!

So I have dreamed up this 10-piece Winter Travel Set, and my first paper doll can show off an outfit! She is sporting three pieces: The very warm tweed pants, as well as the newly finished Shirt-T (I feel all smart about that name, too) and the Faux Fur Vest (click on any image to enlarge).

If you want to see what they look like on her, click "read more". Also if you want to see what they look like in real life, on me, though I'm definitely not as cute as her (and I forgot to put on the hat).

Vintage Pattern Plaid Blouse

Isn't it funny how some outfits just seem to tell you where to take them? For some reason this one makes me want to spend a whole day in the library.

I know I am a bit late to jump on the wagon for the tie-front blouses... I had meant to make this one for so long, but other projects kept interfering. I used a blouse pattern from 1953 that I had made once already for my travel set (you can read about it here).

Very Warm Tweed Pants

May I present to you my first piece for the "10 piece winter travel set"?
It's a pair of warm trousers, made of a tweed that I instantly fell in love with. I LOVE tweed. Even though it's basically brown, it's somehow much more than that, if you know what I mean...

Here I combined it with my Jean Top, which I had planned as part of my 10 piece set too, but it got kicked off the list...

The legs are cut really wide, so that I can wear it with very thick, woolen grandmother tights, which is just not possible under jeans, right? And I lined them, so they slide easily even with those heavy duty tights under it... (click the button to read more!)

My 10 Piece Winter Travel Set!

About a year ago, I found a 10 piece travel set in a magazine from 1953. I loved it so much - all the pieces, as well as the idea of having 10 home sewn pieces that can be combined with each other - that I have decided to come up with my very own 2011 version.

Here is the one from 1953 (and yes, I did sew every single piece of it!):

Source: Vorbachs Neue Moden, Heft 5, 1953

And here are my 10 pieces:

Make me happy Jean Top!

Isn't it one of the most important things on a rainy day, that your outfit makes you feel good?
I got lucky one day and inherited an old pair of jeans from my man. It had ugly oil stains, so luckily I didn't even get tempted to wear them as boyfriend jeans. There also was a funky piece of jean fabric in my stash (from a skirt I once made considerably shorter):

Add to that the inspiration from an amazing Céline jean top (oh, how I love boat necks! Oh, how I love Céline!) and end up with this little number that has the potential to cheer me up!