A new Swirl Dress for me, in a slightly different style

We all love a classic vintage Swirl dress, and this week I added another to my wardrobe. It's a very cool black print on dark vivid turquoise with small white flower buds. 

This one is a little different style from my others. It still has the single Swirl button on the back of the neck and it wraps on the back as usual. But this one ties on each side to a set of ties that are attached on the front instead of wrapping and tying to itself. 

This one also has a v-neck with a collar trimmed in solid piping and piping right under the bust, which also makes it different from my other Swirls. 

Love it! Washed and ready to wear this Sunday, I already have a pair of stockings that are nearly the same turquoise as the dress. 

I love that it's a dark color, because most of my Swirls are kind of Summer-y colors and I don't get to wear them much in cold weather.

Vintage bookcase, filled with everything except books!

 I've always wanted one of these old bookcases with the glass doors, but  they are usually priced high at local antique shops and estate sales. Finally I spotted one that was more in my price range, at the house clean-out that we went to last month.
We managed to get it into the truck with the cedar chest and boxes and bags of vintage clothing and linens that we cleaned out of the house. It sat in our garage for a while until I decided where to put it. I finally got it cleaned and set up today. It still needs a little oil to freshen the wood, but it's looking good.
I devoted each section to some of my favorite things - Kewpies, Oriental stuff and Fairy stuff. Pretty.

Vintage outfits the week of 2/10/13

 

 

2/12/13 Outfit - One of my favorite vintage dresses, which I bought on ebay a few years back (I wore that dress when we went to get Harlow) with a new brown sweater over top of it and a belt from a vintage dress. I'm posed kind of schlumpy here.
Sock Dreams thigh-highs, shoes from etsy and the 1940s brown wool purse with Lucite pull came from a vintage stock purchase.



 

 

 

 

2/12/13 Outfit - 1940s Plaid Jacket, 1960s black skirt, and 1960s purse and 1960s black loafers. New sweater and tights. The belt was a better match in person, it's looking kinda pinkish in this photo.

Cleaning and rearranging my bedroom

I had the urge Friday to clean and do some rearranging in my bedroom, so I might as well photograph my accomplishemnt and show it off!



Below is a little display of stacked vintage suitcases and hatboxes, along with some of my boudoir dolls.  1940s Plaid jacket ( My very favorite piece of vintage clothing) is hanging nearby.

1930s silk kimono hangs over my bed and I've tried to pretty-up the tv, but no use, it's still a big black box.

This china cabinet came out of a house in Strathmere that was going to be torn down. I use it to display all my old Strathmere items - advertisements, photos, postcards etc.
The board on the floor that says 'prepaid Gus Wittkamp' was found under the floorboards in the attic of our house in Strathmere. It's from an old delivery crate from before the 1930s.
Yes, we named our doggie Gus after Gus Wittkamp, he built our house in 1902.

 

 

 

 

Some more of my boudoir dolls and a few Kewpies. I made the dresses for the boudoir dolls with vintage fabrics. The one on the left was a 1950s blue lace dress that was stained and torn.
The large oval photo is Addie Harrison. She is the mother of Florence, who is the girl with the head scarf in my website logo.

This lamp I bought on ebay about 10 years ago. It's a Victorian vase that was converted into a lamp, probably in the 1940s. I bought a new lampshade and covered it with rayon tulle fabric from a damaged piece of 1930s lingerie and some antique crochet lace.

This is just a cheap little shelf that I picked up at a house clean out. I brushed a little paint on it to try to make it look a little older. It houses some of my smalls - mermaids, half dolls, paper items, compacts, etc.

 

 

My very favorite piece vintage clothing item

 

 

 

My very favorite vintage piece is this plaid jacket that I bought in a large vintage stock purchase about 13-14 years ago. It's a late 1930s-early 1940s woven wool plaid, nicely tailored, with very cool silver buttons down the front.

What do I love about it? Everything! I love the blue-grey and brown plaid, great color combo that went with so much. The fit was perfect, I don't like big shoulders and these shoulders are just right, and it's also nicely fitted through the bust and waist. And the buttons are so cool. I got a lot of use out of this jacket, I wore this piece out, it was my grab-it-and-wear-it jacket for everyday.


Now for the sentimental reason why it is so treasured to me. I wore this jacket when we went to get our sweet doggie Boris up in PA back in March of 2001. I wore it when we first saw him and then when we picked him up 2 weeks later. He sat on my lap on the way home and he kept trying to chew those cool silver buttons! That was a special day.
I no longer wear this jacket because it has holes and fraying in several areas, but whenever I see it, I admire it's coolness and I think of Boris and the day that we brought him home. Weep. He would have been 12 years old next week.

The good thing about wearing and selling vintage is that you can sell an item when you get tired of wearing it. Usually I sell items from my own wardrobe if they start to get damaged, as cheap as-is items. But this is one item that will never be sold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some fraying on the ends of the sleeve and a wear hole on the body of the jacket.  Yes, I could probably get the holes and fraying rewoven, but I won't. I don't want anyone touching my beloved jacket.

 

 

 Baby Boris, the very first time that we saw him in March 2001.

 

 

 

 

 

Some recent vintage outifts and cool socks

1/20/13 - I had a lot of fun wearing these striped socks from Sock Dreams. 1940s shoes, 1960s skirt. I was too cool!
Shoes were an etsy purchase, skirt came from a vintage stock purchase. (A 'vintage stock purchase' is when I buy a big lot of vintage all at once from an estate or dealer)

1/27/13 - 1960s striped skirt, 1940s herringbone/plaid jacket, vintage purse and pin, newish shoes and another pair of fun over-the-knees from Sock Dreams.
I may have pushed it throwing the tapestry purse into the pattern mix, but what the hell.
Jacket came from a church yard sale, skirt and purse were from vintage stock purchases, shoes from etsy.

 

 

2/3/13 - 1940s Dark Blue sweater and skirt set (love!) 1940s suede shoes, 1960s carpet bag purse and another pair of socks from Sock Dreams (no, they aren't paying me to showcase their socks, I'm just obsessed) These are knee highs and I wore over black tights, that keeps them up pretty well. The photo was taken after I got home, so hair is courtesy of Gus and Harlow greeting me when I got home.
Sweater set was an ebay purchase, purse and shoes were from vintage stock purchases.



Bye for now, Carol
www.dandelionvintage.com

My vintage sweaters

I've mentioned before that I need to see all of my purses and shoes, otherwise I end up using/wearing  the same few shoes or purses all the time, while others are neglected in the back of the closet. To make sure that none are neglected, all of my purses hang on the wall and all of my shoes are out on the floor in a spare bedroom. 
I guess that  I'm the same with my sweaters, I grab the same usual comfortable sweater (usually black) and wear it all the time. The solution to add variety to my wardrobe was to get them all out for me to see like the bags and shoes. So I have them tiered from over-the-door hooks on the outside of the bathroom and bedroom doors.
Here is a peek at most of my own vintage sweaters, a few stranglers are hanging on a rack where I have some outfits pulled ahead of time to wear. These are all buttonfront sweaters, I only have a few pullover sweaters. I don't know, I just don't buy/wear them very much.
I still have my go-to favorites, but seeing all my sweaters out at once gets me to wear some that might get neglected otherwise.

I was so happy with how well my new stockings matched the stripe in my skirt . . .

 . . .  that I had to take some photos and blog about them! (dork) I bought the stockings randomly on Sock Dreams because I loved the design in the knit. Turns out that they are a perfect match for the green stripes in this 1960s skirt. The stockings fit great and they stay up well on their own.

The rest of the outfit included a heather brown short sleeved sweater from a 1940s sweater set, and a 1960s lacey knit cardigan. The shoes are 1990-2000s-ish I think.

I'm proud to be A Vintage Purse Addict

You can never have too many vintage purses!
I'll admit that vintage purses are my weakness. I have them all hanging on the wall in my dressingroom so that I can see the whole pretty collection and so that I'll use them. If I keep them in a closet or box or something where I can't see the variety, I'll end up just carrying the same purse all the time. I'm that way with shoes too, I need to see them all.
I've built up this collection over the past 20 years of collecting and wearing vintage. Once in a while I'll go through and purge/sell ones that I don't use, a few I hang onto because they are just very cool, even though I don't use them.
It's a lot of purses, but I don't have a lot of money invested in them, because I'm pretty cheap when it comes to buying for myself. $25 is the maximum that I would pay for a vintage purse, and it would have to be super-fabu-tastic for me to pay that much. I think that there are only 1 or 2 here that I've paid close to that for, and that's because the cost would have included shipping. Most of the purse came from stock purchases.
Even if I'm just in jeans, sneakers and a tee, I'm always carrying a vintage purse. It's really the easiest vintage item to add to your everyday wardrobe.

Some recent vintage purchases for me!

I've been shopping on ebay again! Below are a few cute dresses that I picked up for myself. Actually, the striped dress is a little snug in the bodice, so it might end up for sale on the website.

One of my favorite 1940s dresses - I guess it's time to stop wearing it

I've had this cute 1940s cotton day dress for about 8 or so years. It had some slight fade and a few tiny wear holes when I got it. But it's been a great dress to wear around the house in the Summer. Sadlly, I think that it's now time to fold it up and give it a nice resting place in one of my drawers. I've squeezed all of the life that I can out of it.

The small holes have all gradually gotten bigger and are about 1-2 inches in size now, on the front of the skirt and on the center of the fanny - plus it has some new holes from wash-n-wear. Laying on the floor next to Harlow while she chewed her chewy, she snagged her toe on the bust of the dress and made a 2 inch rip. The waist is ripped out, some holes started on the top of one sleeve, and last night when I took it off, the under arm entirely tore out. The fabric is just all tired out and tearing easily now.

Thank you cute old dress, you've had a good long life and I've enjoyed wearing you.