Updating Vintage Patterns - A Sew Today Competition!

I don’t normally purchase Sew Today (or any sewing magazine other than Burda for that matter), but when I saw that they were doing a spread on sewing a ‘chanel style’ jacket, I thought it would be worth a look.  I duly went online and ordered the magazine from Newsstand and received it a few days later.  I have to say, the service from Newsstand is great – loads of titles and so quick and easy to order 1, 2, 3 or 100! 

I purchased the current issue, thinking it was the correct one, but it turns out that I should have purchased the June one.  I don’t know if this is because I didn’t read properly (highly likely), because the naming/issuing of magazines in the UK still confuses me after 7 years (equally highly likely but possibly unrelated), or because I was just plain excited and didn’t think about rational things like dates and issues (most probable of the lot).  Whatevs, I’m just glad I didn’t accidentally buy Top Gear or something.

By happy coincidence, I went back and bought the right issue later.

To be honest, there wasn’t a great deal in the May copy that piqued my interest, however one thing really did: the competition to modernise a vintage sewing pattern.  I *love*seeing how people refashion clothes/patterns, and always want to give it a whirl, but I’m the type of person that needs some parameters to be creative.  Seemingly unrelated but not, we’re off to the Isle of Wight Festival at the end of June and I am crossing my fingers to point of them falling off that we will have beautiful weather.  So, naturally I am hoping to make some clothes that can only be worn in stinking hot, sunny festival weather.  After all, a gal can dream can’t she?

So, anyway, this competition represents a timely challenge to me.  

The idea is to take a Vintage Vogue or Retro Butterick pattern and make something that rises "to the challenge of change...through fabrics, silhouette changes and styling".  Sounds fun, no?

I’m not going to give too much away, but I’m thinking of using one of these patterns to make something relevant to 2012….

 

Vintage Vogue 1044

Vintage Vogue 8812

Add caption

 
And this material….


In case you're interested, the fabric is available on ebay here



Anyone else keen to join?  There are details on the Sew Today website or you could of course look in the current magazine.  I reckon it’ll be fun to see what people retain from the original and what they change to make modern :-)