The 1986 dress complete

National Museums Liverpool turns 40 this year, and the celebration began with the Director's Dinner on Thursday 13th February. This was the event for which I was making my 1986 dress and, fortunately, I got it finished in time. There wasn't a steady stream of people at the dinner asking me, 'Is that a 1980s dress?', so clearly it didn't look too spectacularly of its era.

I was however very glad that I had taken the shoulder seams in a bit, as even with that alteration the shoulders still look very 1980s to me.

It could only be from one decade

There is a stiffener in the sleeve head - an oval of fabric folded in half, gathered along the curved edge, and attached to the seam allowance. The pattern instructions are to make it from interfacing, but I used silk organza instead. Then the shoulder pads are positioned to extend about 1"/2.5cm into the sleeve head. In short, there's a lot of supporting structure in there.

The sleeve inside out, showing all the layers

The sleeves are fairly full all the way down, not just at the head, and fasten at the bottom. There's no cuff, instead the sleeve is folded, and a single buttonhole is sewn through both layers. This then goes over the button sewn onto the sleeve.

The sleeve unbuttoned . . .

. . . and buttoned

While the front of the dress is obviously the focal point, the back isn't totally plain. There's no shaping at all, no darts in either the skirt or the bodice. Instead there's a back belt, which fastens over the zip with buttons. It isn't interfaced, but I did add some interfacing to the buttonhole area to keep it stable.

Back view

I avoided my usual button dilemmas by going for self-cover buttons. The sleeve buttons were made from sections of plain black fabric, but for the back I decided to go for something a bit fancier. The print contains one section which is half green and half beige, so I definitely had to use that.

Fabric cut out from the printed sections

The completed belt

And here is the finished dress, standing and seated.

As I wore it to the dinner

The shoulders look less extreme on me instead of Nancy

Because I bought no fabric last year which I didn't use, the Stashometer is in the rare state of starting from zero. It feels like a bit of a cheat, but I'm taking it anyway!

Amount in equals amount out, for once

The dress took a long time to make, far longer than I was expecting, and I only finished it a few hours before I was due to set off for the dinner. But a lot of that was because I took the time to really do the job properly, and I'm so glad that I did. The fit is spot on, and everything is properly aligned and neatly finished. It ties in perfectly with two of my sewing goals for 2026; slow sewing and building my skills - in this case pattern grading. On top of all that, I have so much going on just now that spending time absorbed in this project was a rare opportunity to feel like 'me' for a bit. Which is priceless.

Finally, one topic which came up several times at the dinner was just how few photos those of us who were alive 40 years ago have of ourselves from then. So if you've read this far (thank you!), here is a bonus shot from July 1986, taken with my parents after my graduation ceremony.

With much the same hairstyle as now!

Thanks to Mum's archive for the photo!

Diamond and triangle

Time to start making Butterick 3794 in my 'proper' fabric. It's Jane Ecovero viscose challis from Atelier Brunette. Things did not get off to the best start when I gave it a (very cool) pre-wash, and it went from being 140cm wide to nearer 130cm! I managed to coax it back to around 134cm, but this still required a few adjustments to the cutting layout. Thank goodness I had bought a bit extra.

Squeezing the pattern pieces in (with migraine tablets unintentionally to hand)

Other than that hiccup, it has all gone fairly smoothly so far, probably helped by the fact that this was my third time making the bodice. The difference this time was that I made up and attached the central quilted diamond panel - and decided to ignore the pattern instructions.

The method given is to quilt the fabric onto wadding, cut out the panel with a seam allowance, sew it to the dress right sides together, and turn the seam allowances into the centre. A lining panel is then sewn over the raw edges.

Nope

Even with trimming and grading, this gives two layers of wadding along the seam, with more at the points, and seemed likely to be very bulky. So instead I cut the wadding to the size of the finished panel, then folded the fabric seam allowance over and overcast it onto the wadding.

Demonstrated on the mock-up because I forgot to photograph the 'proper' version!

Then I basted this onto the dress. There were already three rows of basting holding the pleats in position, plus two rows of tailor tacks for making the pleats, so that made for a lot of tacking thread - all of which had to be painstakingly removed afterwards.

Baste-o-rama

I slip-stitched the panel into place, and then overcast all the edges to make them lie a little flatter.

Completed apart from the lining

As with the mock-up, I used machine embroidery thread for the quilting. This time however it was intended to contrast rather than blend in, so I had to be even more precise in my stitching. To really tie in with the dress fabric, I alternated beige and green threads, and then discovered to my chagrin that the difference in colours is invisible on the completed piece. As ever, at least I will know that it's there.

It is two different colours, honestly!

I'm still not convinced that having what looks like either a tiny eiderdown or part of an even tinier barrage balloon attached to your midriff is the last word in haute couture, but that's the eighties for you!

I cannot shift these images from my brain

So that's a lot about the diamond, what about the triangle?

Having finished my cardigan, I need a new knitting project to take when I visit my mum. And dull grey February days call for something cheery. So I'm knitting up my Leaf Peeping yarn from Ewe and Ply. Somehow, it had caked up looking like two entirely different yarns.

Two for the price of one

The original plan was to make another Close to You shawl, but I decided that I didn't really need two of the same pattern in the same yarn, albeit different colourways. Happily for me, Stories of Small Things, who knits lovely shawls, had recently posted her Dandelion Air on Instagram, and it looked like an ideal pattern to show off the colours of this yarn. And it is.

38 rows in

However horrible it may be outside, it's impossible not be cheered up by knitting a couple of rows of this jaunty fruit salad of wool!

A toile for the 1986 dress

Back to Butterick 3794. Having successfully regraded the pattern, the next step was to shorten the bodice pieces to fit, and make a complete toile.

The first mock-up was made from scrap fabric, but for the second I decided to aim for a wearable toile, so bought a remnant of viscose in a weight similar to my 'proper' fabric and a print I would actually wear. As ever with remnants, I had to devise my own cutting layout to fit everything in. My method for doing this is to lay the fabric on the carpet, play around with the placement of the pattern pieces, and then once I have something which works photograph it and label the photo.

Part of my cutting layout

Making the dress up was fairly straightforward, once I had got all the pleats in place. However, there's one construction detail which is invisible in the photograph, ignored in the line drawing on the back of the pattern envelope, and only hinted at in the drawn illustration.

Can you spot it?

It's only really apparent on the pattern piece for the centre front panel. Although all the points of the diamond meet seam lines, the waist seam is not actually on the waist at the centre front.

The 'waistline' marking is the only clue

I had attempted to take this into account when I shortened the bodice front, but there was a degree of guesswork involved. When I tried the toile on, I marked where my actual waist was with a green headed pin.

Marking my waist

When I laid the pattern piece over the top, it was almost spot-on!

The green pin head is just visible

Up to now, I had been fitting the dress with the sleeves in, but not supported. There are gathered stiffeners in the sleeve head, and also shoulder pads which extend beyond the shoulder seam. I put these in, and surveyed the effect. (Apologies for the poor quality of the next photos, they were phone snaps for reference, and not intended for the blog.)

That's a lot of shoulder!

The face you pull when your sleeve head is bigger than your actual head

The sleeves were also rather too long.

Not a problem I usually have

After a bit of pondering, I thought to check where the shoulder seam sat relative to my actual shoulder. Sure enough, it was too far out, and pinching in the shoulder seam fixed the sleeve length and made the fullness - still full, but less absurdly so. I've redrafted the armscye for making the actual dress.

Finally, although for fitting purposes I had used the plain cotton centre panel that I made for the first mock-up, I still needed to make the quilt version in my toile fabric. I had no confidence in my ability to stitch all the lines freehand, so drew them out on a piece of tearaway stabilizer. I laid this over a piece of wadding, with the fabric underneath, and basted all the layers together.

Pinned out and basted together

I then sewed them together, with a silky machine embroidery thread in the bobbin and ordinary thread on top.

All done, and pleasingly parallel lines

I'm trying hard to banish the thought that it looks like a very small eiderdown - hopefully it will look better once it's in the dress!

We interrupt this programme

Yes, I am continuing to work on Butterick 3794 - I have a deadline for it, after all - but only when I'm at home. When I'm at my mum's, I knit. And, courtesy of a lot of time spent sitting in an armchair chatting and knitting, I have finally finished my slate Wondrella!

Woohoo!

I started this project over two years ago, in November 2023. Given that I had managed to knit both my blue and aloe Wondrellas in the preceding nine months, that's a very long time for one cardigan. I got distracted by other projects, and possibly I was just a bit Wondrella'ed out. But since I picked it up again in October, I've kept at it.

I eventually got to the end of the second sleeve, and I even knitted the cuff ribbing as p1, k1 instead of k1, p1, so that the way the rib meets the end of the cable would be the same on both sleeves! Obviously, no-one will know this but me, but it makes me happy.

Why yes, I am a nerdy completist, how did you guess?

Partway through knitting the fronts, I had begun to wonder how much wool this version would use (and it has used a fair bit more than the previous two), and I thought it best to buy an extra ball. Because it was so long since I bought the original yarn, of course it was a different dye lot. The base colour was the same, but there were clearly more coloured flecks in it. So I decided to knit the neck band and button bands last, in the hope that if I had to use a slightly different yarn it would be less noticeable than changing halfway down a sleeve. After the endless knitting of the sleeves, the bands came together very quickly - and I did have enough of the original yarn.

Slightly blurred (sorry) neck band pic

Buttons. Regular readers (thank you) will know the trouble which button choice always causes me. This time however, it seemed to be straightforward, as I had a whole tube of the perfect buttons for the job - bought years ago at a flea market for pennies. But of course, it was more complicated than that. The seemingly identical buttons ranged from light grey to almost black.

Lighter or darker?

In the end, I went for the lighter buttons. As with the previous versions, I backed the button and buttonhole bands with grosgrain ribbon.

And here, at last, is the finished item being worn. I tapered the lengthened the sleeves too early, so they are quite close-fitting towards the cuffs, but I have no intention of any reknitting! It proved impossible to get any photos which showed the cable detail clearly, so the picture at the top of this post will have to serve as proof that it is on there!

The cable is barely visible

This project was a lot of work; I had to write out the pattern for the fronts line by line, and then alter it in stages to insert the cable instructions. (I'm sure there must be an easier way, feel free to comment!) But I'm delighted with the end result, and proud of myself for achieving it.

Part of my rewritten pattern and notes

That I could do it at all was due to Tasha, the designer of Wondrella. She creates such clear, well-written patterns that I had a strong basis to work from, and that is why this mad idea of a still newish knitter worked. Thanks, Tasha.

Making the grade

If you are going to make your first attempt at pattern grading, a design with pieces cut on the bias, odd shapes, and lots of pleating is probably not the best place to start! But I have form with jumping in at the deep end on new creative endeavours, and this time I had a couple of things to help me.

The first was this book.

Grading Workbook by Connie Amaden-Crawford

It was recommended, ages ago, by @sew.midcentury on Instagram. As a) she is a hugely talented dressmaker and b) it was one of her textbooks when she studied at FIDM, I thought it was worth getting hold of a copy. I must admit that even though the grading process is clearly explained in easy steps, initially there were times when my brain just felt fried.

One step (of many) of the bodice regrade

But once I got used to the process, it was surprisingly straightforward.

Regrading the sleeve head

The other thing which helped was my decision, made very early on, not to regrade the centre front panel of the dress.

This bit

I always have to shorten bodices between the waist and bust by about 5cm/2", so any increase in the panel size would then have to be altered in the top half. I didn't want to end up with a kite-shaped piece, and nor did I want to change the dimensions by widening it but leaving the height the same as the original. The easiest thing seemed to be to leave well alone. This also had the advantage that I wouldn't have to regrade the pleated sections of the skirt and bodice fronts. For the skirt, I just added the extra width to the side of the pleating.

The bodice front was another matter, though.

Traced off the original pattern

I had to pleat it up to understand how it came together.

Now it looks like a bodice front

Even so, attempting to redraft it felt likely to go horribly wrong. I may just launch into things, but I do know my limits. Instead, I cut the piece apart following Amaden-Crawford's diagram and added strips of tissue in the gaps.

I omitted adding any length below the armscye

I then traced everything but the two bottom edges onto a fresh sheet of tissue (I got through a lot of tissue in this process!), traced the pleats off the original pattern piece, and redrew the waistline to join the side to the pleated section. It matched the waistline of the skirt, so I was pretty sure I'd got it right.

Then it was time to make my first mock-up. In the pattern, the dress back is cut as a single piece, but I split it into two and made the skirt and bodice separate so that I can more easily adjust the bodice length.

Excuse the bad mirror selfie

The end result definitely requires work. But everything it needs - shortening the bodice, raising the neckline, bringing in the shoulders - is what I have to do to any garment. I've created a size 16 pattern which fits me exactly as commercially drafted size 16 pattern straight out of the envelope would; and I’m pretty chuffed with that!

Party like it's 1986

I've been invited to a fancy 40th anniversary 'do' later this year, and had the bright idea of making a dress for it from a 1986 pattern. I already have a few patterns from 1986, but none of them were suitable, so I started to investigate what else was available.

It seemed that there were a number of trends that year, and none of them were pretty. I can't remember what I wore around the time, and it's part of my 'lost decade' for which I have no photographs, but I don't recall wearing anything like these. (Although I probably did if it was the fashion, I've just erased it from my memory - with good reason!)

The shapeless, straight-down-from-the-shoulder look was clearly very popular, possibly because it was easy to sew. Many patterns included a nice horizontal line across the hips for emphasis.

For when you just want to look like a rectangle

If that wasn't bad enough, you could have a blousing effect instead of a belt.

What was it with sailor collars?

Or you could really go to town, and have both!

Just throw everything at it

Then there were the massive sleeves. These could be cut as one with the bodice.

Sleeves right down to the waist

With an exaggerated drop down the arm.

At least the sleeve seam would be easy to sew

Or set in, but heavily gathered and also batwing.

So. Much. Fabric.

And let's not forget the shoulders. By this time the slightly boxy 1940s revival shoulders of the early 1980s were old news.

When you have to go through doors sideways

After a fair amount of searching, I hadn't found anything I'd be willing to wear around the house, let alone out of it. Eventually I came across Vogue 9651. I liked the fitted shape, the pleats, and the V neck. The sleeves and shoulders, not so much, but I wondered if I could tone them down a bit.

Getting better

But I kept looking, and eventually found this.

We have a winner

Can we just take a minute to appreciate the utter 1986-ness of that fabric.

Those colours!

The photograph may have been distracting, but the design had potential. The line drawings on the back confirmed that this was something I could work with.

I'm going for view B

Unfortunately the only copy of the pattern available was a size 10, which I most definitely am not. Which is how 2026 became the year in which I will finally have to learn pattern grading!