Time spent in reconnaissance

Jennifer Rosbrugh, who runs the excellent Historical Sewing website, recently asked on Facebook what 'top tip' people would give to sewing newbies. At 800 comments and counting, I've not managed to read them all, but one of the recurring themes seems to be the importance of preparation.

I've had reason to think about this a lot this week, as despite working on Vogue 1277 for what feels like forever, I've still not taken scissors to (proper) fabric. My plan to leave the jacket toile until the dress was complete came unstuck when I discovered that the dress and jacket pieces are jumbled together in the cutting layout, so I need to have everything drafted properly before I could begin.

If only I'd looked at this before I started!

Proper drafting is taking time. Unprinted pattern pieces were cut in thick stacks with a bandsaw, and the pattern markings punched by hand, so there's plenty of opportunity for inaccuracy - and this pattern seems to have made the most of that opportunity! So it's not just a case of making fit alterations; I have to check that notches and circles match up, and 'straight' lines are actually straight.

That's a lot of markings to check

Although it's taking a lot of time, it hasn't felt like wasted time. This pattern is in a different league from my usual projects, and making toiles of the dress and jacket has given me the chance to identify tricky sections before I start on my (limited) proper fabric, and also to work through and understand the instructions properly. The instuctions for pleating the skirt, for example, seemed utterly impenetrable at first. It was only by marking the lines of circles in different colours for different circle sizes that I could understand the process.

I did skimp a bit on making the toiles. I only made one sleeve, and I shortened the skirt panels a lot because it was the fitting at the top that I needed to check, not the length. This was however enough to demonstrate that the side panel markings are totally off, so I need to do do some more work in that area.

The dress toile, with very un-1950s ra-ra skirt!

It wasn't apparent until I made the jacket up that its sleeves are far too long for me. As they have faux vents at the cuff, this would have been almost impossible to fix if I hadn't checked it first. Because I had graded the pattern up a size, I basted on a jacket pocket flap to check if I needed to grade that up as well. I also added stashed buttons of the size I intend to use, again to check the proportions (although as the picture above shows, I didn't manage to add them symmetrically on the dress).

The jacket toile

Adding the jacket buttons highlighted something which wasn't so apparent on the pattern marking: the vertical spacing is uneven because I had to shorten the bodice above the waist. I'm not yet sure what to do about this, but I would have hated to have only noticed it after I'd cut the buttonholes!

Uneven button placement

I'm not entirely happy with the bottom edge of the collar either, so that will have to be tweaked.

These are all things which can be fixed, but I only discovered that they need fixing by making the toiles. It was my mum who taught me to sew, but my dad is a maker as well, and it was he who taught me the maxim, "Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted". It's certainly been the case with this project.

Making these pieces up in white cotton, and adding white buttons and trim, reminded me of my favourite section in last year's Dior exhibition at the V&A; The Atelier, with its floor to ceiling display of toiles.  Obviously, the inhabitants of 30 Avenue Montaigne are not in the habit of missing off sleeves or shortening skirts, but here is my little homage.

Spot the difference!

Vogue 1277 - making a start

Having completed my February entry for the Historical Sew Monthly, it's time to turn my attention to my other monthly challenge, the Vintage Sew A Dress A Month. For this I'm making the dress part of my graduation outfit, Vogue 1277.

Vogue 1277, 1954

Close-up of the dress

At some point I really need to do a full post on the fitting issues I've been having with my dressmaking recently, but for now I'll just say that I knew that at least one mock-up was going to be essential. Mostly for the fitting, but also to understand the construction.

The bodice pieces

The bodice front in particular has a lot going on.

Just some of the markings on the bodice front

Fortunately I'm used to the odd shapes and construction of vintage Vogue patterns from some of the reissues I've tried, especially 8686 and 2859. So I made what I hoped were the right alterations to the pattern, cut it out from cotton sheeting, and started sewing.

The main problem turned out to be not following the instructions, but seeing them! There is a single instruction sheet, size 40cm x 48cm / 15½" x 19", and one side of it is taken up with cutting layouts. All of the constuction details are crammed on the other side, with complex diagrams which are often little more than 2½cm / 1" wide. Fortunately I discovered that if I took lots of close-up photographs and transferred them to my laptop, the printing was sharp enough for a greatly enlarged version to be perfectly clear. This also reduces the amount I have to handle the original instruction sheet, which is a little fragile.

Teeny tiny, but well printed, instructions

It was interesting to see certain differences from current constuction techniques. For example, the bodice is clipped in two places (steps 5 and 7 above), but there is no attempt to reinforce the fabric first, as a modern pattern would suggest. I added the reinforcement anyway, but in a contrast thread so that I could check if it showed on the finished bodice.

Clip lines in green, reinforcement lines in red

Similarly, the sleeve head needs quite a lot of easing to fit it into the armscye. Normally I would expect the pattern to suggest running a line of basting stitches round it and pulling them up to fit, but these ones just say to ease the sleeve head as it is basted in place. This sounded very tricky, so again I went for the technique I'm familiar with.

Nowhere on the pattern, on the envelope or the instructions, is there any indication of what notions are required. There are zips and the back neck and at the side, but I had to work out their lengths from the pattern. More annoyingly, it turns out that there are three buttons on the dress. As I was only bought the six which were visible on the jacket, and can't get any more, I will have to give this some thought.

However, back to the toile. I only made the bodice for the first attempt. When I tried it on, I was pleasantly surprised (please excuse the dreadful photo).

I really need to clean that mirror, and position it in better light

The shoulders are far too wide, and the bodice is too short at the front (it's fine at the back). Both are related to my ongoing fitting issues, and easily fixed. Other than that, I was pretty pleased. I have reredrafted the pattern, also taking time to tidy up all the notches and markings which were out of place on the original, and am currently working on mockup number two - this time with a skirt. We'll gloss over the fact that initially I spread the 1" adjustment of the skirt piece across three places in amounts of ⅜", ½" and a further ⅜" - because everyone knows that there are ten eighths of an inch in one inch, right? This is what happens when you use metric and imperial measurements simultaneously!

I'll finish off with these pictures of the wonderful Lesley Manville in The Visit at the National Theatre. When I saw this photograph in a review, I was struck by just how much the silhouette of her costume matched my pattern.

Even the contrast collar looks familiar. Image © The National Theatre

I love the fact that she clearly rehearsed in a big net petticoat, to get used to the movement of the costume!

Image from BroadwayWorld

Sewing goals for 2020

I may not have managed to do much sewing in 2019, but I'm hoping to make up for it in 2020.

Warning: this is going to be a long post, as I've got lots of goals to write about.

Possibly the most important one (certainly the one with an immovable completion date) is making an outfit for my graduation in March. After all, having spent three years studying and writing about vintage home dressmaking, I can't really turn up to the ceremony in something modern and shop-bought! Of course it needs to be made from a vintage pattern, and something fancier than my usual cotton print dresses.

I've chosen this 1954 Patou Vogue Paris Original pattern, which is from a large lot of patterns which I bought at auction some years ago. I never got around to blogging about the collection as a whole, but it really boosted my interest in vintage patterns.

Goal number one - Vogue 1277

This was the reason for the 9.5 metre addition to the stash on last month's London trip. Cate, who blogs as Vintage Gal, makes wonderful 1930s clothes, and does amazing tailoring, had told me about Crescent Trading near Spitalfields, so I paid them a visit. It is fabric-lover's dream shop, stacked to the rafters with wools, silks, and all sorts of other goodies besides. After a lot of deliberation I bought some beautiful superfine merino suiting in blue with a slight black speckle, which gives it depth. I also bought some fine silk twill for the lining. The jacket collar can be made from fur, which was not going to happen, or velvet. Philip Pittack at Crescent Trading told me that they didn't carry much velvet, but it turned out that what he meant was not much by their standards, so only a dozen or so colours. Happily this included a dark blue which was perfect. Then at Barnett Lawson I found some braid and velvet buttons which were an exact match. They only had six left and weren't getting any more in, but luckily six was what I needed.

Clockwise from left: suiting, buttons, velvet, silk lining

It's a very long time since I've done any tailoring, so this will be a chance to really bump up my skills.

The dress will double-up as my February entry to my second goal for 2020, taking part in the vintage dress-a-month-along organised by Renae Brock Fitzgibbon and Lizzie Violet.

Goal number two

As soon as I heard about this challenge, I thought that it would be perfect for making me actually get on with some sewing. However I didn't want it to become an excuse for buying yet more fabric. So, my plan is to use the sew-along to actually get through some of my stashes of fabric and vintage patterns - both actual vintage and reissues. I am not short of any of these items: these photos show just a selection of what I can use for inspiration!

A worryingly small section of my stash

Some possible reissue choices

Some possible vintage choices

Fortunately, I do have somewhere to start. I found that I was frequently buying fabric because I thought it would be perfect for a pattern, or vice versa, but because I didn't start the project straight away, I would forget what I’d bought it for! So when my friend F gave me this Fashion Timeline Journal last year, I used it to record all the pattern/fabric combinations I had thought of.

1930s ideas

For January I am making up Butterick 5748 in a fine viscose. It's hardly the time of year for a sleeveless dress, but I'm using it as 'pre-work' for February's challenge, trying to sort out some fit and alteration issues. More details to come when I post about the dress.

January's pattern and fabric

However, this isn't the only challenge I’m taking part in this year. When people asked what I was planning to do once I had finished my dissertation, I always replied that I wanted to get back into historical sewing. Time constraints meant that I gave it up while I was studying, and I missed it. The Wedding Gown in a Weekend event just reminded me how much I missed it. So this year I am joining the Historical Sew Monthly again, and am really excited to be doing so.

Goal number three

One problem with my previous historical sewing was that what I made was a bit random: the only complete outfits I produced were my Ottoman dance costume, my 'Fortuny' dress and shoes, and my Wiener Werkstätte ensemble. However, this year the format of the Historical Sew Monthly has changed slightly. All the monthly challenges were opened at the start of the year, and can be completed in any order you choose. This is perfect for me, because while I will use some of the challenges for mending/fixing fit issues on stuff I already have, my main plan is to use them to make a complete 1874 outfit. I have nothing at all for this period, so intend to make everything, from the chemise outwards. The idea is to start with simple things which don't take much time, until my graduation outfit is done.

I chose 1874 because I own an actual pattern from that date (co-incidentally it was in the same auction lot as the 1954 Patou pattern), I blogged about it here. Though in-depth research/endless Pinterest scrolling, I managed to find the back view (thank you to Isabella of All the Pretty Dresses for posting it), so now have some idea of how the pieces fit together.

'Casaque du Printemps' - the illustration on the pattern

The jacket/casaque will be the last part of the outfit that I make, and my hope is that by the time I reach that stage my skills will have improved enough for me to tackle it, as there is only a brief description on the pattern.

So all in all, it's a very ambitious plan for the year. Wish me luck!