Well, in my house cleaning and organizing this past week, I realized how big my etsy shop inventory is! It's getting a little bit out of hand....okay a LOT out of hand so I'm having a big liquidation sale on all of our "modern vintage" inventory.
The Bees Knees Vintage "Modern Vintage $10 and Under Sale" includes all of our 60's-80's vintage. There are quite a few really cute tops,dresses, $5 wool skirts galore- just in time for cooler weather and everything is $10 and under! The sale will end on September 30th. To shop the $10 and under sale click here Thanks for looking! :)
Here's a peek of some of our Modern Vintage Sale items....


Wool Skirts $5 each



Victorian-inspired



Dresses


And lots more...

2018 UPDATE: The BaleOut is permanently closed

Yesterday, I ventured out to downtown St Louis to visit my very favorite source for vintage clothing, The Bale Out.
The Bale Out has the largest selection of vintage clothing in St Louis (and probably the largest in the midwest) with the most affordable prices. I had the pleasure of getting an exclusive tour of the store and appointment-only room and learned the story behind St Louis' best vintage clothing store.
The Bale Out is located on the 4th floor of the St Louis City Museum, which is an incredible place to visit!

About the Museum
The City Museum used to be the International Shoe Company but was opened to the public as a family oriented fun house in 1997.
The creative director of the City Museum is artist, Bob Cassilly who used recyclables to create the rich, urban wonderland that is the City Museum. Every detail of the museum from ceiling to floor has been decorated with found objects.
There is a wall made of ketchup bottles, a wall made of cafeteria serving containers, fabric hanging from the ceiling to create this icy under-water ballroom.

Pj, Amanda and Olivia love the kaleidoscope hallway.
It is an incredible place to visit! Tunnels of coiled metal snake through the museum so parents and kids can climb through. And, you gotta love the bus hanging half-way off the roof! While visiting the museum, tucked away on the 3rd floor is a small wire staircase leading to Vintage Heaven: The Bale Out!

The BaleOut
The Bale Out has acquired over 600 bales of vintage clothing from a building that could no longer store the clothes. How much is a bale of vintage? That's 1500-2000 garments per bale. The bale is about half the size of a queen sized bed. So imagine, 600 bales, 2000 garments per bale that's 1,200,000 vintage garments waiting to find a loving home. Unbelievable, I know!
Employees of this shop (only a handful of them) constantly open new bales, sort the clothes, wash them, inspect and grade them according to the condition of the garment and price them. Natasha showed us some of the funny things that she finds in jacket pockets while inspecting the clothing. She found a pay stub from the 1970's from a man who only made about $4 an hour. Another time, she found a very old Diet Coke bottle cap and once she was lucky enough to find a quarter! I can't imagine what a fun but over whelming job that would be! Some garments go in the store to sell to the general public and some stay in the Appointments-Only room. Vintage clothing dealers and enthusiasts can make an appointment to shop this room, which is loaded with beautiful vintage coats, jackets, children's' clothing, skirts (including a few amazing authentic poodle skirts) and more items than I can even begin to mention. The wonderful thing about the Bale Out is that you will find items from every era. The appointment room has so many exquisite dresses, coats, jackets and skirts from our favorite eras. We even spotted a beautiful vintage red wool jacket by Chanel! Here are a few pics of the Appointment Only room....



This jacket was one of my favorites!
Meanwhile, back in the shop items are neatly sorted according to clothing type. The volume of inventory at the Bale Out is so large that they couldn't possibly sort it any other way but they do pull out a few of the really amazing items to display on a special rack up front.

containers bursting with vintage scarves

Here, you will find skirts, dresses, blouses, men's clothing, kids clothing, coats and so much more starting at $1. Yes, I'm serious!
The dress rack reaches from one end of the store to the other. Incredible!




Check out these beautiful vintage swimsuits:




The front of the store currently displays winter scarves and sweaters as well as some men's items and racks of lovely dresses and skirts.


The urban recycled decor of the City Museum stretched up into the Bale Out. Notice the wall made of glass bottles in the back? What a cool place to shop!

Inventory changes every day as new treasures are discovered in the bales. You could easily spend all day in the Bale Out and not see everything for sale. The Bale Out is currently working on re-vamping the store with new signs, store displays and more. I can't wait to see it when it's all finished! :) For those of you who are not in the St Louis area, if you ever visit, the Bale Out is a must-see!
You can follow the Bale Out sales and events on facebook or twitter. Visit them at their website here.
Here we are, leaving the museum with Olivia and our bags of goodies!

Thank you so much to Natasha for having us and showing us around the store!
I'll be posting lots of pictures of my Bale Out finds very soon! Stay Tuned.....
xoxo
Brittany

Hello, darlings!
As you may have noticed by my absence, I've been taking a short break from blogland this week to de-clutter my house!

Normal people usually have a "crap drawer" or something like that. The place where all of the random crap goes when you don't have a place to put it. Well, I have a crap drawer, 3 crap cabinets and more crap boxes than I can mention! So, I'm de-crapping this week and so far, so good!!
Yesterday, I purged my china hutch and foyer closet of all of the crap and found a home for it or ditched it. I'm pretty proud of myself. I've been the anti-fashionista this week in my capri pants and Pj's t-shirts so I can really get serious.
Today, I'm will conquer Mount Laundry in the basement. Wish me luck!

While I clean and organize, I've been brainstorming lots of lovely post ideas and fun things for Va-Voom Vintage so hopefully I'll get some time to sit and type it all out!
I have a giveaway coming up in early September, which I'm VERY excited about so stay tuned for that, my dears!
Anyways, back to work! Hopefully I'll finish up around the house so I can come back in a few days! I'm venturing into downtown St Louis this weekend to visit the midwest's best kept vintage secret. Aww, do you think I could keep the secret from you? No way! I'll tell you all about it on Sunday! See you soon....
xoxo
Brittany
p.s. Olivia took her first steps on Sunday- I'm SO proud!! :)

Well, since I've been on such a big sewing kick lately, I thought I'd share one of my 1940's sewing books with you! It teaches all of the basics of sewing that many people cover in a sewing class. This book covers everything from learning to sew by hand to tips on making a coat! Just click on the image to enlarge. Feel free to save it to your computer for help later. I love this book because it gives us a glimpse into the daily life of real ladies in the 1940's and the pictures are so neat. Hope you love these as much as I do!




Okay, back to fashion tomorrow with our next Building a Vintage Wardrobe post: Pants

So, what did everyone think of the sew-a-long? Easy to follow or confusing? Pain in the butt or fun? Was your apron a success or a disaster? Was there anything that wasn't covered that you would have liked to learn?

Since we learned to do gathers in this last tutorial, I was thinking about doing an easy "How to make a Dirndl skirt" sew-a-long. There is no pattern required to make a dirndl skirt and I thought it would be kind of fun because all high school girls who took sewing class in the 50's learned to make a dirndl skirt.

So, what do you think about another sew-a-long in a month or two?

My mother-in-law works at a home for adults with developmental disabilities and every week, she picks a different theme to plan activities around. This week is 1950's week. She is cooking 50's food, playing 50's music, watching LOTS of Elvis and she has asked me to come in on Friday night and talk to her residents (14 adorable ladies) about fashions from the 50's!

A few of the ladies are old enough to remember the 50's and they are ALL Elvis fans, so this should be a really fun theme this week!! So, now I'm brainstorming about what the heck I'm going to talk about!!

While I do love to ramble on about fashion history and how the female silhouette has evolved over the years, I know that would put everyone to sleep! We're going to do a little 50's fashion show and tell. So, here's my plan so far....

Hats: I have a pretty good little collection of vintage hats so I'm going to bring them in for the ladies to pass around and try on

Dresses and Crinolines: Crinolines were a big part of 50's fashions and the "New Look" so I'm going to bring in a few to show off. Amanda is coming to help so we're both going to wear our prettiest 50's dress also

Accessories: These ladies love accessories as much as I do, I thought it would be fun to bring in some costume jewelry, gloves, cat eye glasses, handbags and things like that for everyone to play with and look at

The Poodle Skirt Craft: I used to work here, so I know these ladies LOVE to do hands-on activities like crafts. So, I'm going to draw a poodle skirt and copy it and have everyone color and decorate their own poodle skirts with ribbon, jewels and things like that.

If anyone else has any good ideas for my little 1/2 hour 50's fashion presentation, please do share!! I'm having a hard time coming up with good ideas for this one. Thanks!!

Okay, I'm a little late but I'm back with day 3 of our Vintage Apron Sew-a-long!
Today, we will finish our apron by following steps 11-19. When your apron is complete, please send me a pic of you wearing it so I can post it here on Va-Voom Vintage for everyone to see! If you have a blog or other website let me know so I can post a link too.

Okay, are we ready? Let's do this!....

Step 11.)"Pin rickrack 1/4" )6mm) above lower edge of apron, turning ends to inside at sides. Stitch in place."
This is just like when you pinned the rickrack to the pockets the other day. When complete, it will look like this:

Step 12.)"Pin Interfacing 3 to -wrong- side of waistband 3, having edges even; baste." Remember, the wrong side, the side without print. When you baste, use your longest stitch length. To stitch these two pieces together, you will be pivoting the fabric just like you did in step one. Keep that needle down in the fabric when you turn it.


Step 13.) "Turn in seam allowance on long unnotched edge of waistband. Press."
The seam allowance for this pattern is 5/8 inch (1.5 cm). Fold it over 5/8 inch and press it flat with your iron. Lay it so that the raw edge is facing your apron, like this


Step 14.) Pin waistband to upper edge of apron, matching symbols. Adjust gathers; baste. Stitch. Trim. Press seam toward waistband." Now, flip the waistband upside down, so that it is laying on your apron, with raw edges together. Pin the waistband to the apron, beginning at the center, adjusting the gathers as you work out to the edge. Try to make the gathers as even as possible all the way across.
When the gathers are even, stitch across the waistband like this:

Next, press the raw seam towards the waistband like this:




Step 15.) "With -right- sides together, fold each tie ends 4 section along foldline. Stitch, leaving end with large circles open."
So, grab those tie ends and fold them with the -right- side together (side with pattern/color) I pressed mine flat to make it easier on me.
Stitch the tie ends, leaving the flat edge open.



Step 16.) "Turn right side out; press. Baste raw edges together. "
Turning the tie ends right side out can be a pain in the butt sometimes. If you have problems turning it right side out, you can use something long and thin like a chopstick to help push the fabric through the tube. When you "baste the raw edges together" just sew a straight line on the open edge of each tie end. Use your longest stitch length.



17.) "Pin the ends to ends of waistband, matching large circles and having raw edges even. Baste. "
Pin the flat ends of the tie ends to the apron, as pictured below and baste.


18.) Turn waistband to outside along foldine over ties. Stitch ends. Trim.


Take the tie ends and fold them over in an "x" shape like this, just to get them out of your way. Fold the waistband in half as pictured below. Stitch the open ends of the waistband (flat edges on each side):



19.) Turn waistband right side out, press. Slipstitch pressed edge over seam.



Slip stitching is a VERY valuable skill to learn, which is one of the reasons why I picked this apron to start. If you know how to slip stitch, you can lengthen your vintage skirts and dresses (by letting out the hem) or you can shorten them. You will slip stitch with a hand sewing needle. I found this helpful video for learning


You did it! Your apron is now complete! Like I mentioned, please do send pics of you in your completed apron to me at brittanyvavoomvintage@gmail.com. I will post them here on Va-Voom Vintage next Thursday for everyone to see how great you did!

Hello, everyone!
So sorry for the delay in our sew-a-long!! It will be posted tomorrow, I -promise-!!
Today, I'm at my momma's house, helping her set up her own blog! She tried wordpress but didn't get the hang of blogging. Since I blog, I told her I'd help and set her up on blogger, since I'm most familiar here.
So, in a few hours, we set up a lovely blog for her to talk about her fantasy/fairy art, jewelry and statue designs and inspirations.
Do go check out my momma's blog, Tales from the Old Art Table
Now, I'm off to enjoy my Weight Watcher's dark chocolate/raspberry ice cream and the past few week's episodes of True Blood. Oh, what a lovely Sunday!

Hello, everyone!
I just posted 2 lovely 50's swim suits and a vintage girdle on Bees Knees Vintage Clothing so, if you missed out last night, pop on over to see the new listings! Thanks for lookin'! xoxo

Vintage 1950's blue gingham 2 piece swim suit



Vintage 1950's red pin up girl swim suit



Vintage peach Fruit Of the Loom Girdle

Just wanted to pop in before bed to let everyone know that I've just list 3 amazing 1950's dresses on my etsy shop, Bees Knees Clothing! More 50's dresses, swim suits and undies on the way VERY soon!!
1950's Tea at a Paris Cafe Swiss Dot Dress by Ellen Kaye





Vintage 1950's deadstock cotton candy dress by Diane Dunbar




Vintage 1950's white and gold cocktail dress with matching bolero by Ellen Kaye