A Maddening Diversion

This March I’m joining Julia Bobbin and a bunch of other talented seamsters. We are all making Mad Med-inspired garments, and this post marks the beginning of the saga.

I just finished my Minoru jacket, which was part of a Sew-Along over at Sewaholic.net; I’m deeply entrenched in an eleven-garment SWAP, which is kind of like a Sew-Along with the members of the Stitcher’s Guild; and I’m making weekly progress on the Perfect Fit Bombshell Dress class, which is basically a Sew-Along with the Craftsy clan. But, why not throw another Sew-Along into the mix? And, why not make it a Mad Men-inspired Sew-Along at that? Julia Bobbin has been making Mad Men dresses left and right and put out the call for others to join her. I already had such a dress in the works, my mom’s Jackie O dress, so I figured why not make my mom’s dress as part of this Sew-Along?

The beautiful blue Irish linen from Fine Fabrics that I want to use for it is patiently waiting to be cut. But, I realized last week that the problem with using this dress is the timing. The Sew-Along wraps up at the end of this month, and I won’t be able to sit with my mom and check the fit of the muslin before then.

Deciding that excuse was the perfect reason to make me a Mad Men- inspired dress, I went digging through my patterns and found this fun little dress, Simplicity 3034:

…which immediately reminded me of an actual Joan dress:

I may have had a beautiful wool crepe in my virtual shopping cart much of last week trying to justify the making of this dress. But, wanting to keep my minimal fabric stash as minimal as possible, I hunted through it for something that might work. I found the perfect piece: a fun piece of wool that once belonged to my husband’s grandmother. It’s not enough to make Simplicity 3034, but it is the perfect amount to make view A of McCall’s 5308, a kimono-sleeve, bow-bearing beauty:

So far, it’s coming along quite nicely. Just don’t look too closely at my efforts to pattern match!

And, since I realized I don’t have enough of the teal linen knit to make the wrap that I wanted for my SWAP, I decided I will use the fabric for another Renfrew instead. So, even though this Mad Men-inspired style doesn’t quite fit with my other SWAP garments, I’m going to add it to my SWAP anyway since the neutrals mesh well with my SWAP Renfrews and my Minoru.