Vogue 9546 completed

Well, it didn't end up in the bin! Despite last week's traumas with the midsection, I now have a completed dress that I'm very happy with.

Anyone who remembers my #UseNine2021 choices from January will have twigged that this wasn't a planned project for the year. It all started with this year's #vintagevalentinechallenge and the prompt 'Accessories'. I posted a picture of my straw bag, along with the lament that I don't use it much because it doesn't go with anything I own. Then remembered this fabric in my stash, which I thought might have similar colours. It does, as the colour dots on the selvedge show, and the leaf shape is a good match too.

Perfect pairing!

It's a fine cotton which I bought years ago on a whim because I really liked the colours and design. Initially I had no idea what to do with it, but then I found a thin, silky, satin in exactly the same shade of red, and had the idea to make the two-tone version of Vogue 9546. My UK pattern has a black and white envelope, and as a result it's not obvious that this is an option (although the yardage requirements section does mention it). It's far clearer on the US version of the illustration.

British and American pattern envelopes

I made the original dress back in 2015, and while it still fits, it could do with some minor alterations – not least to fix the ungraded sleeves!

Version 1

I discovered a novel problem when cutting out the blouse section. Regular readers (thank you!) will know that I am normally trying to coax a three-metre dress out of two metres of fabric. This time I had plenty of yardage to play with, but the issue was placement of the pattern pieces. I wanted the point at the bottom of the blouse to be as much green as possible, to contrast with the red of the skirt. The best way of doing this left the blouse front consisting almost entirely of red leaves and green background, but I wanted a reasonable quantity of the floral sections to appear. At the same time, however, there was also the need to avoid 'boob flowers'!

So much fabric!

In the end, I was very pleased with the way that the pattern flows across the blouse front.

The completed blouse

Satin didn't feel right for a day dress, so I used the fabric wrong side out. As the pattern dates from 1942, my 'story' for this dress was that it was made when clothes rationing was in full swing, and its owner had Made Do and Mended by creating something from the less worn parts of a cotton dress, and an old 1930s evening gown such as this one from National Museums Liverpool's Putting on the Glitz exhibition.

Silk satin evening dress, 1932-5

I was resigned to having to make a placket opening and sew on a lot of press studs, not my favourite job. Then, miraculously, I discovered that I actually had a zip of the right length and colour in my zip collection – possibly the first time this has ever happened!

The instructions for the tie at the front were still beyond me, so instead I snipped some of the covered buttons off my fictional 1930s dress and used these for decoration. Although it was impossible to photograph, the satin makes a good contrast with the rest of the dress.

Satin buttons against a matte background

I talked my friend D into acting as photographer again (I had warned him last time that he would come to regret making such a good job of the role!) but unfortunately, the day we chose turned out to be the one dull day in a sunny spell. On top of that, my hair steadfastly refused to play ball with whatever styles I tried to get it into, so regrettably it looks very non-period (although a passer-by did make my day by saying "Ooh, very 1940s" as she walked past us).

The completed dress, with the bag

On the plus side, my American Duchess oxblood 'Marilyns' had arrived that morning, and were a perfect match for the dress in both style and colour.

New shoes!

So I've now got a dress which goes with my bag, and it's chipped away at a bit more of the stash. I've also decided to join in with the #fabrichoardchallenge hosted by @jabbadal, and this is my first contribution; hopefully the first of many.

Six metres used so far

Stuck in the middle

Sometimes, a project just fights you every inch of the way. The other day a friend asked how I was getting on with, "That dress you've got to finish by the end of March", i.e. the first of the Sew A Vintage Style Dress Community quarterly challenges. I had to shamefacedly admit that I haven't even started it yet, because I'm bogged down in something else.

This was meant to be a 'quick and easy' make - when will I ever learn that this assumption is a recipe for disaster? I've made up the pattern, Vogue 9546, before. It just needed a few alterations to fix a couple of fit issues and then, in theory, I'd have it made in no time.

Vogue 9546, from 1942

The dress consists of three parts: a blouse, a skirt, and a midsection. Each is constructed separately, and then the midsection is laid over the other two and secured with lapped seams. There is a side opening for either a zip or a placket fastening.

The diagram shows the midsection clearly

It is the midsection which is causing all the problems. Not for the first time, the issue comes down to my fabric choices. I quickly realized that the silky red fabric I wanted to use, while perfectly fine for the skirt, was far too flimsy to work for the midsection on its own. The solution was to flat line it. Fortunately, I still had some of the cotton I'd used to line Vogue 5215 left over, and it was ideal for this as well. (Once we can travel again, a day trip to Shrewsbury is needed, to get some more of this excellent fabric from Watson and Thornton.)

Usually flat lining involves cutting out pieces exactly the same shape as the sections to be lined. However, if I did this, it would mean that there would be at least five layers of fabric (two cotton, two outer fabric, one of blouse/skirt) in the lapped seams, and many more in the front points. I worried that this would be too bulky, so decided to omit the top and bottom seam allowances.

Flat lining the seams, but not the top and bottom edges

I sewed the midsection fronts together, the backs together, and the left side seam (I always put the opening in the right side seam, because I'm left-handed). Then I folded the outer fabric over the top and bottom edges, and tacked it in place.

The completed midsection, from the back

Next I sewed the midsection onto the blouse. The lovely Ms 1940 McCall, who (unsurprisingly) makes a lot of 1940s patterns, has recently posted a video about using an open toe foot as a guide for sewing lapped seams straight. I followed this fabulous piece of advice, and it worked like a charm – thanks Debi!

The blouse attached - it was all going so well at this point!

Unfortunately, sewing the midsection to the skirt didn't go so smoothly. I don’t know what the problem was; if it was the convex rather than the concave curve, or the fact that I had tacked this edge last and didn't want to pull the outer fabric too tight, but the lapped seam failed to catch the cotton lining most of the way round. When I held the dress up, this quickly demonstrated exactly why the midsection needed flat lining to provide the strength and stability to support the skirt!

I spent some time considering how to fix this. I also spent some time considering the possibility that this dress just didn't want to be made, and I should cut my losses and bin it. In the end, I decided to try adding a second row of stitching to the bottom seam. My machine has an option to sew with the needle pushed to the left, and for the first row I had done this with the fold resting against the left 'prong' of the foot. After some experiments on scraps, I opted for the same arrangement, but with the fold resting against the right 'prong' for the second row. Then, of course, I had to repeat the process on the top seam with the blouse section.

Sewing the second row

The end result would not have looked remotely so neat if I had tried to do it freehand, indeed I'm pretty sure that it would have ended up in the bin!

Impressively parallel rows of stitching

After all of this work and changes of plan, I’m currently not exactly feeling the love for this project. However, I think (hope) that I'm on the home stretch now, and with any luck there will be a completed dress to show next week.

#VintagePledge - Vogue 9546

Woohoo! I’ve completed my first vintage pattern make for the Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge, and I’m really pleased with the end result. Plus, it’s purple (well, heather), and I read recently that purple is currently an ‘in’ colour, so I am officially On Trend. This happens to me a) rarely and b) always by accident!

My first vintage pattern choice

According to Home Sewing Patterns of the 1940s, Vogue 9546 was published in 1942. This seems to be confirmed by the envelope back, with its references to coupons and the CC41 restrictions.

Vogue patterns save you coupons!

This rather blurry image from Pinterest show the US version of the pattern, printed in colour.

Same drawings, in a different arrangement and in colour

Not only is the British version in black and white, but the instruction sheet is very poor quality paper, and now quite brittle. I scanned it onto the computer, so that I didn’t have to keep referring to the original.

Relatively detailed instructions for a vintage pattern

Unlike some of my vintage patterns, the piece name is stamped into each pattern piece and seam allowances are included.

Pattern piece, with lots of markings

The grainline is indicated by two large perforations, although sometimes you have to refer to the picture diagram to work out which two.

Diagram of the pattern pieces

Because the pattern is the wrong size for me, the first thing I had to do was resize it. I decided just to make the relevant pieces wider rather than regrade the whole thing, as I thought that I would have to shorten the bodice anyway. I did nearly come to regret this decision later!

I made a mockup of the bodice so that I could work out which pieces I needed to shorten, and by how much.

I love this drawing of how to alter the pattern

The pattern was missing the front facing piece, but once I had finished the pattern alterations this was easy to create from the blouse front piece and the picture diagram.

My fabric is a synthetic crepe, bought from one of the many fabric shops in Goldhawk Road on my recent London trip. Originally the dress was going to be blue, but then I saw this fabric and decided that it was the perfect 1940s colour.

The seam allowances at the top of the midsection are pressed under, then the midsection is laid over the blouse and sewn through all three layers, rather than constructed with a conventional seam. The skirt is attached to the midsection the same way. This was clearly a common technique at the time, but I was relieved that I’d already come across it in Vogue re-issues 8686 and 2787, where it was explained in a bit more detail.

The bodice partway through construction

One thing which nearly had me flummoxed was the ties at the centre front. These were attached in a way which left no raw edges, but did leave a gap in the centre front seam between the ties.

? The instructions . . .

. . . and the finished ties

I didn’t like the end result at all, so took them off, sewed up the seam, and decorated it with three small, self-covered buttons instead. "Buttons for the purpose of ornament" contravene the Civilian Clothing Regulations, but I reckoned that any home dressmaker of 1942 who could tackle this pattern could also have made ball buttons from scrap fabric.

The sleeves have pleats at the elbow, and could be full length with a snap fasten at the bottom, or three-quarters. They are very slim-fitting, and this was where I realised that I probably should have regraded the entire pattern, as this would have widened the sleeves. Fortunately I have thin arms, so the sleeves actually fit well!

The dress has a side fasten, which could be either a placket with snaps and a hook and eye, or a zip. I went for a zip, but decided to hand sew it to make it less obvious. This turned out far neater than my previous attempt at a hand-picked zip, so I was very happy. The shoulder pads in the instructions are huge; made from a circle of fabric 25cm / 10” in diameter, with bound edges so no seam allowance to make them any smaller. I used bought pads, but covered them in fabric.

Also large by my standards was the hem; 5cm / 2”. Because it’s a plain fabric, to me the hem is really noticeable, and I may have to redo it. However I came across this article, about weddings in the second world war, complete with photographs of a bride in a very expensive short dress, with a very obvious hem (yes, I do notice things like that - sad but true!). So I’m taking mine to be ‘period accurate’.

The finished dress has a lot less wearing ease than we're used to now; so much so that it's nigh on impossible to get it onto Nancy to photograph it. So I had to model it myself. Thanks to S for letting me use her 1930s porch as the perfect backdrop, and to J for humouring his mum's lunatic friend and acting as photographer!

The finished dress, worn with the just-visible CC41 earrings

One pledge down, two to go.