50s Coat

I was reading one of my sewing blogs, Did You Make That and a recent post talked about a fab 50s swing coat Karen found. But in her post, she mused a few questions.

1) What makes the differences between 50s and 60s coats?
2) How does one date patterns?

Everyone was congratulating her on her new coat and offering ideas as to how to date patterns, but no one was jumping on how to tell a 50s or 60s coat apart. So I pulled out my coat from Grandma, and set to work. Rather than lose my analysis to the whims of the internet, I'll archive it here:

Ok, I pulled out my 50s coat from my Grandma and thought this over.

I’m going to give a big AMEN to whoever mentioned “swing coats” up there, because that’s what these are.

One of the main details of these is they are VERY full in the back. The front is basically a normal coat, but lots of full ness in the back.

Mine has 3/4 sleeves or so, but that could also be because my Grandma has much shorter arms than I.

Looking at that 60s coat, I see lots of vertical lines. The 50s didn’t do that vertical lines thing. Even sheath dresses and pencil skirts had some diagonal to give width. So my coat has a really exaggerated diagonal shoulder/arm seam, almost like a raglan, but not all the way up to the neck. I also have a 2-piece sleeve with the top seam running all down the top of my arm, and the under seam running parallel. The back piece is divided into two and has a seam running down the middle. Mine also has a HUGE, very exaggerated shawl collar. That little mandarin doohicky on the 60s coat? Would not have been used for this kind of coat. You want some kind of wanna-be tailored but still floppy and extravagant collar.

Mine also doesn’t close in the front. It has no fastenings. So it has a beautiful drape when open, and I COULD wrap it all the way around me if I needed to and belt it, but if it’s that kind of weather, this is not the coat to wear.

It’s hard to tell from the pictures just what the actual seams in your coat are, but it has a similar enough feel to my Grandma’s coat that I figured it couldn’t hurt to analyze it a bit.

Finally Settled

Well Abe and I are FINALLY finished bringing things into our apartment and/or helping people move (*cough cough Ted I'm looking at you cough). Yesterday was the last little bit of it, as we went over to Abe's old place to pick up the remnants of what his roommate left (corner bookshelf for clothes!), bought some clothing racks and CD holder at a yard sale, and found a free (and massively heavy) kitchen table + leaf to use as my sewing table. All in all, good choices!

I made roast chicken last night, and now we have some lovely stock, extra chicken (which Abe is going to turn into hash) and all sorts of noms. I still have some zucchini to grate from Thursday, and carrots to turn into Morning Glory muffins.

I got all of my clothes situated yesterday and so now need to finish the kitchen stuff (so Abe can cook too) and finish dealing with all of the boxes of random crap in the craft room/study/music room.

So happy to be done!

Sourdough Starter

I am attempting to resurrect a sourdough starter that I had frozen over a year ago, perhaps a year or a half ago. It is not particularly happy. I am on 12-hour feedings, and finally got around to getting white flour (I had been using what we had at home, which was white whole wheat and a whole wheat/rye mix). Based upon the advice of Sourdoughhome.com, I dumped out the hooch on top, and only used a smidge of starter, mixing it with 1/2 c. flour and 1/4 c. water. In 12 hours, I will feed it again WITHOUT dumping half of the mix. In 24 hours, I will start dumping half when feeding.

Come back little starter! I want to eat you!

Tomatoes

Yesterday at market, we had about 10 pounds of heirloom tomatoes that would not make it another day. A couple Amana Orange, a lighter-colored orange one, some Lemon Boys, and other yellow ones with the odd German Striped thrown in. So I chopped them all last night, and put them in the stock pot. I cooked it for a few hours, covered, and then turned it off and went to bed.

Today, I turned it on and checked about an hour, hour-and-a-half later to see that my oversized lid for my stock pot had leaked condensation all over the stove! Luckily, this stove is electric or I might have destroyed a burner before I realized it.

I removed the lid to let it remove some liquid. I'll let it cook down all day, and add in some onion, peppers, and spices as we go. But I've never made yellow tomato sauce -- I hope it turns out well!

Winter Coats

So I have an angora coat that I got at Goodwill last year for $15. It's boxy and shapeless and designed to be so. It's some weird 90s Montreal fashion designer. Whatever. The point is that it is not what I'd like it to be. And I keep meaning to get around to making a coat, I just also keep not finding juuuuuuust what I'd like. Except when you find just what you'd like.


That is exactly what I'd like! And I need to talk to my friend who raises rabbits and get some rabbit fur for cuffs and a collar and I'll be golden! Well, and I need to get my hands on a copy of that pattern and get nice lining material and... :-P

Closets

So one of the problems with the new apartment is that there is exactly ONE closet, and it's under the eaves, not very big, and only a half size closet to begin with. Not fun. Basically that'll fit Abe's clothes nicely but not mine at all.

While browsing the IKEA catalogue at Meghan's house, I saw what looked like really nice hanging racks for pretty cheap. Having now looked them up online, most of them are either too expensive to be worthwhile, or don't hold enough weight to be worthwhile. The happy medium appears to be the RIGGA clothes rack.

It's only $13 and it can hold up to 77 pounds. That's still a wee bit flimsy, but I think it will be worth it. As it's 43" long, I probably will only need one as well, which is a plus.

Abe keeps talking about how he wants to use bookshelves to hang a pole through and create a closet for me, also using the shelves to shore up the ceiling. I think it will be sturdier if we use a clothes rack and have bookshelves on either end. I have every intention of winning this one.

Smoothies

In an endeavor to eat healthier, Abe and I often have smoothies in the morning. This is also due to his having a blender and my being an expert smoothie-maker. Yesterday, I used the last of the bananas, frozen or otherwise. I figured, this might be a problem, but not a big one.

So today, when I made a smoothie, I realized that not only are we out of bananas, but we are super low on fruit in general. So my options for flavor were frozen peaches, frozen raspberries (always tart) and limeade concentrate (tart as well). I threw in some almonds, some flax seed, almond milk and, horror of all horrors, white sugar. I don't want to waste my good honey on a smoothie and it's just easier to pour some white sugar out of a bag than to scoop the brown sugar out of the jar.

The verdict? Still brain-numbingly tart. I'm eating it with a spoon and barely managing to take more than a spoonful per minute. Good thing I have 30 before I have to leave for work...