THE BIG REVEAL!!! - Mad Men III

If you stop and listen carefully you might be able to hear it. A faint high pitched squeal that's not dissimilar to the sound a jacket potato makes when you put in the oven to bake and forget to poke holes in it (really creepy if you've ever experienced it). It's the sound of me squealing with excitement all the way from Melbourne, Australia. Why?

It's MADMEN III REVEAL TIME!

EEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEeeeeEEEE!!!

If you've been following on Instagram you may have already seen me reveal a few gems.
But now it's time for the whole ENCHILADA!

So sit down, put on some red lipstick and enjoy!

Click on the buttons below to see all your inspired creations for each character:

Is your outfit missing? Please email me if your outfit is not showing!

Stay tuned for next week's blog post; we have some fabulous vintage brooches from Ruemiraldi to give away. 

It is FREAKING ME OUT how awesome these creations are! This is always my favourite time of the year and I'm continuously inspired by this community. Thanks to everyone who took part in the challenge; you all look fabulous!

MAD MEN Challenge 3 - You IN?

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CHALLENGE RESULTS!

Ladies and gentleman of the sewing world ... it's Mad Men time!

The TV series that we have been swooning over for the last six seasons will be airing part 1 of it's FINAL season this April.  That means another season of fabulous and give-it-to-me-now vintage fashions for us to indulge ourselves with. And for those of us in the sewing world, we know what this means ...

MADMEN CHALLENGE III

Can I get an amen?

Challenge:      

Recreate a Mad Men dress that you love. It doesn't have to be an exact copy, you can just be inspired by the style of the 50's, 60's and early 70's.

Why take part:

I love this sewing community and group challenges are a great way to meet other like minded vintage lovers. It's so rewarding to set yourself a sewing goal, and we all get to be inspired by the beautiful creations that people make.

What's more it's a great way to discover new blogs to follow and to get yours out there. Don't have a blog? No worries! You don't need to have one to be part of the fun.

What you need to do:

Make your garment and then if you have a website do a blog post about it. Then ...

Email me at julia(at)juliabobbin(dot)com the following:

• A photo of you wearing the garment that you made
• A photo of the inspiration dress/character - remember it doesn't have to be a copy it can just be inspired by a dress/character
• A link to your blog post showing your finished dress. Make sure you blog about your garment before you send me the images so that I have a blog post to reference. Don't have a blog? No worries! You only need to provide your blog details if you want to. Plenty of people took part in past challenges that didn't have a blog.
• Your name (or alter-ego) and your blog name.

Once I have received the above information I will respond with a confirmation within three days that it has been received.

Got any questions? Still not sure what you have to do? Just send me an email!

Shout it from the rooftops!

<div align="center">
<a href="http://www.juliabobbin.com/2014/02/mad-men-challenge-3-you-in.html" title="Julia Bobbin - Mad Men Challenge III" target="_blank"><img src="http://i751.photobucket.com/albums/xx160/JuliaBobbin/JuliaBobbinMM3_zpsa913cf16.jpg" alt="Julia Bobbin - Mad Men Challenge III" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

For those of you who want to let people know they are taking part in the challenge, here is a button you can proudly post on your blog:

Due By:

Send the above details to me by Tuesday, April 1st – that gives us about six weeks to create a masterpiece!

The Big Reveal:

I will then post up everyone’s photos and blog links on Sunday, April 6th 

Need Inspiration?

• Check out the Mad Men challenge from 2013 and 2012. It'll blow your mind!
• Head over to my Mad Men pinterest board for lots of pics of fabulous get-ups from the show.
• Check out my previous Mad Men dresses below:

So ... You in? Say yes yes yes!! (will also accept just one yes).

Project Sewn Week 2 - The Era Challenge - Butterick 5747

Thank you so so much to everyone who voted for me last week on Project Sewn. I made it through the first round (hooray!!) and now here is my entry for week two's 'Fashion Era Challenge'.

Once again 50% of the vote is up to the public. So check out the other gorgeous outfits and if mine is your favourite I would be TICKLED PINK if you voted for me. Voting closes Thursday 8pm MDT.

For this weeks challenge we had to make a dress from an era of our choice and I chose the 60s. Surprised much?

The 60s is one of my favourite eras for fashion. The range of styles that were introduced in one decade it incredible. In particular I love the fashion at the beginning of this decade. It still had influences from the 50s but with the attitude and boldness of the new time.

The Pattern

To create my look I used Butterick Pattern B5747 which was originally released in the year 1960.

Image on far right from the Butterick Patterns website

I made version A of the pattern and cut it in a straight size 14.

The instructions were pretty straight forward, though they did jump around a bit.

There is a step missing in the instructions! Watch out when you're about to attach the skirt to the bodice/waist band. It skips the step that has you turn in the waist band at the centre front. This will make sense to you if you are making this dress.

Features of the dress

The dress is closed down the centre front with four buttons.

Like a lot of vintage patterns, the dress isn't lined but uses facings.

The dress has a full pleated skirt, a waist band and a gorgeous boxy collar. I made my dress using a thick quilting cotton and added white trim for contrast. I love how it gives the dress a bit more playfulness.

The dress also features a detachable dickey. I've seen some other bloggers wear this dress without the dickey and it looks gorgeous. Unfortunately my dress doesn't look very 'family friendly' when I wear it without!

The beautiful Anna Neah made a similar dress recently but with a different pattern. I'm bananas about her version. It's like we're sewing twins. It freaks me out how much I love everything she makes. If you don't follow her yet you are CRAY CRAY! Check her out!

Changes I made

I'm actually wearing the dickey slightly lower than the pattern design as it overwhelmed my short torso when I was wearing it the original height. It sort of looked like it was choking me!

I also omitted the belt and used one that I already had. I raised the hem slightly to a length that flattered my shape and height better. No other alterations were made to the pattern which is such a nice change!

Styling

I teamed my dress with red lipstick (of course) a beautiful vintage brooch curtesy of the Ruemiraldi store, a red belt and a big bouncy petticoat that I'm a little bit in love with. I love the fullness it adds! I also tucked my hair under to create a sort of faux bob. My hair is a bit long for this era!

Conclusion

That's it, I'm wearing full skirts every day. Just try and change my mind.

Ok so maybe I'm prone to the obsessive, but I feel like a freaking princess in this dress. And the skirt has excellent twirling capabilities. I'm actually a little bit nervous to go out past midnight incase my dress turns to rags and I lose a shoe. It happens.

A special thanks to my parents Beverley and Michelangelo (who totally has The Kinks stuck in his head now) and my sister Angeline who looked after Harry while I sewed like a maniac to get this finished for the deadline. And of course to my wonderful husband/photographer who patiently photographs me even though I inevitably turn into a diva during the process.

Thanks again for all your support! You can vote for me and my dress here.

Colette Patterns 4 x $50 e-Voucher GIVE AWAY and Goodbye Google Reader

Hello sewers and sewer appreciators (the needle and fabric type, not ninja turtles living underground in actual sewerage type),

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be punched in the face by the internet? Well I recently found that out. Turns out daddy google doesn't want to play with google reader any more and is giving it the virtual boot.

What does that mean? Well it means us bloggers who write and read blogs using blogger/blogspot, can no longer follow other blogs using this bad boy:

Google Friend Connect.

What? WHAT?!!? Yep, when we log into our blogs we can't see posts by our favourite bloggers, and our readers can no longer see our blog posts. Still don't know what the H it is? Click here for a bit more info. Effectively you lose a whole bunch of readers to your blog.

Ugh. Well that sucks.

After kicking and flailing my arms and legs around on the kitchen floor to no avail (I DO love a tempter tanty), I decided to look at other options. On a side note, I should REALLY wash my kitchen floor ...

If you currently read my blog with Google Friend Connect, you can stay up to date with my posts by subscribing via email:

Subscribe to JuliaBobbin by Email

By following my blog on Bloglovin'

Or by using Feedly. I haven't played around with this site yet, but it looks like you can transfer the blogs that you follow currently with google reader over to this new platform.

I have starting shifting all of the blogs that I follow over to bloglovin' so I can keep track of new posts. The interface is similar to google reader and I do love how easy it is to use. But I'm still grumpy about it. Don't know what Bloglovin' is? Click here for the run down.

To cheer us all up I decided to do a giveaway:

The Prize:

4 x $50USD e-vouchers for Colette Patterns online store

To WIN:

Follow my blog through Bloglovin' or via email (or heck, anything other than google reader) and comment on this post.

If you already follow my blog through one of these means, then you are welcome to enter as well!

Four lucky peeps will be randomly selected and each will win one $50 e-voucher.

Entries are open to everyone from anywhere in the world. 

Entries close on Friday, April 26th, 2013

The winners will be announced in a blog post on Sunday, April 28th, 2013

So is anyone else put out by the latest news from google? Discovered any great ways to keep up to date with your favourite blogs? Know how to give kitchen floors a good clean?

Let me know!

P.s. - Don't forget to email me your pictures for the Mad Men Challenge An extension has been given until Monday, the 22nd of April so we can work on our projects over the weekend.

I can't wait to share all amazing outfits you guys have made. Such a talented community!

Mad Men Dress Challenge - You in?

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE CHALLENGE RESULTS!!!

Challenge:      

Find a dress on Mad Men that you love and create your own version.

Email to me:

• A photo of you wearing the garment
• A photo of the inspiration dress
• A link to your blog/ blog post of your dress that I can reference
• Your first name
• Email the above to Julia@juliabobbin.com – I will respond with a confirmation within two days that I have received your email.

Due By:

Send the above details to me by Friday, March 30 – that gives us about six weeks to create a masterpiece!

The Blog Post:

I will then post up everyone’s photos and blog links on Sunday, April 1^st – That’s April Fool’s day, how appropriate.

Ok so it’s no surprise to anyone here that I like me a bit of ‘Mad Men’ time.

And when I say a bit, I mean a lot.

And when I say a lot, I mean more than is socially acceptable.

The main reason for this obsession/love? The clothes (though I do also enjoy watching the show for non-frock reasons).

My TV screen has a worn out mark on it from where I’ve constantly scratched at the screen, pining after the fashion delights. The thing that makes me feel less ‘freakish’ is that I know that in this wonderful sewing community I am not alone in my absurdity. Right? Thank God the actor’s addresses are not made public as I could imagine myself turning into a ‘hide-in-the-trees-with-goggles’ type stalker and apparently that’s illegal. Whatever.

I’ve recently made myself a few garments directly based on dresses worn by characters on this TV show. Remember my black and white gingham print Peggy dress?

I’ve also been influenced by the silhouettes of the clothes from that vintage and have incorporated them into my other garments such as my fantastic elastic skirt, and my galaxy dress. You can see my other ‘celebrity copy-cat’dresses here.

I’ve also recently finished another copy of a Mad Men dress, this blue and white number worn by the fabulous keeper of my heart; Joanie. 

Oh isn’t it lovely? Bows and buttons and the never-fail combination of blue and white! Stay tuned for this dress folks, I’ll be posting it this weekend and I’m quite pleased with it too if I do say so myself. 

Here’s a tasty little preview for you …

The point to this story is all this Mad Men dress copying got me thinking (I do that sometimes) and I had me a notion.

If I love the Mad Men dresses so much, surely other people do too. There are many trees surrounding these actor’s houses, surely I’m not the only potential stalker-in-a-tree-with-goggles person out there.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all got our creative hats on and created a Mad Men dress each?!!

Can you imagine the sensory delight of seeing a whole lot of Mad Men dresses recreated.?!!

Challenge accepted.

So I decided, let’s do this! Let’s buy yourself some goggles and .. no wait … let’s put out a challenge to the sewing community and see what wonderful mad men inspiration dresses we can come up with!

The challenge is to imitate a Mad Men garment of your choice by a certain date. You can of course make any changes to it that you like. Once you’ve made it, email me a picture of yourself wearing the garment and a picture of the inspiration dress. Send along a link to your blog post if you’ve done one and then I’ll create a page with everyone’s creations and links on it for us to all drool and get excited over.

Maybe you’ve already made a Mad Men dress and you want to send me those pictures instead! Please do!

               

Here’s a few Mad Men dress ideas to get you fired up and inspired.

Oh boy, I’m excited!

So who’s in?

I’m so excited to see what people come up with!! I reckon this could be a heck of a lot of fun! I can’t wait to see people un-leash their inner Joan/Peggy/Betty/other gorgeous character on the show.

I'll be creating a blog badge for those of you who want to show on your blog that you’re taking part, which I'll be posting up on the weekend.


UPDATE:
I have a shiny new blog button for this challenge. If you want to show your readers that you are taking part in this challenge, just add a HTML widget in your layout and copy the text in the grab box below.

<center><a href="http://www.juliabobbin.com/2012/02/mad-men-dress-challenge-you-in.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/6890944447_3fc1efa18a_o.png" width="150" height="150" alt="Mad Men Challenge Blogger Button" /></a></center>

These dresses are going to be delicious; how fun! Stay tuned for my Joan imitation dress which I’ll be posting this weekend.

Until then, happy sewing!