My Hawaii vacation in June was fun and all but let me tell you about my July. It was the greatest. I had nearly nothing to do the whole month but watch all the television and crochet all the afghans. And I’m finally old enough that I don’t even care how frumpy that sounds. It was the actual best month ever.
I watched three series and all three of them are in my top five favorites: Grantchester (technically about a WW2 veteran), Home Fires, and Bomb Girls. I made a healthy dent in Land Girls as well. Sense a theme? I’m a little obsessed with the World War II homefront.
I’m also obsessed with needlework and I loved the costuming on all of the series, especially the knitwear worn by the country folk in Home Fires. As a vintage pattern collector I knew it was likely that costuming was at least inspired by the patterns if not made from them. I scoured the web searching for something similar to farmer Steph’s chevron sweater.
Imagine my delight when I stumbled on this goldmine. The Vintage Knitter took stills from the show and linked to the vintage patterns that matched!
I appreciate vintage flair but my wardrobe is hopelessly overflowing with gray t-shirts. However the Vintage Knitter post has me convinced I could make my vintage wardrobe dream a reality! With my charity marathon nearly over I could justify a winter of selfish knitting. According to math all I need for a 100% vintage inspired work wardrobe (other than the sweaters of course) is a navy suit, new oxfords, and a fabulous pair of dungarees from Freddies of Pinewood (with removable apron).
I played on Polyvore to make a wardrobe sudoku. Free Notion describes the concept well. You choose four each of bottoms, tops, shoes, and layers and arrange them in a grid. Each row and column makes and outfit plus each diagonal, four corners, and quadrants. You end up with at least 16 outfit possibilities.
Polyvore has templates for this concept but they crop everything and don’t let you add yarn. I just brought in Becca’s template as a layer and deleted it when everything was as I liked it.
I hope I don’t just play with Polyvore forever and I get the gumption to wear more bright, fun clothes. My post charity marathon treat will be the yarn to make Steph’s sweater (Second row from the top, farthest column to the right) and we’ll go from there.
