One Reason to Be Excited for the Super Bowl

It means Glee is back! And Glee means Emma Pillsbury and her cute dresses are back! And she's going to be wearing this Kate Spade number that I've been drooling over from afar!

Do you like how I can make anything about dresses, including football?

Here's Emma in it (with special thanks to WWEPW for alerting me to this!):

I saw this dress in the window of the Kate Spade shop on 20th Street while walking to dinner with Jeff and my brother, Bryan. I was transfixed and made them both stop so I could ogle it for a while. Those roses! Those cute little raglan sleeves! It was about 9 degrees out, and the fellows wanted to, you know, not be hanging around on the freezing sidewalk.

"You can make that," Jeff asserted, in a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here tone. 

I tried to explain that it wasn't about the style, but the print. Oh, the print! It has a sort of dreamy, watercolor texture. Yet! The roses are flocked, so I assume they have a velvet-y texture.

Anyway, I was soon almost completely abandoned on a frigid, desolate street corner, so I moved along with the guys. But I just can't stop thinking about this dress! I love anything with roses, and I'm actually somewhat decent at drawing them. I wonder if this effect could be acheived on some silk shantung with the help of a silk paint like Dye-na-flow and some salt?

Anyway. Yay for football!

(Not really.)

Next Step: Accessorize!

Readers, this next sew-along step is VERY IMPORTANT. Wouldn't you agree that the Lady Grey coat is just begging for glam accessories? So, I don't want you to get so bogged down in your impeccable pad stitching that you forget this crucial step of planning your accoutrements. Being the self-indulgent type, I went ahead and bought myself a couple pretty little things to complete my look when my coat is finished. I'm pretty sure I deserve it.

The first step was gloves! The bracelet-length sleeves of the Lady Grey are perfect for showing off a pretty new pair. I opted for the grey ones below (love those lavender buttons!) from ModCloth. They also come in red! Luckily, long gloves seem to be in style these days, so it's not hard to find a pair that will go up above your wrists.

Second step: brooches! I love to accessorize my coats with vintage pins, and the wide lapels of the Lady Grey are the perfect backdrop for some baubles. In fact, wouldn't it be cool to wear a few brooches in a little cluster? But let's start with one. I ordered this little guy on Etsy:

Etsy is practically crawling with vintage brooches to be had for cheap.

I have a beautiful pashmina that will keep my neck warm. All I need now is a nice hat, though nothing's really caught my fancy yet. All I know is that I want to look as adorable as Emma Pillsbury does in a tam:

How will you be accessorizing your Lady Grey?

The Emma Outfit

It's done! This is the outfit inspired by one of my favorite TV characters: Emma Pillsbury of Glee. As you may recall, I wrote about my quest to recreate a particular outfit of hers here.

Here's the inspiration:

And the Gertie-fied version.

Not bad, eh? Guys, I love this outfit. (Not to toot my own horn.) The blouse was made from a 1960 pattern and the skirt is BurdaStyle's Jenny (which I've made before in black with suspenders). If I had to live with only one skirt pattern for the rest of my life, it would be this one. No joke. To get the bow version, I made the waistband a little narrower (so it came to 2" wide, to be exact). The bow pattern was easy enough to make - it's just two rectangles.

The fabric I used is the "Fancy Italian RPL" from Gorgeous Fabrics. Oh, how I love this fabric. It has a sort of crepe-like texture to it, and it's both comfy and flattering. I lined the skirt in Ambiance rayon lining, and I cut it on the bias. I read that this can be helpful if your garment fabric has some stretch to it, but it really just made the lining very hard to work with. I don't think I'll be doing that again. If you want your lining to stretch, it's easier just to buy a stretch lining, in my opinion.

Here's the lining. I stitched some lace to the bottom for extra prettiness. It's like a creamsicle!

The blouse was made from this lovely pattern, McCalls 5226.

It was kind of hard to fit, but it turned out well in the end . . . aside from the fact that the bust darts are a smidge too high. (Yes, I should have made a muslin!) I actually lined the blouse too, since the rayon I used was a little on the sheer side. I used a rayon lining matched to my skin tone, and followed these excellent instructions for quick-lining. I love how professional it looks to attach the lining to the facing. It became a sort of underlining/lining hybrid since I stitched the sleeve hems to the lining.

I love the look on my face here in this next shot. Yeah, I'm wearing an orange skirt with a bow on it. Wanna make somethin' of it?

And here you can see the skirt length better.

That's it, folks! I've also made another blouse and skirt in the meantime (both 40s-styled) which I suppose I'll photograph next weekend. (It's so hard to photograph anything during the workweek!) This week, it's back to the grind on my the background dress - with muslin number two!

Emma Pillsbury: Queen of the Retro Mash-Up?

I hope you haven't forgotten about the Emma Pillsbury-inspired ensemble I'm sewing! I've been working away on it, with brief interludes into other projects. (My sewing has been so scattered lately!) I made the blouse last week, and the skirt will be done this weekend. (I picked a different skirt fabric; more on that soon!) Jeff and I have also finished watching every episode of Glee, so I've had plenty of time to watch my muse.

I've only just realized how seventies-influenced Emma's look is. (That fabulous feathered bob is exhibit A.) And yet! The sweater guards, the enamel brooches, and shrunken cardigans hearken back to decades earlier. She'll also sometimes wear 70s-style secretary blouses and pleated skirts, but I absolutely couldn't picture her in platforms - only her ladylike pumps. Isn't her wardrobe an interesting paradox?

Just look at this Emma-lookalike on the pattern below! Now I think we know she wouldn't be caught dead in this get-up, but isn't the hair spot-on?

Musical mash-ups are a big theme in Glee, and I think it's absolutely fascinating that one could call Emma's costumes a mash-up in themselves. The costume designer has drawn successfully from so many decades. Yet Emma's hair and clothing manages to blend seamlessly in a way that reads retro but doesn't look at odds with itself.

It's also interesting that her hair and makeup is clearly from the 70s, while her clothes and accessories skew more 50s/early 60s. I think trying to pull off this melange of decades could spell disaster, but for some reason, it just works.

So, my question is this: why does it work on Emma Pillsbury? Certainly, many looks in today's postmodern fashion world are mash-ups in themselves, but I think it's surprising to see two decades normally at odds with each other in such pure form together.

Do you ever borrow so liberally from different eras? Have you tried hair from one distinct era and clothing from another? Are you dying for Glee to come back from hiatus? Do share!

{Images courtesy of What Would Emma Pillsbury Wear? which you absolutely must read.}