Hi friends! At long last I’m sharing my project for Tanya’s “Dress Like Your Grandma” sewing challenge, where you find an outfit that your grandmother (or other relative) wore and re-create it. Like I mentioned in my last post, I wasn’t able to track down any good family pictures, so I took the opportunity to re-create one of my favorite vintage fashion photos.

My first task was creating the fabric design to order on Spoonflower. I wasn’t able to find any other photos of this skirt while I was working on re-creating the design, so I sketched it out as best I could and then brought my sketches into Adobe Illustrator, traced them, added color, and made it into a repeating pattern. Later, I came across this blog post by Dividing Vintage Moments where she also re-created this skirt with some of the original 1940s fabric. You can see by her version that the colors were actually a bit lighter than the way they look in the photo.

I had the design printed on the organic cotton sateen, which is turning into my go-to fabric for skirts. It is 56 inches wide so I am able to make the design on both borders and then cut it in half lengthwise. It did end up a teensy bit shorter than I would have liked by the time I took off some for the waistband. I ordered 2 yards which I cut in half so this skirt has a total of 4 yards in sweep.

I didn’t use a pattern for the skirt- it’s just a simple dirndl skirt with a side zipper and hooks at the waistband. I did add pockets, which was a bit tricky to figure out with the side zipper. I used this tutorial to help me figure it out.

For the shirt, I used vintage Simplicity 2127, which I had in my stash, and some of this rayon voile from fabric.com. Unfortunately mine is missing the envelope, so I had no idea what size I was working with (it isn’t marked on the pieces either). I was in a bit of a time crunch so I just went ahead and made it without any grading and luckily it fit just fine. I love how forgiving peasant blouses are! The only thing is that it’s a but sheer so I’ll probably wear a cami under it.

Well, thanks for stopping by! You can check out all of the other entries for this challenge on Tanya’s blog. I hope she does this challenge again so I can find a real family photo to re-create!