Celebrate (and Green)

Whoohoo! Vogue 8686 is finally finished, and in 2013 as well. Admittedly only just; I sewed the hem at my parents’ house on New Year’s eve.

Originally this was intended for the Historical Sew Fortnightly Green challenge, but that went very awry. At times, given the number of ‘fit-sigh-take apart-try again’ cycles I went through, I did feel that it qualified for the Re-Do challenge as well! Fortunately the last challenge of the 2013 was Celebrate, defined by The Dreamstress as:
"Make something that is celebration worthy, make something that celebrates the new skills you have learned this year, or just make something simple that celebrates the fact that you survived HSF ’13!"

So, after all the angst that has gone into making this, it seemed fitting to celebrate its completion. Plus, I can celebrate learning a new vintage sewing construction technique; a side placket fasten with press studs.

The completed placket

I wasn’t sure how well this would work. The fabric is quite thick, so I worried that all the layers involved could make the end result fairly bulky. However I ruthlessly trimmed and graded all the seams, then carefully overcast all the raw edges as the fabric frays very easily, and stitched the lining under the edges of the placket.

Inside view of the placket

The end result looks really neat; far better than I had expected (the wobbly seam in the picture is due to the dressform having considerably less curvy hips than I do).

The fastening closed

Plus, the skirt finally fits perfectly. A massive thank you to Leimomi for her suggestion as to why the fit was initially so bad; I shall try out her method next time I make up a Vintage Vogue pattern.

I took the waist of the dress in quite a lot in order to get it to fit, so the next potential problem was that the separate peplum and belt would be too big. Fortunately by a combination of making the side seams slightly wider towards the top, and using a much smaller seam allowance on the join between peplum and belt, I was able to match it up to the dress.

The peplum, with the narrow seam allowance marked at the top

Initially I didn’t think that the big hem on the peplum would work, but I did manage to ease in the extra fullness. I made up the lining the same way, sewed it to the peplum at the top, then turned the lining under, trimmed off the excess and slip-stitched the lining in place. Then I attached the belt, and held the interfacing in place with five rows of topstitching.

Completed peplum and belt, inside view

I used a vintage buckle to finish the belt off. It didn’t have a prong, so I used a tip of my mum’s, and made the belt a little wider than the space in the buckle, so that it wouldn’t slip open. Thanks, Mum!

Close-up of the buckle

Completed peplum and belt

The eagle-eyed may have noticed that some things seem to be the wrong way round. This is deliberate. Because I’m left handed, I moved the side fasten to the right of the dress, as it is easier for me to reach there. I also swapped the belt round.

There is a tiny bit of shine on the right side of the bodice, where I accidentally moved my press-cloth while pressing the dart. This gives me the perfect excuse to disguise it with this super-cute wooden swallow brooch, which was a present from my sister-in-law.

The perfect accessory

After all that, the dress fits perfectly, and I’m delighted with it. So much so that I actually have pictures of me wearing it, complete with a Christmas tree just sneaking into view at the right. Actually, it had to be photographed on me, as there wasn't a dressform to hand. (I ‘acquired’ my mum’s dressform some years ago, but that’s another story.)

Back view

Finished at last!

The small print:
The Challenge: Originally meant to be completed for Green, actually completed for Celebrate.
Fabric: Linen-effect fabric of unknown (man-made) composition for dress, equally unknown synthetic fabric for lining
Pattern: Vintage Vogue 8686
Year: 1933
Notions: Three self-cover buttons, seven snaps and one hook and eye for fasten , vintage buckle for belt, three (! yes, there was that much unpicking) 100m spools of thread
How historically accurate is it? The pattern is a re-issue of a Vogue 1930s design and construction is accurate for the period, but fabric is definitely not. Say 65%
Hours to complete: Too many to even contemplate!
First worn: 31 December, to celebrate New Year at my parents' house
Total cost: Fabric £27.13, lining £11:47, thread £4.80 (three spools at £1.60 each), vintage buckle £2, pattern and other notions from stash, so £45.40.

Adding a lining

The Historical Sew Fortnightly has introduced me to the blogs of so many talented people and given me a wealth of ideas and inspiration; not just for yet more garments I want to make, but also how to make them. For example, the beautiful finish which The Modern Mantua-Maker always gives to her clothes has prompted me to make more of an effort with finishing off my own dressmaking.

The first thing to benefit from this approach is Vogue 8686, to which I have added a lining. The only green lining fabric I could find was an emerald green which clashed dreadfully with the apple green of the dress. Eventually I found a browny-green crepe fabric which was suitable, if a little heavy.

To make the lining, I cut out all the pattern pieces apart from the facings. The only thing which I changed was the bottom of the sleeve; I cut it slightly shorter, and with a straight edge. Then I made up the bodice in the lining fabric.

There were only two differences from the construction of the dress bodice. Firstly, I used a scant 12mm/½” seam allowance rather than the usual 15mm/⅝”. A lining should be made very slightly larger than the garment, because lining fabric generally has less 'give' in it that the outer fabric. Secondly, I omitted part of the stitching which attaches the lower back piece of the lining to the sleeve/back yoke. This was because the lining would be handled differently at the centre back.

The part of the bodice construction omitted from the lining

Once I’d made up the lining bodice, I turned the dress inside out and then pulled the lining over it, wrong sides together. I pinned the two bodices together the seams and dart ends, then pinned through the lining, neckline facing and dress at the very edge of the facing.

On the dress front, I cut the lining fabric away to about 25mm/1” in from the row of pins, except at the centre front. There I made the edge of the lining into a much shallower V, so that it was easier to work with. I turned the raw edge under by about 12mm/½”, pinned it down, and slip-stitched along the turned edge.

Front neckline completed

The facings at the back of the dress are quite wide, as they have to accommodate the buttons and buttonholes. As with the front, I cut the lining back to about 25mm/1” in from the edge of the facing. Once the sides were in position, I turned under the top edge of the lower back piece, and slip-stitched that in place as well.

Back neckline

I used much the same technique for attaching the lining to the sleeves, except that I made the sleeve linings about 25mm/1” longer than they needed to be, so that the lining comes down over the sewn edge. This is the same technique as is used for jacket sleeve linings, and ensures that you can move your arms easily.

Sleeve, showing the slight overhang of the lining

When slip-stitching the lining down, I had to be very careful that I only sewed it to the facing, and didn’t so much as catch the bodice fabric underneath. I found this out the hard way. Even though the stitches didn’t show on the right side, they pulled the fabric, and were very obvious once the dress was on.

Next I made up the skirt lining, and attached it to the bodice. I now need to decide if I want to sew the lining down to the waistline seam allowance, or if I leave it hanging free, with a stay at the side seams to stop it from twisting round under the dress.

(Please excuse the festive backdrop to these photographs; my sister-in-law and brother-in-law called in at the weekend and dropped off our Christmas presents, I haven't found anywhere to store them yet!)

Back view of the lined dress

I also used two strips of the lining fabric to neaten the edges of the skirt’s side vent with a Hong Kong finish.

The skirt vent

I will use the same technique on the hem, when I get to that stage. Putting the dress on a dressform, I was surprised by how long it is; even though I made my pattern pieces quite a bit shorter than the originals.

Front view. The dressform is the same height as I am, without shoes.

As well as making the inside of the dress look so much neater, the lining makes it much easier to get the dress on and off. So all in all, well worth the extra effort.

Vogue 8686. Again

Me and my big mouth - part two.

So, last week I posted about completing the bodice of Vogue 8686 and foolishly added that the bodice was definitely the most complex part of the dress. Well, that was just asking for trouble.

The pattern envelope describes the dress as, "fitted, A-line". Referring yet again to my trusty copy of Vogue Sewing, 'fitted' should mean that the pattern has a total ease of 7.5-10cm / 3-4". Comparing my measurements to the total dress width on the pattern pieces at the bust, waist and hips, I decided that the bust needed to be the size I wear in bought clothes, the waist one size larger, and the hips between one and two sizes larger (yep, seriously pear-shaped).

So, I drafted my pattern pieces and cut the dress out. I did have some reservations about just how wide the skirt would be at the bottom, but worked on the basis that if it did seem too wide, taking in is always far easier than letting out.

Skirt front pattern

Having completed the bodice, I made up the skirt, and sewed the two together. As the fabric frays a lot, I also overcast the seams and bound the edges of the side vent, so that the whole thing wouldn’t fall apart when I tried it on. The end result looked dreadful on me, just entirely shapeless. In fact, it looked so bad that I couldn’t even bring myself to take a picture.

The dress looked much better if I made a couple of pleats at the front waistline. However, was this appropriate for 1933 (the date of the pattern)? An exhaustive trawl of 1930s fashion online suggested not; I could only find one image of anything remotely like that.

McCall 8242 (on left), with front skirt darts

So I tried Plan B, and redid the side seams to take the dress in at waist. This improved the waist no end, but the hips were still far too wide; so much so that the dress actually stuck out at the sides like comedy panniers. Plus, as feared, the skirt was massively too full at the bottom. Needless to say, I still couldn’t bring myself to photograph it.

At this point I abandoned trying to work from pattern measurements, and went for the practical approach. I took a similarly-shaped bought dress which I know fits me, laid it on top of what is rapidly becoming the 'dress from hell', and marked out the skirt shape from there. The skirt now fits. However, the amount removed has taken it back to dimensions suspiciously like those of the bust size!

I’m really not sure what is going on here. Several years ago I made up view D of Vogue 8028 (now out of print in the UK), all to my bust size.

View D is the orange dress on the left

It fits perfectly, and is one of my favourite dresses, but I had assumed that the pleats at the waist allowed me to get away with a smaller dress size at the hip than I really need.

Vogue 8028, back and front views

According to the dimensions of the pattern pieces of Vogue 8686, making the waist and hips the same size as the bust should produce something far too tight. I’m confused, and need to go back to the fitting shell, Vogue 1004, to work out exactly what to do with straight and A-line skirts.

So I now need to overcast the new side seams and bound the edges of the new side vent, then add the side fastening and then do the hem. I had hoped to complete the dress for the Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge Green before the next challenge is due tomorrow, but clearly that’s not going to happen. Meanwhile, all the green items which the other Challengers have made can be viewed here.

One final, slightly weird, thing. When I considered making something for this challenge, I immediately thought of Vogue 8686, but had no idea why. Then, when I went to buy fabric, I was immediately drawn to an apple green, tweed-effect cloth. Looking for Vogue 8028 today to photograph it, I came across Vogue 8633 as well. I wonder if this is why I associated green with a funnel neckline?

80 years difference, oddly similar neckline

Vogue 8686, the bodice

The work on the house is complete, but has left a fair bit of mess, and my studio needs a good clean before I can move back in. Fortunately the things which I couldn’t move were carefully wrapped up in dust sheets, so should have come through unscathed.

I couldn't face moving all my books!

I’m still exiled to the dining table, and have not got as much done this week as I’d hoped (this is becoming a depressingly familiar refrain). However the bodice of Vogue 8686 is now complete, and that is definitely the most complex part of the dress.

My standard alteration for Vogue patterns is to shorten them by 3cm between waist and bust, and by 2cm between bust and armscye, but this time I just wimped out, and removed the full 5cm / 2” at the ‘lengthen/shorten here’ line on the pattern, just above the waist. The reason? It was just too complicated to do anything else.

The bodice consists of three parts: a full length front section, a short back section which goes from the waist to halfway up the back, and a complex piece which forms both the sleeves and the upper part of the back. At the front, the bodice and this third section fit together quite simply to form dolman sleeve effect, with a dart shaping the shoulder line and the stand-up collar.

Bodice front and sleeve, with the dart at the top

To remove the 2cm between bust and armscye I would have had to shorten both the centre back and the bodice front sections of the sleeve. Now that I’ve actually made the bodice up, I can see how I could have done this, but when I was doing the pattern alterations it was just beyond me, so I took the easy option.

The sleeve/back yoke piece

Like Vogue 2787 the pattern has a lot of markings; squares, triangles, large circles and small circles. As you can see in the picture above, I had learned my lesson, and tacked each type of marking in a different coloured thread.

The bodice construction begins with the darts in the bodice front. Then the sleeves are attached, easing the bodice in slightly to fit. Also like Vogue 2787, this isn’t done by laying the pieces right sides together and sewing: instead the seam allowance on the sleeve is turned under, the pieces lapped together, and the seam is stitched close to the folded edge. The same technique is used on the back, and to attach the skirt. Next come the darts to form the shoulder and collar.

Front completed

The next stage is working the bound buttonholes, and this is where there appears to be an error in the pattern. The buttonholes are made from a single piece of fabric, which is cut from piece number three of the pattern. When I cut it out, I marked the outline of the buttonholes with white thread, and the square marking with black. The square marks the centre back. The buttonhole piece is then placed on top of the left back, matching the squares (step eight in the instructions). As the illustration in the instructions shows, the edge of buttonhole piece is slightly to the left of the raw edge of the back, so the positioning in the photograph below is correct.

Buttonhole bother

The only problem is that buttonhole piece is lying right side up, whereas the instructions are to place the pieces right sides together.

It wasn’t a major problem. I realised almost at once that the instructions were wrong, and re-marked the buttonhole piece on the wrong side. However it could confuse someone without much dressmaking experience.

Once the buttonholes are done, the two sleeve/back pieces are overlapped, and the lower back section attached. Then the neck facing is constructed and attached.

Back completed

The instructions are then to sew the underarm/side seam, and after that make up and attach the sleeve facing.However the sleeves have an attractive curved edge at the bottom, and I decided that it would be easier to attach the facing first, and then sew the whole seam, facing and all.

I couldn’t find any buttons that I liked for the back, so I decided to use self-covered ones instead. Because the fabric is relatively thick, the buttonholes are quite deep, and need buttons with a longish shank. So, after my complaint about Hemline self-cover buttons the other week, I found that they were perfect for the job!

Completed buttons and buttonholes

As my usual dressform is wedged deep behind goodness knows what, I took these photographs on another, 'pre-loved' dressform that I've been given; some day I plan to do it up a bit.

The bodice is gathered slightly between the yellow marks and the side seam when it is attached to the skirt, so it is actually more shaped than it appears here. So far, I’m happy with the way this is working out.

The completed bodice - front

The completed bodice - back

Nice sleeve edge detail

Bound buttonholes, a comparison

Oh, me and my big mouth! Last weekend, The Dreamstress posted that she was busy working on her piece for the current Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge, green, and asked if anyone else was having a ‘green weekend’. Well, the pattern alterations of Vogue 8686 were coming along nicely, I had the (green) fabric ready, and I expected to have some time to make up the dress during the week. So, like a complete idiot, I posted that I hoped to actually get a challenge done on time.

Well, you can guess what happened. All sorts of things turned up to take up my time. Worst of all (from a Challenge point of view), some work on the house which we had been talking about for ages is finally going to happen, and some of it is going to happen in my studio. So not only have I had to relocate to the dining room (I have to put things away when we want to eat, horror!), but I also had to move out everything which wouldn’t take kindly to a lot of dust: rolls of fabric, sewing machines, more rolls of fabric etc. etc.

Just some of the stuff I had to move

The result? I’m a long way behind on yet another challenge. I’ve made a start on the dress bodice, but I’ve only got as far as the buttonholes.

The dress has three buttons at the back of the neck, and these fasten with bound buttonholes.

Vogue 8686, back view

It’s a very long time since I’ve done bound buttonholes. The pattern instructions give the method which I’ve used in the past, but I vaguely remembered reading about a different approach, which uses patches of silk organza. I found details of the organza patch method in Vogue Sewing, and also in Gertie’s blog, so I decided to make up samples of both techniques, and see which one I preferred.

I worked two buttonholes by each method, so that I could refine the process as I went along. To start off, I basted sew-in interfacing to the back of each sample piece, to match the construction of the bodice.

The method in the pattern instructions
The pattern includes a single piece for cutting out the fabric for all three buttonholes; I shortened this to two. Once I'd cut the fabric out, I tacked through the pattern to mark the corners of each buttonhole. The fabric is woven from quite thick threads, which give a clearly defined warp and weft, so it will be very obvious if the buttonholes aren't exactly on the grain. With this in mind, I clearly marked the corners of each buttonhole with tacking along the gaps between the threads.

The buttonhole piece and the pattern. This is also the only photo which shows the fabric in the correct colour!

Then I laid the buttonhole piece onto the fabric, right sides together, making sure that the grains were properly aligned.

Buttonhole piece tacked into place

Next I sewed the rectangles marked on the pattern. This needs a very short stitch length; whereas I usually have the stitch length dial on my machine set to around 2.5, for this I set it to 1. The stitching needs to start partway along one of the long sides, and be overlapped by a few stitches at the end. It's particularly important that the long edges of the rectangle are perfectly parallel: I sewed the short edges by hand-turning the balance wheel of the machine, and counting the stitches.

The stitching shows up better on the wrong side

The buttonhole was cut according to the diagram below. The stitching is shown in black, and the cutting lines in red. Cut right into the corners, but be careful not to cut the stitching.

The buttonhole piece was cut in two, following the broken line on the pattern piece in the first photograph above. Then all the tacking threads were removed, and each square was pushed through the hole cut in its centre.

One buttonhole turned through, the other partway

The fabric has to be pulled firmly on the wrong side to make it lie flat. This is where I discovered that I hadn't snipped right into the corners in a couple of places, and had to cut through a couple more threads. Next I pinned the buttonhole piece to the main fabric at the centres of the short sides of the rectangle. Then I pleated the top and bottom sections so that they met in the middle of the cut-out rectangle.

One buttonhole pinned flat, the other with the fabric pleated and pinned into place

I overcast the folds together at either end of the buttonhole. I used contrasting thread for the example, so that the stitches would show. I also sewed down the raw edges, although this wasn't necessary.

Completed buttonhole from the wrong side

This was the finished article. Not very good. The buttonhole lips are not equally sized, and fabric is showing at the short edges. On the plus side, the buttonhole is exactly on the grain.

Could do better

For my second attempt, I trimmed a tiny amount off the raw edge of the long side of the seam allowance. This left a little gap between the two edges, which accommodated the thickness of the pleats meeting in the centre. I was also a lot firmer in pulling the short ends out.

The long edge trimmed

I tacked across the buttonhole piece an equal number of threads above and below the centre point. This made it much easier to check if the pleats were even.

The tacking line just visible on the lower section

The end result looked much better.

Perfectly even tacking lines, and the extra fabric trimmed away

And much better from the front as well.

Even lips, no side sections showing, and still on the grain

Definitely an improvement on the first attempt. And the two buttonholes are in line!

No contest

The organza patch method
I made a few alterations to the instructions I found online. These recommended marking the buttonhole on the interfacing on the wrong side of the garment. However, partly because the interfacing is black, but mostly because of the importance of having the buttonhole follow the fabric grain, I stuck with my tacking lines. However this time they are on the fabric/bodice itself. The organza patches are cut 2.5cm / 1" larger than the buttonhole all round.

The prepared fabric and the organza patches

I had marked the buttonhole shape on the organza, but it turned out that it wasn't really necessary, as the tacking stitches showed through clearly. As before, the outline is sewn with a short stitch length.

One patch pinned in place, and one patch sewn on

The buttonhole is then cut as before, and the organza pushed through to the back and pressed in place. It's important that none of the organza shows on the right side.

The organza is slightly visible, and the 'windows' aren't entirely rectangular

The next step was the lips of the buttonhole. For each buttonhole I cut two rectangles of fabric, each 2.5cm / 1" larger than the buttonhole all round. These were placed right sides together, and sewn across the middle. I sewed one by machine and one by hand, because I wasn't sure that the machining was following the grain exactly.

Important! These stitches will be removed eventually, so if they are sewn by machine, remember to increase the stitch length first!

Next 'butterfly' the pieces by folding along the stitching line so that the wrong sides are together. Press firmly.

One set of lips hand sewn together, the other set pressed flat

Pin this piece behind the window in the fabric, with the lips even.

This is where it gets tricky. Turn over to the wrong side, and fold the fabric back, so that the long seam allowance of the window is visible. Sew this to the buttonhole lip, sewing over the existing line of stitching. Gertie does this by machine, using a zipper foot to get right into the stitching line. I was a wimp, and sewed mine by hand.

Sew along the line of machine stitches visible in the centre of this photograph

This was where the problem with hand sewing the lips together became apparent.

The lips are coming apart, and the main piece is puckering towards the centre

The machine sewn lips stayed together, but as well as being uneven, the puckering persisted.

Still not right

The two completed buttonholes

And the back view

The verdict
Although it's not that obvious in the photograph below, the organza patch method produced what looked like a 'deeper' buttonhole, as the lips were set back from the window. Also, despite my best efforts, the grain of the fabric still curves in to the lips, both above and below the second buttonhole. For this fabric, I think that the method given in the pattern works best.

All four samples.