Slow going on my January dress

I had hoped to be posting about my completed January entry for the Vintage Sew A Dress A Month today, but it's not quite finished. For some reason, hemming a circle skirt of thin viscose is harder, and takes longer, than hemming a circle skirt of cotton. Also, the dress is fully lined, so once I've finished that I've got the lining to hem as well - although that will be done by machine.

My pattern choice for January

Part of the reason why this dress is taking so long is that I made life harder for myself by altering the cutting layout. Like many of Butterick's other full-skirted pattern reissues, 5748 has the skirt cut at right angles to the bodice - along the fabric rather than across it.

Cutting layouts for different views and fabric widths

This wasn't a problem when I made Butterick 6582. The bold floral print looked much the same both up-and-down and sideways.

This fabric hides everything

The stash fabric I'm using for 5748 however is strongly directional.

This fabric does not

I didn't want to have the black elements of the pattern running up and down on the bodice, and sideways on the skirt, so I used an approach which was common in the 1950s.

This Weldons pattern is a good example, as it also has a full skirt - in this case it's a semi-circle.

Weldons 1606

Because the completed skirt sections would be wider than most fabrics available at the time, they are split into two pieces; the skirt and the skirt gore.

Instructions showing the pattern pieces

These are stitched together, and then the completed pieces are sewn up to make the skirt.

The skirt construction

I folded my fabric in half lengthways, and cut out the skirt front and back on the fold. Before I unpinned the pattern from the fabric, I marked where the edge of the fabric was, making an allowance for the seam. Then I used the pattern piece to cut out the extension. Naturally, I had to pattern match the join - I couldn't bring myself not to! And then, I decided to alternate between black and light grey thread on the join, to make sure that the stitches don't show. Talk about a glutton for punishment!

Attaching one of the skirt gores

Because the viscose is so thin, I used a thicker cotton for the lining than I'd normally use, to give the dress some body. I also had to patch one of the bust darts with a lighter section of the fabric, to stop one of the back circles from showing through. The only other changes I made were my usual ones of swapping the zip to the right side and adding a pocket in the left side skirt seam.

This is the dress as it currently looks. I'll post some pictures of me wearing it when I finally finish the hems! I'm hemming it with the light grey thread, and going over the stitches in the black sections with a black permanent laundry marker pen. I did the same on the hand-picked zip.

On Nancy, awaiting hemming