Sunday 5 June 2022

Butterick 7598 progress

After a long break, I'm finally back working on Butterick 7598. Yay!

Unfortunately, I've got rather less done over the weekend than I had hoped. My laptop decided to die yesterday, and it took me the entire afternoon to coax it back to life. Things weren't helped by going on to the manufacturer's website and basically being told that it was my own fault for persisting in using it for so long instead of replacing it - grrr! After all this, it was a great relief to go back to working with a 90-year-old lump of cast iron which is still going strong.

Back in my happy place!

When I last posted about this project, I had given up trying to redraft the pattern with four different adjustments simultaneously, and had just redrawn the bodice pieces without the variable seam allowances.

The seam-free versions laid over the originals

I could then pin the pieces onto Nancy, to see where alterations are needed. Because I knew that I needed to grade up a size, I pinned the pieces ½" out from the centre line.

The back . . .

. . . and the front

The result was 1½" too long at the back, and 2½" too long at the front, so I am going to assume that I've positioned the shoulder seam wrongly, and just take 2" out all round for the first toile.

When I make mock-ups, I usually only do the bodice, as that is where the fitting issues occur. However, I've come unstuck with this approach a few times recently. What appears to fit when it's just a bodice can behave very differently once there is a skirt attached to it. So this time, I'm trying something a bit different. I've made the skirt part of the dress already, and will pin it to the mocked up bodice once it is done.

I felt that the skirt of 7598 was a bit too slim to work on me, so I used the skirt of Butterick 6866 instead, as both are six-panel skirts with a side fastening. The result is more mid-1930s than late-1930s in length, and rather full for 1937, but both of these can be adjusted if necessary. Please excuse the terrible pictures, the lighting in this part of my workroom is not ideal for photography.

The skirt

The next step is to draft new bodice pieces and make the first toile.

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