1940s Playsuit!

A lot of people have been making playsuits and bathing suits for an unofficial pool party at Costume College this year. Of course this made me want one too! So I bought this pattern on Etsy, and this fabric from Reproduction Fabrics.

Now, these aren't great pictures, the color is off, it was a long, hot day and I took them after 10 at night--minutes after finishing, actually. Normally that's not late for me in the summer, but I ended up going to bed before 1 that night. So not like summer vacation me! Anyway, the point of all that is, as mentioned before, I very much do not want to get behind here, so I'm sharing them. As with all posed in front of the fireplace pictures, I hope to have pictures of me really wearing it too!









Ha! Matching shorts!

To make this, I followed the pattern almost exactly. The only changes I made were machine hemming (so not me!), machine finishing the skirt placket and leaving the snaps off (it fell well enough to do that, plus, big bow), and hand gathering the ruffle on the skirt. The fabric was so stiff and the loop so big that I couldn't face machine gathering it!

I'm very impressed with the sizing on the pattern. It said 30 inch bust and it was! My waist is bigger than the pattern so I thought I needed to add to the shorts, but ended up cutting back down to pattern size (I guess there was a little ease there, but it was about an inch, not the four inches or whatever ridiculous amount modern patterns use that makes them virtually unusable), so I ended up making the pattern with no alterations--way too fun! I never make anything straight from a pattern, or even use patterns as anything but bases, so it was an amusing change.

The scarf is just a half yard of silk chiffon (unhemmed, why bother?) and the shoes were an extremely lucky, on sale find at Payless ($14.99!). The bows are striped. Too cute :)

I'm really looking forward to wearing this at Costume College. I believe that Sunday afternoon is the planned day for the pool party, so expect much better pictures then!