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?

Tips on Working with Vintage Patterns

I posted earlier today looking for tips on how to put a placket with snaps into a side seam of a dress.  Well, a short internet search later and I found this helpful Threads article that covers many aspects of sewing with vintage patterns.

If you feel the need for some pointers, the article includes tips on pattern sizing, terminology, pattern markings and short tutorials on bound buttonholes, adding a gusset, bias binding, and placket closures.

If that fabulous 1933 dress in the Threads article looks familiar to you, it's because Debi from My Happy Sewing Place just made it for The Sew Weekly Challenge.  She did a wonderful job!

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?

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.

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.

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!