Whether from an estate sale or a thrift store, vintage fabrics, with their nostalgic charm and classic appeal, are hard to resist. In Sew Vintage, Jennie Archer Atwood shows you how to fashion these textile treasures, such as handkerchiefs, dresses, and buttons and beads, into elegant creations for garments or home.

In Sew Vintage, youll discover a host of techniques, including:

• what to look for and where to look when shopping for vintage fabrics
• how to repair and clean delicate, stained, or well-worn textiles
• how to incorporate vintage designs into contemporary garments and accessories for women, children, and the home
• how to modify patterns to take advantage of the fine details and handiwork your vintage fabrics are sure to feature

Along the way, Atwood offers basic sewing tips as well as simple projects made exquisite through the use of vintage fabrics. Her charming and informative anecdotes describe the challenges shes overcome to create usable, fashionable items from castoff fabrics and share strategies for handling common and unanticipated problems.

Let Sew Vintage help you bring a piece of the past to life.

Introduction

Discovering Vintage Treasures
Finding Vintage Textiles
Choosing a Vintage Treasure
Cleaning Vintage Textiles
Pressing
Holiday Gifts: Potpourri Bags

Design and Construction
Getting Inspired
Pattern Selection
Construction Considerations
Next Steps
Holiday Gifts: Designer Gift Bags

Developing a Pattern Layout
Fabric Shortage
A Challenging Example
Holiday Gifts: Christmas Stockings

Embellishing Vintage Textiles
Piecing
Sheer Overlay
Corded Piping
Lace
Creating Texture and Dimension
Color
Buttons and Buttonholes
Holiday Gifts: A Perfect Purse

Creative Clothing for Children
The "Growth Factor"
Make It Kid-Friendly
Creative Clothing Ideas
Holiday Gifts: Tooth-Fairy Pillow

Vintage Textiles in Home Decor
Pillows
Slipcovers
Window Treatments
Holiday Gifts: Hanging Organizer

Resources

Index

Steinbeck said in The Grapes of Wrath that it is the female of the species who passes heritage and culture and a sense of family down through the generations. Throughout history, using textiles as the medium and their hands as the tools, our ancestors have created beauty and humble art. Today we are awed by the creations of another time and place: the intertwining threads of a piece of old lace, the lines and colors of a bird embroidered in Eastern European cross stitch, and the threads deftly adorning silk and linen. We imagine another time when pride in simple things like home and hearth existed alongside the difficulties of the day. We imagine women who must have been like us.

In this new century, we, too, care about art and color, form and style, hearth and home, and a job well done. We want to do more than just admire the vintage handwork brought out for special occasions. We want to incorporate it into our lifestyle and enjoy the luxury of old fibers and beauty that were created years ago. Our hands can be used to build upon the creations of women who have gone before us. We can transform and re-create old textiles to bring beauty to our lives, and at the same time contribute to our heritage, culture, and family. We can imagine pride in simple things like home and hearth existing alongside the difficulties of our day.

My passion for sewing is rooted in my personal heritage, my childhood. A familiar sight was my mother at the sewing machine, creating functional, practical items for her children and home, and as time and energy permitted, the humble art that fueled her passion. This passion I share with my mother grew through touch and exploration with my hands. Take fabric, for example. I find I slip it between my fingers, pass it from hand to hand, rub it against my face, and even smell it. I bunch it up and shake it out, flip it over. I use words in my vocabulary like smooth and scratchy, I talk of the fabric's "hand." When the fabric doesn't feel quite right, I hear myself say it needs more texture, more dimension. Almost always, these are unconscious actions, unconscious words. I am a tactile learner.

When I was interviewing for admission to physical therapy school, I was asked why I wanted to become a physical therapist. My answer seemed perfectly logical: I wanted a profession that allowed me to use my hands in a creative way to help people. Perhaps the confidence with which I expressed this desire was rooted in a passion for creating with my hands, which had been passed down through my ancestors and had been evolving inside of me for years.

Working with vintage linens has been a connection to the past for me. Writing this book as been a lofty goal, one rooted in the desire to connect with the future, to share my joy for this craft of creating beauty from vintage textiles with other like-minded enthusiasts.

The techniques and projects I explain in this book and the creative ideas I throw out are aimed at getting you going in the direction of trying something new with something old. By accepting the imperfect nature of the vintage textile, and by extension, ourselves, I hope some of the fear of creating with our hands will disappear. We can all create beauty and art through the work of our hands to document our lives and to share with our families. Along the way we're bound to discover a little about the way we learn, the choices we make, and the passions we enjoy.