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!