Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Getting started with my Enids

I 'discovered' an old Enid Gilchrist book in an Op Shop a couple of years ago (Play Clothes for Children, costing 20c). Since then I've been collecting her books ... some from Ebay, but mostly from op shopping. I've managed to collect quite a few, ranging from baby patterns right through to adults. There seems to be a lot of baby books around, but not so many for women ... I guess that people find it easier to hand-draft the smaller clothes (personally I love the adult ones as the fashions, dating from about the '50s, are awesome :)) I've even managed to double up on a few of her books, but other than sending one to fellow collector Tracy, I thought that I'd hold onto them as spares (most of them are falling to bits anyway ... it's so cool that they've been well used :)
So,after a million attempts to take my measurements and agonise over which size I was, I drafted the basic pattern (I knew that all those excess rolls of christmas wrapping paper would come in handy!). Now either my body measurements were not taken too accurately or there is a lot of ease calculated into the patterns, because I needed to go down a size from what I thought. Just to make sure that I had the size right, I quickly made this
dress in scrap fabric (without facings,
turnings, zips etc), and I'm very pleased to say that the fit is perfect:)
Now to find some cool (matching!) fabric, to make my first Enid for real ... I can't wait :)

2 comments:

Tracy said...

I've also found the sizing of Enid pretty generous. Can't wait to see the final dress.

2paw said...

Wow, that's fabulous, I can't wait to see your finished dress either!!!