Vintage Pledge Pirate Dress

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

So my daughter needed a pirate outfit recently, to wear for ‘Pirate Day’ at school.  I knew about this in plenty of time, but, of course, I waited until the night before to get my ass in the sewing room to create something.  How else am I gonna be motivated and focused?!  IN NO OTHER WAY because my life revolves around deadlines, time slots, and feelings of obligation.  (You’ll have to just bear with me here as I’m drafting this post after several glasses of neat Sloe Gin sorrynotsorry.)

Pirate dress

So, I had two options: make a fancy dress pirate costume, or make a normal dress using some pirate fabric.  Bearing in mind I had, that day, attended my daughter’s pirate-themed assembly, in which she heroically played the part of Ann Bonny the famous female pirate, wearing, erm, an old pair of stripy pyjama bottoms and a red tshirt, amongst her peers who all looked the part in amazing pirate outfits (even if they were all mainly from Asda), and me, her own mother, even going as far as to wear my own pirate dress (the Sewaholic Cambie, if you’re interested); I wanted not only to sew her something handmade to make up for my lack of adequate costume provision for her class assembly, but also to create something different to everyone else’s outfits, so I decided on a normal dress in pirate fabric, also reasoning that it would be something she could wear frequently (because why wouldn’t you want a pirate dress for everyday wear?).  This decision was in no way influenced by the fact that it would be easier and quicker.

I had a look through my children’s dress patterns and found this vintage Simplicity Jiffy 5291 pattern from 1963 for a swinging sixties shift dress!  The pattern was sent to me a while ago by a friend who likes sewing but who has two boys 🙂 After quickly taking my daughter’s measurements I decided to chance it.  I figured a loose fit would be quite handy because I wanted her to be able to wear a tshirt underneath to keep her warm.  This decision was in no way influenced by the fact that this is a single size pattern.

The sewing was easy peasy and super quick.  The only zip I had in my stash was a regular dress zip in turquoise, so I thought the best way to conceal it would be to do a lapped zipper, and I’m mega pleased with it.  My daughter was really pleased with her new dress the next day and I’m hoping she’ll want to wear it again soon!  I reckon it will fit her for a few years yet – bonus!

Lapped zip

This is the second vintage pattern I have used in 2016, which I know is not a major achievement or anything, but I do usually sew modern patterns, so I’m pleased to be able to include it in Kerry and Marie’s 2016 Vintage Pledge.

I’m also quite pleased that in the writing of this blog, I managed to produce a sentence with 146 words in it.  My husband thinks the semi-colon in that sentence should just be a comma, and probably he is right, but I wanted to clearly separate the ‘what people wore’ part of the sentence from ‘what I chose to make in relation to what people wore’, so I’m keeping it, because I like it.

Daughter in pirate dress with my son in the pirate outfit I made for my daughter three years ago. CUTIES!

Bye.