Autumn roses dress - part 2

Not only have I completed my October dress for the Vintage Sew A Dress A Month, but I've even got pictures of me wearing it somewhere other than my own home! Woot! I also have several thank-yous to make.

Not my usual backdrop

Finishing the placket was easy if boring (so many fasteners to sew on), but when it came to the hem, I realised that I had cut the skirt a little shorter than I would like. I think that I must have lengthened it for the second CC41 dress, but forgot to make a note on the pattern pieces - tsk, tsk. Fortunately, I remembered that Susan Young had recently posted this article about different hem finishes on her blog, one of which involved using bias binding. The binding is attached to the raw edge of the skirt - I did this by machine - and then turned up and sewn in place like a normal hem.

The next problem was finding suitable binding. The binding I had used on the sleeves was quite stiff. This was fine on a sleeve opening, but too rigid for a hem. In another triumph of memory (I can't remember what I did yesterday, but I can remember sewing conversations from ages back!), I recalled Juliana of Urban Simplicity explaining that modern binding tends to have some synthetic fibres in it, which makes it stiff, whereas vintage bindings are pure cotton and softer. Sure enough, in my stash I found this beautifully flexible grey vintage binding which was ideal for the job. So, a big thank you to Susan and Juliana for their advice. I ended up with a perfectly hanging hem, which only required a small seam allowance.

The completed hem

I wanted to photograph the dress being worn with the 'matching' hat, ideally with a backdrop of autumnal trees, so enlisted the help of my friend D. Unfortunately, by the time we got a day when it stopped raining for long enough for us to go out, most of the leaves were on the ground rather than the trees!

With autumn leaves, just not on the trees

We went out quite early, and while the autumn colour might not have been quite as I wanted, we did get some misty autumn light on the canal.

Misty morning shot

Despite the use of two hatpins and multiple hairpins, the 'tilt' hat tilted rather more than I had intended - but this did produce some good pictures of the flowers.

Hat close-up

I must admit, I was quite nervous about enlisting photography help. I typically take a lot of photographs in order to get the handful which appear on this blog, and I was worried that D would get bored. Happily for me, however, he threw himself into it - suggesting backdrops and poses and never once hinting that surely I must have enough pictures by now. I put a lot of work into this ensemble, and really wanted better pictures of it than my usual back yard shots, so a huge thank you goes to him for his input. (He may come to regret this enthusiasm, when he finds himself called upon to photograph future projects!)

This was my favourite photo of the day

I bought this patterned crepe ages ago with the intention of making a 1940s dress from it, and finally doing so made another dent in the stash.

30 metres in credit!

The fabric was also one of my #UseNine2020 choices and realistically, it’s going to be the last one I use this year. The remaining four are very much spring/summer fabrics. My November dress is going to be another stash make, but in a winter-weight cotton - hopefully this time I will complete it in the month.

At least I used more than half of my fabrics

Autumn Roses dress - part 1

I think that it's safe to say that estimating is not my strong suit. Yet again, I have reached the end of a month with that month's contribution to the Vintage Sew A Dress A Month incomplete.

To be fair, there have been a number of changes of plan through the week. The fabric is one of my UseNine2020 choices, and the intention was to make it up using this pattern.

Plan A - Advance 2229, 1939

Unfortunately, it is missing the collar and sleeve pieces. However, a few weeks ago I spotted another 1939 pattern for sale which had a similar sleeve, so I snapped it up.

Plan B - DuBarry sleeves on an Advance dress

I redrafted the bodice of the Advance pattern, shortening it and using the armscye of the DuBarry pattern pieces. I also slightly redrafted the skirt, as the centre back piece bears no resemblance to the actual shape of my behind!

Comparing sleeve pieces, and the 'never going to work' skirt

The fabric was a remnant which I bought some years ago because I liked the retro print. Stupidly, I hadn't checked it before I started this project, and when I finally unfolded it I discovered that it was far smaller than I remembered. There was no way that even I was going to be able to squeeze this dress out of the fabric I had.

The main problem was the full, flared skirt, which just eats yardage. So, I decided to abandon the idea of a dress with buttons all the way down and instead have a buttoned bodice, a straight skirt, and a side placket. For this I turned to my tried and trusted CC41 dress pattern. Even this didn't fit on the cloth available, so further economies were needed. The bodice front has a self facing, which makes it very wide, and therefore difficult to fit on the material with other pieces (the fabric is an odd 133cm/52½" wide), so I split that into separate bodice and facing pieces. This was far less wasteful of fabric.

Finally, there was the issue of the missing collar. I wasn't keen on the plain round neckline, but nor did I have enough spare material for a collar adapted from the DuBarry pattern. Then I noticed the tiny illustration at the bottom left of the pattern envelope.

Neckline solution

This was View 3, with a shaped neckline, and it was perfect. Finding it on the pattern was another matter, though. Most of the unprinted patterns which I have used before have had a clear key and/or diagram in the instructions, explaining what all the perforations mean. The Advance pattern did not, it was up to the maker to decipher them. The DuBarry pattern was the same.

Bodice front piece, with lots of perforations

(This is why I would recommend that anyone wanting to try using a true vintage pattern, rather than a reissue or a vintage-style pattern such as Gertie's, starts off with one from the Big Five - Butterick, McCall's, Simplicity, Style or Vogue. The information may not be presented in the same way as on modern patterns, but it is all there somewhere. I consider myself a fairly experienced dressmaker, but I found this pattern taxing.)

I don't know whether it was my poor drafting, but after all that the end result barely shows the curved shaping at all (I tucked some white fabric underneath to show the shape more clearly). It might be more visible in a plainer fabric. I do like the little notched effect, though.

The finished neckline

Then there were the sleeves. I've never made anything with the structured, darted, style of sleeve head before, and hadn't realised that it involved quite so many darts. Plus, there were a further three to shape the sleeve at the elbow. For someone whose pet dressmaking peeve is transferring pattern markings, this was torture!

My Darts Hell

I also made a mistake with the sleeve openings. The raw edges are finished with binding, and this should have been attached in such a way as to create an underlap so that the sleeve edges meet when the sleeve is closed. I just turned the raw edges under and bound them, so the sleeve has to overlap slightly to be closed. Fortunately I have both thin wrists, and teeny tiny vintage snaps to minimise the overlap!

Sleeve opening

So this catalogue of quirks and changes is my excuse for why it is now November and I do not have an October dress. However, now there are 'just' the snaps on the placket and the hem to do, so hopefully I will have a completed dress to photograph soon.