Patterns

A few weeks ago, just after moving here to the City of Fraternal Affection (as Lady calls it), I bought a sewing machine used off of Etsy. She needs a little work, so I haven't been sewing much yet, but have spent a lot of time (almost obsessively... well, let's be honest, actually obsessively) reading dress making blogs and looking at patterns online. I've bought a few, ranging from the simple to the complex, and I've pretty much convinced myself to hold off on buying anymore for at least the next month, but regardless I can't stop looking. It's so. very. addictive.

Why? Partly it is because vintage patterns are beautiful--pretty lines, lovely colors, amazing hats--but mostly it is because they are hilarious. For instance, what is going on in this pattern:




Why is Blue Lady so angry with Orange Lady? Maybe because she has a better blouse than Blue? And I love that Orange is all, "I ain't even care." Meanwhile, Green Lady is having her own personal conversation with no one, and she clearly thinks she's being incredibly witty (we know better--those greens are not even complimentary. She looks like The Jolly Green Giants hot but vegetable obsessed wife).

It's like a soap opera!

Then there are the 60s and 70s patterns where they have included a Real Life Fashion Model to show you how easy it is to look like a space alien/cylon/terminator/Stepford wife:



If this lady isn't backlit by a landing mothership, then I don't know space aliens. Also: what is in Pink Lady's left hand?!?!?!

And just so you are assured that this isn't a fluke, check out Simplicity 7903:



She is clearly thinking, "I killed your brocade couch to make my infiltrator dress. Show me to your leaders and your Laughing Cow miniature cheese wheels or I will kill you with my perfectly coiffed hair."

This one, however, is my absolute favorite evar:



Maybe it's a holdover from my pre-teen obsession with A Separate Peace, but I have definitely developed something of a taste for clothes that look like they are prep school uniforms. Additionally, doesn't this look like the cast of a really awesome tv show about snotty rich girls? The brunette girl in the tan jacket is clearly the show's protagonist. Unlike her cohort here, she's on--gasp!--a scholarship to Snooty-Snooterville School (hence her angsty expression and no-nonsense tie). The girl to her left is her one and only friend, the down-to-earth and perfectly preppy BFF, kicked out of the it-crowd for being smart (she wants to eschew social life and deb balls for something like math or marine biology). Plaid Shorts Ensemble Girl with the Pink Bow is the Queen Bee Bitch. You can tell from the Bow. And the Hideous Shorts. Because all Bitchy evil princesses have bad shorts and giant hair bows. White Beret is the Quirky One. She likes fashion (obvy, she has a beret on) and is the nicest of the Plastics here. Sometimes she shows up in ridiculous outfits and she is inexplicably biffles with Pink Bow--probably due to some childhood kindness that will be revealed via flashback near the end of season one. The two on the end are also Plastics, but the ones with no actual interiority. Houndstooth Skirt looks like she might be The Sporty One--she's the physical enforcer of Pink Bow's evil plots, but secretly she just wants a boy to think she's pretty. And the one on the end? She's the class-prez, a grade-grubbing good girl who is obsessed with being the perfect student. Everything she owns is monogrammed.

Ok, so maybe I just convinced myself I need to make that show happen. Wouldn't it be amazing. I have a feeling I'd find Tan Cardigan really obnoxious, but I'd be really in love with her BFF there on the far right.

What do y'all think?