Li Chan sent me a link to this dress a few days ago, but the seller, Affaire d'Amour Vintage, set a Buy-It-Now price that was, astoundingly, less than $20, so someone else got to it first. Not that I'm bitter, or anything. (Although on a closer read of the auction text, it turns out that the dress is polyester knit, so I probably *wouldn't* have BIN-ned it. I don't do polyester knit.)
However, this print is so cute. Any of you type-heads out there want to ID the font? That "fat" question mark should be a giveaway, right?
You know that "SWAP" meme that's going around? Where you sew a certain number of coordinating items, and they they're judged, and the winner gets a gift certificate? (There are a couple of them, I'm too lazy to google for them, extra credit for those who do so and put the links in the comments …) I'd love to do a SWAP with a "typography" theme and have a little jacket and skirt combo with comma-shaped pockets, and a couple alphabet-print dresses, and so forth. The one thing that holds me back from SWAP.jpgng (aside from the complete and total lack of a spare hour in any day between now and the 4th of July) is that they all want you to sew tops, and I just don't sew tops. I make dresses, I make skirts, I buy t-shirts and cardigans, I'm done. This is not A Blouse A Day, after all …
A Dress A Day 
I am so with you on the no-blouses. Blouses just don’t return the hours you put in – almost all the time of a dress, only half an outfit. I’m making summer suiting separates but I’m skipping the blouses – just jackets, skirts, and maybe a sheath dress.
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http://timmelfabrics.com/2007swap.htmNAYY of course.Marilyn D.
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Patternreview.com has a SWAP contest going on until July 31, 2007. The message board URL is:http://sewing.patternreview.com/cgi-bin/sewingclasses/board.pl?t=22114
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SWAPing doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make shirts. It just mean Sewing With A Plan – pieces you make that go together so you can mix and match. A SWAP can be dresses, jacket, skirts, tees. It can be business trousers, blouses and blazers. It can be workout clothes, a wardrobe for school for your kid. Sometimes also known as a core wardrobe, it starts with some basic pieces that go together, and you build on it to keep expanding your options.The contests of course have rules, but when you’re just doing it for yourself, you make up your own! I hope you make the typography wardrobe – comma shaped pockets sound way too fun!
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A typography theme would be brilliant!
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Speaking of type-heads, did you know that Helvetica is 50 years old and there is a movie out about it? I’m just a type dilettante. I’m looking forward to seeing a movie about a typeface, but I don’t know what face the dress is in.
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Comic Sans?
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Erin, you could do a dress SWAP!The winner of the timmel fabrics swap did a lovely dress SWAP with vintage patterns.
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“SWAPing doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make shirts. It just mean Sewing With A Plan – pieces you make that go together so you can mix and match.”Wait – is it possible to have a plan when sewing? Like, wow… All my sewing is completely random. :)I never like that advice to make/buy stuff that goes together, because then my stuff would be too similar. I want colours and patterns and a range of historical and cultural influences. Unfortuantely this means that something just can’t be worn together because of too much clashing in terms of shape and style – like large sleeves that don’t fit under narrow sleeves of jackets.
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I spent most of the day changing the shoulder line of a linen jacket and then shortening its sleeves and then shortening the sleeves on another, both lined, and it is so lovely to have my little reward of checking in here. I am now on my way to bed at 1:15 Pacific time and I have a smile leftover from LOL over this and the last entry and the comments. It just makes me happy to be in the company of people who are serious about doing traditional SWAPs, typographical SWAPs, sewing comma-shaped pockets, as well as those who couldn’t/wouldn’t possibly ever do anything remotely resembling a SWAP! I love it! Thanks for the sweet dreams!
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Font on the typographical dress is likely hand drawn. I am guessing the dress dates from the early 50s? Many designers hand rendered fonts at that time. Text for printing was still being set in lead, and so it is improbable that the fabric designer used an actual typeface. A display font, such as Comic Sans, (which it is not) probably wouldn’t even be available in that small of a point size. In addition, the question marks are inconsistent – leading me to conclude that it the marks are hand drawn. I myself would LOVE a typographical dress – hand drawn or otherwise!From a Graphic Design Professor.
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Hi Erin!This is too funny; I check your blog as I do every morning but today there’s my dress! Yes, I’m the lucky girl who snagged it. I haven’t received it from the ‘bay yet but I’ll let you know about the fabric. I was a bit scared by the poly-knit as well but the pattern was so cute I couldn’t resist it. As I said before, I love your blog. Thanks for making me smile this morning.
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SWAP – how dull!
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Ah, the magic of punctuation!
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Marie, if you like sewing things that have a strong historical influence (I know I do), I think it’s actually MORE important to sew with some kind of plan!! If you wind up with a bunch of full-sleeved chemise-based blouses, or Garibaldi blouses, then you want to make sure that you DO have a jacket that will fit over them, like the Bolivian jacket pattern with the sleeves modified [to a 17th century fullness], or a Zouave jacket, rather than some little narrow-sleeved spencer jacket (which would actually work fine with a sleeveless shift, but not with the above-mentioned tops). And then you want to make sure you have an outergarment that works over them, which means a cloak, or a robe, or a dolman-sleeved coat with sleeves that are wide enough to take the blouse and jacket, AND full enough for whatever skirt you might wear.There is, in fact, no reason you couldn’t make an entire wardrobe – even a corporate-adaptable wardrobe – based on vintage and historical clothing, but it DOES take planning. The planning is actually part of the fun. There’s no reason you couldn’t make an entire winter wardrobe based on LOTR patterns! – as long as you planned out the function of each.
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I agree with the font professor. The fact that no two question marks are alike (or stars, or even semi-colons) mean it isn’t any font in particular. They were hand painted. –L
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You know, Erin, if you are doing a typography SWAP, you could do a couple of t-shirt designs for Cafepress to go with your other things. Now that they have women-shaped tees in colors, a transparent design with words or scattered letters in colors to go with your skirts could be great, even if it is only a 10 inch patch on the front. I love my brown womens long-sleeve tee with an aqua design.http://www.cafepress.com/wrwcolors.90208248MinaW
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C7KxUk Please write anything else!
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Magnific!
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oh that fabric is love.punctuation marks!i would love to have a dress made out of it.
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