Cross Post - Interlining

Well, I'm almost there. I did an informational post on interlining here.

McCalls 4115

Ok, after some fits and starts, I finally decided on this pattern for my sewalong pattern:

It actually has similar bodice lines as my other sundress pattern, and the best part is I now have TWO vintage dress patterns fitted!  (I did fit my other pattern, I just got more interested in this one before I made the real thing!)  

Here is the finished dress:

And, if you'd like to read more about the process, it's all there on my blog!

Update on Velvet 1940s Dress

I wish that at this moment I was uploading pictures of my completed fabulous red velvet dress.  I started it with the intention of wearing it on Valentine's Day and well, Valentine's Day has come and gone, and still my dress is not completed.

Women who turn out dresses every week (ahem-- I know some of you do!) and even those who turn out dresses once a month are an inspiration to me.  You guys blow my mind.  I've spent hours working on this dress and yet, it's not finished.  On Sunday night I made a mad push to get the dressed finished, but after I passed two hours ruching and stitching up one sleeve-- and I haven't even set it in yet!-- I hung my head and realized that it simply would not get done that night.

So now I need the encouragement to press on with a red velvet dress now that spring is on its way-- a dress that I no longer have anywhere to wear it to:(

Tomorrow morning I embark on a cruise with my family to the Bahamas.  Chances are that this dress will not be complete before the end of February (I return on the Feb 26th), but hopefully I'll be able to post a picture of the completed dress sometime in early March.  Hopefully.

I'm excited to see what y'all have been doing-- keep 'em coming!

*I should add that the dress looks lovely so far.  I still need to attach the sleeves, make shoulder pads, install a side placket with snaps, hem, and make a fabric-covered belt.  That should be doable, right?

Slow and steady

I have made some, but not much, progress on my 1970’s dress. Since my last post I have made a few tweaks to the muslin and I am now very happy with it. I am also satisfied that the riding up in the back was from me putting my hands on my hips and not smoothing the skirt down again, rather than a fit issue per se. The lime green lawn I’m using for the muslin is so light I think it clung to my underwear.

Over the next week or so I intend to transfer the markings from the muslin to the (traced) pattern, and then I will use the lime green lawn to underline my dress. Which brings me to my fashion fabric choice: I have decided to go with a cotton print featuring large green and blue flowers. Truth be told, I chose this fabric in part because I already had a long green dress zip in my stash, and also I want to be bolder and more daring in my sewing choices, and this will certainly be bold. I asked Ant Queen for her opinion, and she agreed that it will work in the sleeveless style, but if I had added sleeves it would be a bit over bearing. I am so pleased with this choice, I am already imagining other pieces to make that will go with it, as well as garments already in my wardrobe.

Finished - Sixties Shift Dress

I've finished my project too!  Here's the original pattern as a reminder:

I used embroidery floss for the decorative stitching:

which added another couple of hours to the project!

There's a bit more on my blog pattern~scissors~cloth

Thanks JoanneM and Lindsay T for hosting the sewalong!

Muslin Take Two-- and Some Advice Needed

You may remember this picture that I posted last week when I realized that I needed to add some major length to the bodice.  (Imagine-- at first I thought it was supposed to look that way!)

I went back to the drawing board and added 2" to the pattern.  While some of you advocated not changing it at all since it didn't look bad per se, I think the second muslin is much better as the proportion seems more correct in this second one.  Another reason I wanted to lower the waist is that I do want to include the belt-- so the natural waist needs to actually sit at the waist, not at my ribcage.

A few sidenotes:

• These are NOT the shoulder pads I intend to use.  I wanted to use shoulder pads for the fitting since the pattern calls for them and I definitely want to use them.  (They're supposed to extend into the sleeve cap).  I will most likely make my own from batting when I get to that point in the process.  I have a few forties dresses in my closet that I can use for reference.
• When I was a design student in college, I did an independent study with one of my professors where we focused on fit.  One great trick I learned is to tie a piece of elastic around your waist (the black line above in photo).  Jump around a bit/wiggle/move and the elastic will naturally settle into the smallest part of your waist.  THIS is your natural waist.  Compare this with where your pattern has the waistline marked (also visible on the muslin in the middle photo above) and adjust accordingly.
• I also lowered the armhole about 1".  It felt a little tight, and there were wrinkles forming along the side seam.  According to Vogue Fitting (a wonderful resource that you can buy used on Amazon for as little as $2.00), the underarm seam should start about 1" below the armpit.
• I'm ready to move on to the fashion fabric.  Woohoo!

So, I need y'alls expertise on something:

This dress has an opening in the side seam to allow for me to put it on (see picture below).  The original pattern calls for snaps, but I don't really know how one makes a placket (for lack of a better word) for snaps in a side seam.  Does anyone have any experience doing this?

My mom suggested using an invisible zipper instead which is fine except I don't think I like zippers in side seams.  In my recollection, they tend to buckle strangely which ruins the silhouette of the dress.  I have a suspicion that gals with a lower waist-hip ratio can use a zipper there, whereas girls like me with tiny waists and larger hips run into trouble.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Beth's Garage Sale Dress, Finished

While Beth of SunnyGal Studio is not a Vintage Sewalong member, we just love the story of the 1953 dress pattern, all cut out and still pinned to the fabric, she bought at a garage sale. She just finished sewing it and here it is. Can't you see your grandmothers or moms wearing this back in the day? Read Beth's post here.

Dunderhead!

Is there an official name for the sudden dementia that strikes as soon as one starts a sewing project?  I swear-- Every.Single.Time I sit down to sew, I end up making silly, silly mistakes.  And, rather than learning from these mistakes, it seems that each one is more grievous than the previous.

Let me ask you: Does anything curious strike you about my version of the pattern (aside from the missing belt)?

Ding! Ding! Ding!  The prize goes to the woman in the front row.  YES! You may be scratching your head wondering why that skirt is hoisted all the way up to my boobs.  Frankly, I'm wondering the same thing myself and questioning how I could have made such a silly mistake.  I'm just glad I caught it before I cut out the fashion fabric.

SO, the lessons learned are (to be forgotten the next time I tackle a pattern):

• When you're 5'10", you ALWAYS have to lengthen the pattern.  ALWAYS.
• Take a GOOD look at the fashion drawing on the front of the envelope.  And, if there is one, take a good look at the flat sketch as well.

Silly, silly me!  I'm off to add, oh, a good two inches to my pattern.

Muslin pics

I finally found time to be pinned in to my dress muslin and take pics yesterday afternoon.  There are a full set over at my blog, but these 2 I think show where I am up to. 

Front of the dress

side view

There were not too many adjustments to be made after all. I took it in by about half an inch at the long side darts and the shoulder seams. I think the fit is fine for a summer dress. I am going to lower the neckline by about 1.5 - 2 inches. I don't find high necklines comfortable, nor do I think they are flattering on me.
I am not sure whether the bunching at the back here is a problem with the pattern/fit, or if bunched it up when I put my hands on my hips for the earlier photos. You can see we only pinned the hem up at the front. I will make the shorter hem adjustments on the pattern before I cut the fashion fabric.

Greetings and salutations

Having signed up as soon as I heard about the sew-along, it has taken me a while to post, but better late than never, right? I have hatched and scratched a few plans for this project and have settled on this Simplicity 7509  from 1970.

A year or more ago a friend helped me to fit a muslin of it, and I never got back to it, so this sew long is the perfect motivation. However, I have lost about a dress size since then, so I will be working on the muslin some more before I upload pics.

I am not 100% decided on fabric yet. I have some lovely royal blue linen that was gifted to me by a friend, but I fear there will not be quite enough. I will try some creative pattern laying laying out, but if I can't make it work I might use a russet red cotton that is in my collection.

My Pattern arrived!

So my pattern arrived today and I have spent a fair bit of time studying the back of it - especially looking at those measurements. Hmmn ... I think there may be trouble brewing and I don't know how to resize a pattern up three! sizes and based on my measurements (which stay fairly true when I'm not pregnant) the size 16 then is equivalent to almost a 12 now. Hmmn...what to do.

Dig out the dressmaking books and learn about resizing patterns - that's what!

After that I will cut out and sew up a muslin and compare it wish some of the muslin's I did for dresses I made last year. I might even take it to my aunt's place and try iton her adjustable dress form.

If I am planning on wearing it just a month after I have a baby - it shouldn't matter if the muslin is too big.

I think given how much I am in love with my fabric - I will put the pattern on hold at that point until post giving birth when I can at least fit the dress too me.

I'm still here!

and I'm not slacking off, I PROMISE! I've redrafted the pattern using Tru-Grid which doubled as my "muslin". I don't like making an actual muslin because it feels like a waste of fabric and time. I know, I know. Anyhow, I managed to make a reasonable facsimile of the dress pattern and once I got it on my dress form, I realized that it was too BIG in certain areas. Now that? Something that NEVER happens. Which mean that I needed to monkey around with it a bit to get a decent fit including shortening the bodice by 2".

The bodice

Side Insert



Waist Adjustment 2"!



Sleeves



Once I had that done, I moved on to the skirt. I used my Tru-Grid to drap a skirt yoke for my border printed fabric.



Draping the yoke

After getting my yoke sorted, I turned to my better half to get the radius of a 44" circle so that I could make the hole in the middle of the fabric for my double circle skirt. Just so you know, the radius of a 44" hip measurement is 7". Which was TOO MUCH because I measured for a full circle and not a *double* circle. Silly me. But what the hey. Lemons, meet lemonade. I'm making a crinoline to go under this, so having some soft gathers at the hipline will work better than just having it fall straight down.

Using the crack in the floor!

Love that border print!

The dress form has the fashion fabric version pinned on and I'm still monkeying with the fit. It wasn't "just right" to quote Goldilocks and so I'm leaving it on the form to allow the fabric to get used to being worn. Overall, I'm very pleased with the way the pattern has come together. The side inserts are a royal beyotch though. I think there's a better way to do them, but since the fabric has been cut, I've got to follow Tim Gunn's advice and "make it work". I always do. Except when I don't and the remains of the dress end up in the rubbermaid tub for "later".

First toile. hmm - could be worse

Time to tackle my Aust Home Journal teenage frock !  - a reminder:

Its a very simple design and both front and back pieces are cut on the fold, with the zip in the side seam.

The pattern is for a 24inch waist, so I thought I'd measure the pieces with the darts 'darted' and the seam allowances marked.

They were both around the 7inch mark, so x 4  = 28 inches, which is my waist (without any ease of course)!.

Anyway, I figured I'd just make this up and see where to go from there.

Cue a cute print scored yesterday from the Salvos on the highway - 2.9 metres x 90cm wide for a measly $2.

Perfect for a toile.  Except maybe a but busy to see details in photos.  Fine for 'real life' though.

 It's a bit tight and the bust dart goes right up and over my boobs, and the side dart is too high.   So I plan to push those down the pattern about 1 to 2 inches.   But the neckline and sleeve hole seems to be ok !

I'm thinking for the back, I could place the pattern piece on the fold at the top of the piece, and pivot it so the bottom part is about 1centimetre in from the fold, thereby giving a bit of extra fabric across the back ?  Is that a plan ?   Its tightest across the shoulder blades, but fits ok at the top of my shoulders, so don't just want to make the whole piece bigger.  I could increase the dart suppression (new word to the vocab here - thanks Sherry!) at the base of the dart to take up the extra fabric?  Your views?

lore
x

Simplicity 3619- Velvet Update

I'm happy to report that I have made some progress on my dress-- it's been incarnated in muslin!  I thought I would need to grade the dress since it's a 14 and I think I'm probably a 16, but decided not to make any changes until I had first sewn it up.  I wanted to see the construction of it so that I could better understand how the pieces work together.

The dress, amazingly, fits pretty well. I didn't realize until I took these pictures how uneven my shoulders are-- do they really do that in real life or am I just standing strangely?!?  It does seem to create a wrinkle that pulls from one shoulder to the opposite side of the waist (in both the front and back), I'm thinking I can correct that by either having better posture (which probably isn't going to happen), OR by adding a bit more padding in the sloping shoulder.  The dress does call for shoulder pads, which are not in use in the photo-- so maybe the shoulder pads will fix everything?  What do you think? I know in many patterns you can adjust the shoulder seam slightly on the one side, but this shoulder seam isn't on top of the shoulder-- it's actually brought forward to the front of the dress where it meets with a line of gathering, so I'm reluctant to fiddle with it much.

There's lots of gathering on this dress (on the sleeves, at the shoulder in front, where the bodice back meets the back yoke, under the bust, and of course, in the skirt), so some of the "wrinkles" in the photo are actually supposed to be there.

The only other change I may make is that the gathering below the bust feels like it sits just a tad too high-- maybe 1/4" (2.5cm) .  It's not really noticeable to the eye-- it's more about how it feels on me, so I might just leave it alone.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the length?  I kind of like the length where it is, but now that I'm looking at the picture, I wonder if I should go a tiny bit shorter?

This is the fabric that I am planning on using.  I bought it at Jomar Discount Fabrics in Philadelphia (if you live in the region, it's definitely worth checking out!  It was the go-to source in college for fabric for all of the design students).  It's a pink-ish red (perfect for Valentine's Day!), but I'm not sure of the fabric content.

I washed and dried the velvet in my washing machine/dryer (eek!).  I was a little worried about ruining it, but I really HATE dry-clean only clothing, so I risked it.  It came out much softer (the sizing has been washed out), and overall it looks pretty good.  I'm going to give it a good steaming, which will hopefully perk up the pile.

Finally a decision - Vogue 2263

Looks like every one has been busy making progress on their vintage garments. Sadly, the only progress I've made has been in my mind.  Which happens to me quite frequently.  I confess that many times I'll plan an entire project - from pattern alterations, to fabric choice, to order of construction, to finished garment - completely in my head before I even pull the pattern out of it's envelope.  That's not to say that I always do that.  But this time I did and now I'm a bit behind schedule.

First of all, let me properly introduce myself. I'm Sharon, from the blogs Sharon Sews (I know, real original, right?) and Patternaholic.  I've been blogging for about four years and sewing forever. Well, not really forever, but it has been quite a few years. 

For this vintage sew along I've chosen a lovely 1970s dress by Donald Brooks - Vogue 2263.   

"Donald Brooks, the Coty Award-winning designer has won great acclaim for his own definite theory of fashion - that clothes should be infinitely less important than the woman wearing them. His lines are pure, uncluttered and classic in shape. He is also known for his mastery of elegant detailing."

I'm using a heathered purple semi-sheer wool knit (70% wool 30% polyester) from Fabric Mart Fabrics.   The design is underlined and I was not sure what to use as an underlining for a semi-sheer knit. I have black tricot on order and I'll see if that does the trick. Otherwise, I'm open to suggestions.

This pattern was chosen for the neck, waist and wrist tucks - love 'em!  I'm thinking to make it look more modern I may add an exposed zipper down the back. 

And lucky for me this lovely pattern is already my size so no grading for me. Yay!

Now I must get back to my pattern alterations so I can get busy with my muslin.

Velvet 1940s Dress

I have a confession to make: I'm terrible at finishing anything I start--  especially my sewing projects!  I have my fingers crossed on this one, and I am really counting on you guys (and this sewalong) to keep me accountable.  I think doing this will really help me to stay on top of things.  And my hat goes off to Miss Muslin for starting the sewalong.  It looks like it will be a great success!

I haven't properly introduced myself yet.  My name is Elise and I blog at Dum Spiro Spero (which is Latin for While I Breathe, I Hope).  I never really sewed much at all until I went to college and decided that I wanted to major in fashion design.  I graduated from University of Delaware in 2002 with a B.S. in Fashion Design and promptly put away my sewing machine (I was burnt out!) and moved to NYC and abroad to chase other pursuits.

After a L-O-N-G hiatus, I've dusted off my sewing machine again and jumped into the fray.  I've only sewn one other vintage pattern before (blogged here), but it was from one of the reprinted patterns from Butterick so I'm not sure if that counts.  Fot this challenge, I've decided on a dress dating from 1940 that I purchased on Etsy from She'll Make You Flip.  I think it's lovely!

It's a bit of an unorthodox choice, but I've decided to make it out of velvet-- red velvet for Saint Valentine's Day when I hope to wear this.  I've seen so many dear velvet dresses from the thirties and forties and loved the way velvet really shows off seams and gathers.  I'm also loving velvet's return to front and center for Fall/Winter 2010/11.  I may shoot myself when I start sewing, though, because as I recall from sewing my senior collection in design school (I used a lot of velvet in my collection!), it has an awful tendency to creep.

I'm off to get down to business.  I'll be posting my muslin pictures soon, and then hopefully, I'll be cutting out the fabric by the weekend.  I'm looking forward to watching all of your progress, my fellow sewists!

Final Toile

This is it - my final toile, in all it's glory:

What a kerfuffle!  Since my last post I did the following refinements:

• lowered front neckline
• moved bust point of french dart
• reduced shoulder length and reshaped armhole front and back
• raised back darts
• taken in side seams and french dart
• shortened, and hem band = 10cm
• fixed shoulder drag lines

To fix the drag line between my shoulder and bust point, I first clipped into the armhole to the drag line to release the tension.  The armhole edge opened up and the drag line disappeared - yay, cause of problem found:

However you can't exactly do this to your pattern, so on the opposite side I slashed to the neckline from that point, and here held together with red Christmas tape you can see the extra height I needed at the front shoulder, and this is essentially what I did to the pattern as well.

I cut it out this morning, and I just had enough fabric!

And the linen tells me my shears are very blunt!

Muslin 2, Advance 8524 fitting ideas

Hi Juliane (Retro Grace) -
I went to your blog and saw more pictures and looked for an email address so I could send you these ideas.
I'll just post here.

It looks like you've been hard at work and you have addressed the issues with ease and bodice length.  Your diligence is paying off!   I have a few more ideas that may help.
How do you get this bodice on? I don't see a zipper anywhere!  Is it under the arm?

click to see larger image

Juliane, have I interpreted your muslin correctly?  Did you include seam allowances?

I posted about narrow upper chest on my blog not too long ago.  Another blogger who makes a concave chest adjustment is KayY and here is a link to her explanation of tucks in the upper chest.

Feel free to email me if you have questions.

I hope this helps.

Robin (alittlesewing)

Muslin 2, Advance 8524

A second muslin is underway for this dress--still trying to fit the bodice. In these photos I have moved side darts, shortened waistline darts, added back neckline darts, added huge side seam allowances, and added another inch in the bodice length.

More details at my blog. I need input in the worst way!

DuBarry 5766

I've decided that this will be my selection.  It is a 1943 pattern, and I like it for several reasons.  The back princess seams will be helpful in fitting adjustments, and I love the insert detail at the front/side.  This is an "unmarked" pattern, i.e. no words or symbols printed on the pattern--just small "holes" in the pattern.  The instruction sheet has the "legend" for what the punched markings represent.  I traced the pattern off yesterday and marked with words and arrows.  Interestingly, the seams are .5" with the underarm seam being .75".  This is noted in the instrction sheet since there are no markings on the pattern itself.

The muslin is started, but I haven't had a chance to take photos yet.