I'm playing hooky this morning and ignoring my housework, though I'll have to buck up at some point and plow through it. My son is returning from college tomorrow and I have to expunge his room of all my Etsy inventory clutter. Dreadful prospect! 

I actually had it fairly well in hand until last weekend's bazaar which resulted in my digging wildly through all my boxes and bins to prepare the wares for display, so now the room's back to resembling something from the Hoarders: Buried Alive television program. Sigh....  That wouldn't be so bad if I'd actually sold stuff at the bazaar, but I was definitely a Misfit in Scentsy-Land at that sale.

Oh, well. Live and learn. (I'd prefer to live and earn but Etsy/crafting doesn't always work out that way.)

Anyway, last night I finally managed to get some photographs of a few of those terrific vintage polyester 70s blouses I've been yammering on about since my South Carolina trip, and I'm going to show them to you now. I haven't done the fancy fotofuze editing or anything;  you will just have to view them au naturelle. The shirts, I mean. Not you!


First, feast your eyes on this wonderful black and white number:

It's in excellent vintage condition, and the print is so clear and crisp! I can see myself wearing this as a jacket with a hot pink t-shirt underneath.

This easy-fitting tunic blouse is another gem. Terrific pastel and bright flowers against a geometric navy blue and white background.

 
Now THIS one is the Big Kahuna. I can't begin to tell you how disgustingly filthy this was when I found it, lying in a heap of similarly storage-stained garments on the floor of an antique store's upper floor. Truly gross! In fact, I talked myself out of it on the first visit, but fortunately we made a second trip to the shop and I decided to try and salvage it. I'm so glad I did! (Oxiclean to the rescue!) Yes, it's missing a few buttons, but that's an easy fix.

But now look at the back of this shirt and see why I'm so jazzed!!

 

 

Have you ever seen the like of this? What a hoot! This is what I love about hunting for vintage. It's a voyage of discovery, history-mystery at its best. 

Eventually I will put these (and the others I haven't photographed yet) up for sale, but I will have to keep them and gloat over them awhile first, maybe wear them a time or two myself. 

The Oxiclean did wonders for these. All of them had scary-looking patches of orangey storage stains, and musty smells. I wasn't sure they could be saved, but as they were cheap ($2.00 minus a 30% discount apiece!) I decided to take the chance.

About two weeks ago, I was at a senior center's annual rummage sale, and I found some other $2 wonders. Take a look at these fabulous vintage dresses:

 

This beauty is in lovely shape, though I need to resew a cuff button which is miss-positioned. I'm thinking this green dress probably had the same original owner:

 

The only flaw I've found on this one is a tiny snag, which I should be able to fix with a little hook tool I have for fixing sweaters.

By the way, what do you think of my new dress dummy? I bit the bullet and splurged here for the sake of both my Etsy shop and my potential sewing projects. This is a Singer adjustable model and it cost about $100. This was my first run-through and I can see now I need to position it higher for the next batch of photos. Right now it's even with my own height. 

(It's odd, I never realize how short I am myself until I meet up with another person of the same height. I'll be thinking, Look at that shrimpy person, and then--oops--I realize I'm looking levelly into their eyes and not up. It's always a bit of a shock.)   

Up until now I've been stuck with an old quasi-Venus-de-Milo job:

 

 Well, not that one. But I have about 3 of these:

These are old flat-backed hollow store display mannequin thingies that originally had hooks at the top, but which have broken off. The dummies are discolored with age, and have various marks and scuffs. I was glad enough to find them stacked in the back of a thrift shop several summers ago, but they do have their limitations, so I decided it was time to scale up. If anyone wants to buy them from me, contact me via one of the Etsy shops and we'll work something out. 

If you don't need an adjustable dummy for actual sewing purposes, you can get much classier, new ones from The Shop Company, like this example, for about $60 plus a very reasonable shipping cost:

www.etsy.com/listing/104556456/new-white-female-dress-form-mannequin

I've also seen where very crafty folks have taken basic plastic mannequin cheapos like mine and upscaled them with decoupage and paint and even old doilies and turned them into very classy works of art for display purposes. Maybe someday I'll get inspired enough to try that myself.