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Vintage Details: Fan appliques

There’s a lot to love about this dress from The Church of Vintage. The shaping looks divine, the color is so soft and beautiful, and the perfect contrasting lining on the sleeves is a wonderful touch.

fan-dress-02

But check out those amazing appliques! Though it appears a detail like this would be incredibly difficult to incorporate into your own sewing, it’s really pretty simple: The “vine” portion appears to be bias tape, while the fans are just little pleated tubes of fabric, sort of like tiny pleated skirts.

Sarai Mitnick

Founder

Sarai started Colette back in 2009. She believes the primary role of a business should be to help people. She loves good books, sewing with wool, her charming cats, working in her garden, and eating salsa.

Comments

Heather

December 3, 2009 #

Gorgeous!

Clare

December 3, 2009 #

I love your site, so many sources of inspiration. The applique is just beautiful.

Casey

December 5, 2009 #

Oh wow–this is such a neat detail! What struck me as I was looking at these images is that from a modern standpoint details like this (appliques, self-fabric frog closures, bound buttonholes, and the like) are considered “couture” or the mark of extremely high end clothing. But back in the day, touches like these that made clothes special were not that uncommon. I think that is one (of the many!) reasons vintage clothing continues to fascinate me…

Stephanie

December 11, 2009 #

What a stunning dress!