Bittersweet

This time of the year always makes me a bit melancholy.  There’s just something about the beauty of gradually realizing summer is fading into fall, and seeing the season gently usher in the upcoming cold I despise.  I am not one to have Halloween in my blood the minute September rolls around.  Instead, I like to let the fall season come in barely perceptible stages, as it does naturally, and enjoy its every transition.  The sun might be just as bright but there is a different smell in the air.  The cricket chirps are louder without the competition from tree frogs and cicadas.  The night settles in a bit earlier.  Fall’s entrance is indeed bittersweet in emotion, which is why I find it so ironic I love the shades of bittersweet, the plant, because it also is the time of the year I can appropriately wear the most gloriously rich earthen tones of that vine – browns, tawny shades, dusty green, a wine red, and hues of gold.  This little vintage number is early fall embodied in a dress!

THE FACTS:

FABRIC:  a sheer printed polyester crepe for the dress and some colored jute ‘ribbon’ with some leather cording scraps for the belt

PATTERN:  Vintage Vogue #9295, reissued in 2018, labeled as a year 1940 design.  The original pattern was Vogue #8241, an “Easy to Make One-Piece Frock”, featured in Vogue Patterns booklet for March 15, 1939.  What is up with the confusion of the original date on the cover of the reprint?  My me-made belt was made with no pattern…just an idea in my head!

NOTIONS:  I needed nothing but the basics – thread, some skinny ¼ inch bias tape, and a small 14 inch side seam zipper

TIME TO COMPLETE:  Even with all the fine finishing inside, this dress took me only 5 or 6 hours to complete and the belt was made in 30 minutes.  Both were finished in May of 2020.

THE INSIDES:  All French seams

TOTAL COST:  This dress is practically free as all my supplies came from a local sewing rummage sale where everything was $1 per pound of weight…so my frock may be a dollar at the most!  My belt was made from some sort of multi-colored jute ribbon I bought on clearance many years ago when the now defunct Hancock Fabrics was closing.  I bought 2 yards of it for about $5.  The leather cording is leftover from a hat I had on hand (free).  This is a $6 outfit!!!

This is quite an interesting dress, full of contradictions.  First of all, it is a very classic dress design for 1939, with a very basic general construction and silhouette yet very interesting, tricky-to-make little details.  It is a sweet and feminine dress and tries to be complimentary with no real body shaping profile to it at all.  It is certainly not your 50’s take on a ladylike style, nor even a 40’s ‘I’m-ready-for business’ style…this is softer and more delicate without being girlish.  Even though the drawing makes one think this pattern might be scaled for a very tall woman with long legs, the proportions seem to be the opposite.  Sewing my dress as-is straight from the tissue, no fitting adjustments, it turned out perfect for my almost petite height (5’3”) and my short (14 ½”) back-of-neck-to-waist ratio.  The envelope’s yardage chart recommends anywhere between 2 ½ yards to 3 yards depending on the fabric width, yet – believe it or not, but I am the queen of optimal pattern placement – I was able to eke this dress out of 1 ¾ yards, with no compromise on grainline.  What gives here?  Overall, this was a quick treat to whip together and is a new dress that I absolutely love to wear, so I will not complain…not a bit.  I’m just warning every reader not to read this dress by its cover.

The full skirt, puff sleeves, and the bloused-out bodice are the obvious, and well-known visual giveaways for its original date.  Yet, somehow, the way Vogue styled their model and sewed up their sample dress made it seem more like a 1980s garment.  Weird, right?  That is an unfortunate reference which I do believe has turned off a number of sewists from potentially picking up this pattern to try it out because anything blatantly 80’s seems to repulse many.  As I said above, do not judge this by how Vogue has marketed it.

The decade of the 80’s does not give me an immediate adverse reaction and neither do puff sleeves, and so I tried to focus instead on the line drawing and give the design a chance.  I’m so glad I gave it a go!  It does have a bloused-out bodice that is something not all women will have a taste for today, yet it is very authentic, if you look at how garments fit women in old photos from the 40’s.  This dress has good lines, but it just cannot make up its mind what decade it wants to be in, and is not as timeless as other vintage designs.

 I dare to say it has a “cottage core” or “Laura Ashley” aesthetic at heart, with everything I still love about the 30’s, 40’s, and 80’s, so I’m there for it!  It is as comfy as a glamorous nightgown, with no need to feel to have a certain body image, yet it is as pretty as a picture perfect picnic and as breezy as a romanticized run through a field of flowers.

The one major change I did do on this dress was to simplify the neckline.  The pattern calls for a short back neck zipper to be put into a slashed and faced opening, and then self-fabric bias facing to be sewn along the neckline and sleeve edges.  As my fabric was a delicate crepe, and sheer too, I disliked the idea of a bulky back neck zipper.  I tested out the opening space of the finished neckline and guess what – you really don’t need that closure!  The dress can easily pop over my head without it, thankfully, because I think the dress is much better lacking the back neckline zipper.  Then, I used vintage cotton solid brown pre-made bias tape in lieu of self-fabric facings.  I love the simplicity and bit of contrast that this little step added.  Granted, I still made sure to cut the pre-made vintage bias tape out according to the patterns measurements for the given facings, just so I knew I was still keeping to the correct neckline.  I love it when some of my sewing work is already done for me with pre-made supplies, yet by using such quality vintage notions, I’m not just taking it easy – only adding a singular touch and putting my stash to good use.

Such a subject brings me to unashamedly brag about the total splurge of my really good vintage supplies on a finish that no one but me will ever see in real life – old rayon hem tape.  This stuff is so wonderful, and if you’ve never tried it, please find yourself some, use it, and you’ll thank me.  The wide and full skirt of this dress needed a deep hem to hang properly and have the proper weight, yet doing so is normally a slightly tricky technique.  It requires the cut raw edge to be gathered softly in to fit.  A regular folded-under edge is harder to do with this kind of a hem and, even on a soft material like this crepe, can turn out bulky and noticeable.

To get the nicest hem that is also invisible when worn, soft rayon hem tape is an incomparable wonder which does the job perfectly.  One long edge is sewn onto the cut edge of the skirt and then the other edge of the hem tape is sewn down to the body of the skirt.  The fabric merely ‘hangs’ from the hem tape instead of being firmly sewn together to the body of the skirt.  A light steaming sets the hem and controls the gathers.  Being out of the silkiest rayon, it gathers in so nicely and its lovely variety of colors that can be found make for a cheerful little splash of added beauty.  I chose a sky blue pack from on hand, and it contained a 3 yard length which was just enough for the skirt width with an inch or two to spare.  I do get a little concerned every time I use one of these vintage rayon hem tape packs because I know they are a limited resource and are not made anymore.  When they are gone, they will not be coming back.  Yet, what good will such items do me stashed in my notions drawers when they can be used and both bring me joy on my handmade garments as well as teach me a better way to do a sewing technique?  I rest my case.

Keep in mind the tiny, 1/8 inch pintucks are oppositely directional. They fold towards the center for both the front and the sleeves.  This was quite a challenge to accomplish when also sewing the edges into the skinny bias tape along the edges, but a little hand stitching finished off what I could not do using my machine.  Since the neckline and sleeve pintucking is practically the only major detail to this dress, it is well worth the extra time it demands.  There were so many thread ends to tie off though!  I can imagine how wonderful the pintucks would look on this dress if it was made of a solid color fabric.  They do stand out on my version by difference in texture alone, but are a bit lost in the print overall sadly.  Who knew making so many tiny stitched pleats could make such a difference in shaping when you do about a dozen of them!?

I paired my dress with a simple handmade belt, too.  I had two yards on hand of this novelty ‘ribbon’ made out of different colored jute.  I figured it would brighten the dress up a bit to add in more color -the late 1930s frequently combined unexpected tones to great success, anyway.  So I cut the two yards into half (for two one yard portions) and sewed them together lengthwise using a zig-zag stitch to end up with double the width.  I instantly had one wide belt.  Next, bias tape was sewed over the two raw edges for a clean finish, and then the edges were turned under and stitched down to form a loop on either end for the leather lacing to go through.  My belt kind of has the same idea as the one that came with the pattern, but was more fun to construct because it was my own idea.  I somehow like the belt better when the lacing is at my back and not the front.

The rest of my accessories are mostly vintage originals.  My earrings are from my Grandmother, while my straw hat is a 1930s mint condition original and a lucky find, as well as my kidskin leather driving gloves.  My velvet vintage purse is the only item that is from the 1940s and not the decade before.  Since the dress is sheer, under it I wore this deep purple, full-skirted, opaque 1950’s slip that I sewed awhile back now.  The two-tone heels are reproduction Miz Mooz brand.  I highly recommend anything from this vintage inspired shoe company…it’s like walking on air, they’re so comfy, especially their heels, and crafted with high quality (I have several pairs from this brand now, he he).  Altogether jazzed up, I went for a visit to our neighborhood “five and dime” candy shop to sweeten the melancholy I get from early fall.

I realize that readers on the other side of the world from me are just now easing into spring.  That is the other season of transition, kind of like fall, but with much more of a cheerful flourish.  I understand – which is why a dress like this could also be very appropriately a spring dress, too!  A little multi-season sewing is the most bang for my time spent, and hopefully a good inspiration for my readers no matter where you live.  Have I convinced you to pick up this pattern and give that 2 yards of material which is floating in your stash a chance to shine with this pattern?  What are your favorite tones of the fall season?

A Skirt-Blouse and a Dress-Skirt

The second installment for my 2020 “Alter It August” is a featuring of this crazy but coordinated and happy display of me wearing things in the wrong place.  Ugh – that just sounds like need to relearn how to dress.  No, I just like the sewing success I find when thinking a bit differently when attacking my tucked-away mending pile.

What I started off with were two vintage pieces in their own right.  I’m wearing what had been a skirt from the 1990’s as a newly refashioned blouse of the 40’s WWII style.  Then, I also salvaged what was left of a true vintage 30’s era dress into becoming a skirt which pairs nicely with my new blouse.  Yes, I’m all over the decades and every article of clothing I started with is now something else.  Yet, somehow, what I ultimately ended up with is these wonderful separates that I can wear and enjoy for years to come.  I think I can rock this sort of upside-down dressing!

THE FACTS:

FABRIC:  a soft cotton with a hint of spandex is the fiber content of the skirt that became my blouse, while the true vintage dress that became a skirt is a lovely rayon gabardine finished off with a matching color modern cotton sateen

PATTERN:  Simplicity #4528, a year 1943 vintage original pattern from my personal stash, was used for the blouse

NOTIONS:  some interfacing scraps, thread, two true vintage buttons for the blouse, and a vintage metal zipper for the skirt.

TIME TO COMPLETE:  It only took me about an hour or less to clean up the dress and turn into a skirt.  The blouse was finished on August 1, 2020 in about 4 hours.

THE INSIDES:  The insides of my blouse are cleanly bias bound, while I kept the original (pinked) seams of the vintage dress-turned-skirt and merely finished the waist.

TOTAL COST:  FREE!

My true vintage skirt was more of a salvage than a refashion like my blouse.  I had an acquaintance had passed to me this piece that someone had given her because they knew I am a smaller size and would be capable of restoring this to a wearable state.  The bodice of a cream-colored, rayon gabardine 1930s dress had been roughly cut off midway through, the side zipper ripped out, and the amazing duo of large pockets halfway hanging on.  I can’t help but hopelessly wonder what the full dress looked like originally.  It might have been wonderful to have the chance to save more than just the skirt, but really – I shouldn’t complain!  This was a wonderful gift and an honor of a challenge.

I started off with the basic preliminary tasks – trimming the bodice down to the point where I would sew on a waistband, taking off a handful of belt carriers, re-stitching down the pockets, and setting in a side zipper.  Next I used a cotton sateen from on hand (because hey, it was something I didn’t have to buy and it matched in color) to sew on a waistband and a hook closing.  That was all it needed besides a basic cleaning and pressing.  There still are some very slight stains I need to get out but overall I am very ecstatic to have saved this piece.  I am amazed that for all this dress had went through before it came to me, there were not any obvious stains or even a hole, rip, or tear in the skirt (it is pristine).  A very good vintage find finally all fixed up deserves a great new top to pair with it, right?!

I had a plaid skirt which had hardly ever been worn, even though it has been in my wardrobe since circa 2000.  I had bought it second hand back then, so it must be from at least the 90’s, judging by both the style and how the label inside proudly claimed to be completely “Made in the USA”.  Maybe I should not call it fully vintage…just ‘dated’ for now.  Nevertheless, it became a blouse of a different ‘vintage’!  The skirt’s plaid was cute enough to me that I held onto it for this long, yet the style always screamed too “school girl” for my taste and so was rarely worn.  No doubt the fact the hem ended right above my knees added to that impression.  It has a low-riding hip yoke with a deep-pleated, flared skirt below and was fully lined.

A refashion can feel like a giant uncertainty, so it helps to use a pattern that you’ve used already and which has turned out successfully before.  It gives an extra confidence level.  I used the same pattern that gave me one of my current favorite vintage blouses – this “Australia” movie inspired creation – and merely shortened it to waist length because of the limited amount of fabric I was working with.

There was so much fabric in the pleated section below the hip yoke, all I needed to do was cut that part of the skirt off and it was like having a long 2 yard by 20 inch section to work with.  There was imperfect plaid matching in the skirt to begin with, and I did not have any extra fabric to be as choosy of a perfectionist as I like to be with geometrically printed fabric.  Yet, I do think I made the best of it!  The belt strip to the original skirt became the waist tie attached to the bottom hem of my new blouse.  This tie front feature helps the top stay down on me and is also a nice feature to perk of the pretty, but still a bit plain, ivory gabardine skirt I am wearing with it.

I was sort of aiming for a pre-WWII casual 40’s kind of look here, but I’m happy it ended up looking pretty timeless after all.  The skirt is in a feminine and comfortable bias cut so it is obviously 30’s era, but a well done cut and style like this never goes out of style.  After all, the giant, interesting pockets hold my Android phone just fine with room to spare…how modern is that!?  I personally like large blouse lapels and cannot lie, however, they do rather give the blouse away that it’s vintage.  Yet, crop tops are quite popular now, the tie waist is an unexpected detail, and the plaid is quite fun, so perhaps all this outweighs the collar for a contemporary appeal.  I paired my outfit with my Grandmother’s earrings and my comfy Hotter brand tennis shoes.

Even though “Alter It August” is drawing to a close, it’s always a great time to whip those unusable clothes into shape and make them work for you!  You have the sewing superpowers to create…now use those same gifts to take care of what you already possess on hand and make sure it is something useable that you love.  A refashion from what’s on hand is something new for nothing, with the added happy benefit of knowing you both succeeded at something challenging and helped counteract the global harm of the wasteful fast fashion industry.

I don’t know about you, but at the rate I am going out and about these days, I really don’t need a whole lot of anything new coming in the house besides food in the fridge.  That doesn’t stop me from continuing to be a ‘maker’, though, and this sporty little outfit was just the sensible, thrifty little pick-me-up project to be useful, keep me creative, and clean the house all in one.  Maybe I haven’t been out enough for me to even think of turning a skirt into a blouse, after all, though?

Agent Carter’s Color-Blocked Slacks Suit

Slacks suits of the 1940s – when the blouse and the pants both matched as a set – are such an admirable yet interesting piece of fashion history which is under the normal radar what we think of WWII clothes for ladies.  No doubt it has to do with the fact they are an extremely rare item to find extant, especially with both pieces together.  They were an avant-garde statement of women’s empowerment.  They always have great design lines and wonderful styling when they are to be found either in person or in magazine images.

A slacks suit was nice clothing, and not just for working the garden or at a factory assembling war supplies like dungarees.  They were also day wear, or for home leisure, when they were out of nicer materials with finer details, but always practical by offering great ease of movement and practicality for the busy, multi-tasking woman of wartime.  Any way they were styled or worn, though, wearing pants was still not a societal accepted norm for women.  Many young women or ladies with confidence and a sensible disregard for public opinion took to such fashions.  It totally makes sense that a character such as the indomitable Agent Peggy Carter would wear such a thing when she came to sunny Los Angeles in 1947 (Season Two)!   What a better way for me to channel a 40’s slacks suit than to take cue from Miss Carter and make my own color blocked version!

THE FACTS:

FABRIC:  a burgundy colored apparel weight polyester challis from Uptown Fabric shop on Etsy along with an old cotton knit t-shirt

PATTERN:  an adapted version of Simplicity #4762, year 1943, for the blouse; I acquired this pattern as part of a trade of vintage goods with Emileigh, the blogger behind “Flashback Summer”

NOTIONS:  thread, some interfacing, and a set of true vintage 1940s buttons out of the inherited stash of hubby’s grandmother

TIME TO COMPLETE:  The blouse took me 30 hours to complete, including the necessary re-sizing of the pattern.  It was finished October 30, 2019.

THE INSIDES:  cleanly bias bound

TOTAL COST:  All I needed was two yards and this cost me only $14

To make things a bit easier on myself –so I thought – I bought the pants RTW from a company that remakes vintage style garments (Unique Vintage‘s “Ginger pants”).  These pants are made of the hard-to-find, soft, and wonderfully sturdy rayon gabardine so I couldn’t resist them, especially as they have a true high waist, pockets, and a good 40’s style wide leg.  I love that these pants are the next best thing to something I would sew myself.  They are a saturated, true burgundy and I thought that should not be hard to match…boy was I wrong.

It took me a year’s worth of browsing every so often, both in person at fabric stores and over the internet (which is much harder to do due to screen variations), to find a color which would match my existing pants AND be a proper blouse weight material.  So many burgundy tones either were too blue toned, too red, or too purple and then the fabric was either a quilting cotton, a silky print, or a duck cloth.  I would have preferred a natural material, but sometimes ya gotta go with the best one can procure for sewing projects.  At least this challis is high quality polyester which is surprisingly quite nice and –besides the surface shine – really not an obviously man-made in content.  Occasionally that dream material is too hard to find, especially when I was so impatient to be able to wear my completed dream project!  The two different contents of the pants and the blouse play tricks on the camera in the sun, but in person and through pictures in the shade, the two pieces really do match up.

Speaking of another challenge in color matching, I also had a really hard time also finding a material to match the rest of my set which was a true dark-toned spruce green.  I was tired of the searching so part of this outfit is also a refashion.  I chose the practical “made-do-and-mend” route and used an old printed t-shirt from on hand which no longer fit me.  It was in the right color green, only a completely different fabric – a cotton knit.  I was thinking (rather hoping) that the contrast in type of material might be passable because it is a contrast color to the rest of the set as well.  Also, I do love a sleeve that is easy to move in.  Against my better judgment, I went ahead and used the tee for this slacks suit’s blouse…and I am pretty pleasantly surprised at how well this refashion turned out.

I kept the original sleeves as-is from off of the t-shirt and transferred them directly onto the new blouse I was sewing.  I cut out the front Christmas print because I liked it (and might applique it to a new tee in the future).  The majority of the back body of the tee went towards the new blouse’s contrast shoulder panel and under collar piece, while the bottom hem was used to lengthen the sleeves a bit by adding faux cuffs.  I interfaced the shoulder panel and the under collar piece because, being a rather thin and stretchy knit, I thought the green tee material needed to act and feel stable like a woven from the rest of my set for it to ‘fit in’.  It seems my idea worked well.  I was afraid that using a knit for the shoulder panel – the spot on a blouse which has practically the most stress from movement – would be a terrible idea yet between the interfacing and lining that panel with more of the blouse fabric…my blouse is staying in its intended shape.  The sleeves were the only part from off of the tee that I kept fully stretchy.

Between the knit arms and the full, gathered lower back bodice panel, I now have a vintage blouse which lends itself to some extreme butt-kicking wrestling moves, such as Agent Carter was wont to exhibit on men who needed an awakening at the hands of a woman.  Luckily the scene in which we see Peggy first wearing this outfit (“A View in the Dark” episode) was a very active one, and all the different angles shown of her slacks suit were very helpful in seeing what details there were.  Out of the TV series’ original outfit, I kept the small pointed collar, the dark green buttons down the front, the back blouse fullness, the combination of colors, and the general placement of the contrast color.

However, as I have done for all of my other Agent Carter “copies”, I like to both personalize the clothing according to my taste and base it more heavily upon historical accuracy.  My bought trousers align with WWII-time standards with smaller pockets, no hem cuffs, a side metal zipper, and rayon gabardine – the classic fabric for a slacks suit.  I started with a 1943 pattern because when the war effort hit the home front in full force, slacks suits began a strong showing in fashion catalogs and shopping magazines.  All I needed to do was make just a few tweaks to make my outfits closer to extant originals that have caught my admiring eye.

I feel so much better about trying to copy a garment when I change up the design according to my own ideas.  Doing so is my way of respecting the original artist that was behind the garment which is my inspiration!  Yet also, I do want to stay true to that self-realization of knowing what will look best for my body shape, height, and proportions.  I want everything that Agent Carter wears, yes – but I also want to like myself in them rather than forcing something which might not be ‘right’ for me.  This is the only way for me to naturally incorporate a bit of Peggy Carter into my everyday wardrobe.  I like to wear my Peggy outfits as something other than a special occasion cosplay item, but to each her own.  This is why I opted for a belted overblouse style to my slacks suit, unlike the way Agent Carter originally wears her set.  Just like her, I dare to be different!

My main 1940s inspiration sources were both color-blocked jackets (with skirts) and extant matching slacks suits as seen through vintage selling sites.  Many of these include burgundy color.  My favorite set is a 40’s “California Sportswear” set made in Hollywood monotone set, sold by FabGabs, which is remarkably close to Agent Carter’s TV one.  Otherwise, I drew heavily from the two-tone “American Spectator” blouse sold at Boswell Vintage.  I made a separate belt and added it to my blouse, then adjusted the look to match my inspiration.  I imitated the front (below the belted waistline) pleats of the blue hound’s-tooth overblouse and the full gathered back of the burgundy “American Spectator” blouse.

The detail of the button going through the middle of the attached belt is everything to me here.  It’s a sharp detail so very much in tune with the tailored 40’s era and complimentary to my waistline, a big plus.  It keeps the general idea of Peggy’s set with – dare I say – better details and a better classic 40’s sportswear air to it.  My blouse is sans faux chest pocket flaps because they struck me as a detail which might only become a fussy distraction.  Combining my smaller frame proportions with the faux belt detail seemed like just enough of a balance although I do feel lost in any outfit that is lacking true pockets!

Matched in both fabric and color, slacks suits were frequently color-blocked – no doubt because each piece would be easy to mix and match separately with other items in a wardrobe.  Like most clothing meant to be an everyday item or at least supremely useful, they do not survive like special occasion clothing, says “The Vintage Traveler” (as in this post here).  She had been highlighting her collection of slacks suits on her Instagram (see these fantastic sets).  The more I see of slacks suits the more I agree with “The Vintage Traveler” and admire how casual did not mean sloppy in vintage style.  Yet, such dressing – women in pants, in particular – has lost its novelty over years.  What was informal for back then now appears quite refined by modern standards, but at the same time what was daring then is now often only thought of as a conservative approach to everyday wardrobe staples.

True instance on many an occasion – my hubby tells me to be casual for running errands and I reach for my vintage sportswear.  Then he says he needs to dress up to match me because I still look so nice!  This slacks suit is my sharpest version yet of 40’s pants based sportswear and has no complaints when I channel Peggy.  Luckily I ordered more burgundy challis material before Uptown Fabric sold out.  My hope is to extend my slacks suit to have a blouse and skirt matching combo at some point in the future.  I love how I can make something killer but still have it versatile and practical at the same time when I sew vintage…especially Peggy Carter…styles.  Now I have something new in my arsenal of creations, another box ticked off – a 1940s slacks suit.

The Pink Polka Dotty Dress

For as much as I love everything about the 1940’s wartime styles, I also love the contrast that the post WWII fashion offers.  It is a lovely in-between the 50’s extremes of femininity (either big, poufy skirts or slim wiggle versions) and the rationed utility clothing.  I mean, this post’s year 1948 dress is 40’s still, yet I can have a full skirt in a midi length, softer shoulders, and extra details which demand excess fabric.  Yes, very early 40’s frocks also had only some of these qualities.  Yet, the post-war period had streamlined, elegant looks while the pre-war time had many folk inspired styles often with exaggerated features.  This dress is the best of what came both before and after it, in my opinion!

Even though this dress is in my least favorite print – polka dots – I am naturally disposed to favor it, probably no matter what pattern it is made from.  The fabric has the prettiest light pink and a very rich, purple-tinted burgundy!  They fall directly in my “favorite colors” range!  The whole ensemble is finished with some true vintage gloves, pink pearl earrings which had been my Grandmother’s, a retro scarf (which had been my mom’s) as my belt, and a little 1940s original hat in the same tones.  I have a recipe for a total mood booster.  To go full matchy-matchy, I even have a vintage post-WWII rayon blazer which further pairs beautifully with my dress, only it covers up the details so I saved it just for cold indoor air conditioning or a cool breeze in the shade.

THE FABRIC:

FABRIC:  The polka dot fashion fabric is a polyester crepe, with a satin finish.  It is partially lined in both a cotton-polyester blend broadcloth as well as an anti-cling polyester.

PATTERN:  McCall #7226, year 1948 ( I never cease to be shocked at the completely sheer black version on the cover!  In 1948, really?  I love it!)

NOTIONS:  Just plenty of thread and one side zipper was all that I needed to whip the dress up!

TIME TO COMPLETE:  This dress was finished on September 21, 2018 after taking about 20 hours to finish.

THE INSIDES:  The entire raw edges are covered by full lining.

TOTAL COST:  The fabrics for this dress had been with me long enough to no longer remember when they were bought, so let’s just count this as a free stash-busting project, shall we?!

The most obvious, glaring difference than any 40’s pattern which came the previous 6 years was the great number of pattern pieces and the extra fabric they required.  The back of the skirt section is a flared out version of the classic three piece which is the same as most of all 40’s dress patterns.  Yet the front has 7 panels which get wider as they go to the hem for a fantastic sweep which is so perfect for twirling!  The bodice back is like a bloused out version of a 1950s kimono sleeved block, and so is the front underneath the three wonderful layers of horizontal pleats!

This was as easy to sew together as it is a breezy and effortless joy to wear.  As the polka dots are randomly spread all over I made absolutely no attempt at any matching, totally taking the laidback route.  The skirt is more so.  The cut on sleeves with the deep cut armholes are unconfining.  I adapted the pattern so that the zipper would open up all the way under the arm for no need to wiggle into a dress with a limited side closure.  My choice of lining also adds both comfort and simplicity.  I detest the feel of raw polyester on my skin and hate the static cling it builds.  Lining the entire dress made it opaque and eliminates the need for an extra slip, of course, but adding a cotton blend to the bodice is for pure comfort while the anti-cling poly cuts out any problems with static.  I do like a ‘throw-it-on-and-out-the-door’ kind of dress which is classy in an instant yet feels as nice like a nightgown.

There is always something surprising to the construction of a vintage pattern.  They almost always have some little detail that is put together so much smarter than it seems at first glance of the line drawings.  In the case of this pattern, it was the pleats on the front bodice which were the ingenious detail that surprised and amazed me.  The bottom two pleats are drafted into the bodice front.  You have to stitch (wrong sides together) a certain amount away from the two marked foldlines and let the pleats hang down before sewing to the side seams.  Yet, the top “pleat” is really a fake, but realistically a two ties which get sewn into the top horizontal neckline seam.  Half of each tie hangs down free at the center front so they can be drawn into a bow.  As I said, things are not as they seem in vintage patterns…they are better than they first seem!

This is the perfect 3 season transitional piece.  Now, with the chilly spring days, it is just as perfect as crisp fall days with the darker burgundy background color (especially with the matching vintage jacket).  It is lightweight enough on its own for summer, too!  I have found myself reaching for it again and again after I’ve sewn it.  Some of the things I make just immediately transition into a being a piece of my everyday wardrobe and this is one of them (versus projects that wear out of that ‘just made’ status through time).  This is why I forgot to post it until now.  Oh, I am so behind on posting sewing goodies like this one!  So, no matter what is going on in the world, and no matter whether I am staying home looking not at all as magnificent as I would like, I have stuff up my sleeves to post of past fabulous times dressed in fabulous clothes to share.