Thing #8: 1970s Vintage Pea Coat, sourced 2008

I once spent several weeks during the run-up to Christmas stranded on the couch after a cycling accident. With nothing better to do than surf the Internet I did all my gift shopping online and bought a winter coat. I looked at many examples, new and vintage, from many different sources and I passed up a number of brand new mid-range coats to buy this one. I've not regretted it for a moment. They really don't make 'em like this anymore.

Buying vintage online can be a gamble when you can't be sure what you're looking at. Used garments rarely declare their quality in amateur photos taken by independent dealers. It's far harder to assess fit when all you have are a vendor's measurements. How can you tell how fabric feels from an image on a screen? All you can do is use your imagination and trust your experience. 

Thing #7: Ralph Rucci Pin Tuck Dress, completed 2015

Appropriated Edge has been woefully silent for a month or so, during which I've been learning some valuable lessons in the art of community engagement, an essential life skill for an aspiring blogger. Here on the Internet, we all have the potential to become part of a shared global conversation in which we are both content providers and audience members, an ideal which collapses when all that time you spent engaging with the community has kept you from updating your blog. 

So I've decided to begin again with the garment which in a roundabout way inspired me to start this enterprise in the first place, a project which I began as 2014 was drawing to a close. This is the Ralph Rucci pin tuck dress, a notoriously complicated piece of home couture which I would probably never have attempted without the inspiration of one particularly talented sewing blogger.