Vegas Night dress, the details

By Wednesday night all I had done was make up the bodice lining, which also functioned as a final toile to check the fit. I still had a lot to do, especially as I had work Christmas lunch and a class party/rehearsal to go to before Saturday. Fortunately I had some spare leave to take.

One thing I hadn’t done by then was draft the neckline properly. The dress was always going to have a back zip opening; I just made the toile front opening so that I could get it on and off easily. I decided that I wanted a wide neckline and a crossover front, so drew a rough outline on the toile, and drafted a proper bodice front and facings from this.

The neckline sketched out on the toile

When I cut out the bodice front pieces out I matched the pattern roughly, but didn’t worry about an exact match.

Cutting out

With hindsight I wonder if more of a mismatch would have been better, as the crossover is a bit lost.

The disappearing crossover front

I made up the bodice, tacked the overlapping fronts together, and sewed a wide stripe of black satin on for waistband. The lining waistband was made differently, by sewing seven shaped pieces together. This was because I wanted to bone the lining, and sewing boning channels onto flat-pressed seams would give a smoother look than sewing them over darts. However for the satin I was happy to just put darts in.

This was the point when the dress began to come together.

Raw edges and tailor tacks still in, but starting to look like a dress

I didn’t bother to draft a pattern for the skirt. Rather than a smooth skirt made from shaped pieces, like the red dress, I wanted to make the skirt as wide as possible, with deep pleats to fit it to the waistband, like the mint green dress. I decided on the length, added a bit extra for luck, and cut out four rectangular panels using the full width of the fabric. Then I laid these on top of one another and carefully folded the whole lot in half, top to bottom.

To calculate the width of each panel at the top, I measured the bottom of the black satin waistband, and divided by four, to get the width of each panel. Then I multiplied this figure by three, to allow for the pleats. Finally I added three centimetres for seam allowances, and divided the total by two. This was the measurement from the fold line at the top of the panels to the cutting line. I drew a line from this point to the bottom of the folded panel, and cut out through all eight layers of fabric.

The skirt was pleated to the bodice with inverted pleats at the centre front and back and the side seams.

Side pleats and a lined sleeve

On the back there were also inverted pleats at the bottom of the waistband dart. On the front the final pair of inverted pleats matched the bodice pleats for the bust.

Matching pleats on bodice and skirt

By this stage time was really getting short, so now we reach the ‘almost’ finished bit. There are a few things I need to go back and redo. The bodice lining is very roughly tacked in. Even worse the hem is, whisper it, machine sewed. Oh the shame of it! I deliberately made the skirt rather too long, so that I can re-hem it. The fabric is almost plain white on the wrong side, and as I have a bit of it left over I want to do a proper faced hem, so that if the underside of the skirt shows mid-swish (and with a full skirt and a net petticoat, there’s a lot of swishing) it will look pretty.

That’s a lot of hand sewing though; the hem is over four metres long. Fortunately I can sew and watch TV at the same time, and because I’ve been so busy recently I’ve got most of series two of “The Hour” to watch. I’ve had a sneak preview of some of the outfits on this blog, and can’t wait to get started.

Finished! (well, almost)

Time I needed to set off for our girls' night out - 6:30pm.

Time I put the last stitch into the dress - 5:45pm.

45 minutes to spare? Ample. (Believe me, for some projects in the past it has been less!)

One thing I haven't had time to do however is write a proper post; so for now here is a picture of the completed* article, and I'll write a full post tomorrow.

All ready for the Vegas Night

* - give or take a few, minor, details

Gertie to the rescue

It’s all very well being able to draft pattern pieces with a gusset, but you have to be able to sew them too. The bodice/sleeve piece is split up the centre of the gusset marking, and the gusset set into the gap, raw edge to raw edge. It’s tricky.

Inserting the gusset

So tricky in fact, that my first attempt was a complete disaster. The second attempt was better, but only because I machined the straight parts, and hand-sewed round the curve. This a) was time consuming, and b) did not give much strength at the point of the gusset which is under the most strain.

Fortunately Gertie’s Blog For Better Sewing has an excellent tutorial on how to tackle this particular vintage detail. Gertie sews the gusset into a much narrower area on the main piece, but I decided to stick to Hilary Campbell’s method of drafting and sewing the gusset.

For the dress I’ll use silk organza as the tutorial recommends, but for my test piece I used the frost fleece which I use for making toiles. I cut a rectangle of fleece, marked the gusset sewing line on it, laid it on the right side of the test fabric, and sewed round the cutting line.

'Organza' sewn on

Then I cut up the centre line, and clipped the curve.

Cutting up the gusset line, and clipping the curves

Next I pulled the fleece and seam allowance through to the wrong side of the fabric and pressed it, making sure that the seam didn’t show on the right side.

The facing pulled through to the wrong side

I pinned the gusset under the main piece, matching the raw edges, and top stitched close to the edge of the main piece.

The gusset inserted

The result: a neat gusset, with an extra line of stitching and an organza/fleece facing reinforcing the edge.

The gusset opened out

Once I had this sorted, I could make up a toile from the kimono blocks I had drafted previously.Although the dress will have a zip at the back, I drafted the toile with a single back piece and a front opening, so that I could try it on easily.

The result fitted really well (why am I always surprised that a pattern drafted from my own measurements actually fits?), so I could then start on the alterations needed to make the dress I have in mind.

The first toile, with possible neckline drawn on

Much as I like the fabric, even I have to admit that it’s a bit busy.

Whoa!

To tone it down a bit, and to echo the very fitted waists of my inspiration pieces, I have decided to have a tightly fitting section from the waist to directly under the bust in plain black satin. The line marking where the main bodice should end is just visible on the toile above.

I want the dress to have short sleeves, partly in line with the inspiration dresses and partly for a balanced overall shape. I have a small bust and wide hips, and anything sleeveless, especially with a full skirt, just makes me look more cone-shaped than ever. Just how short I could make the sleeves was limited by the upper edge of the gusset, but I was happy to go with that.

The final consideration was the darts on the bodice front. The two dresses have strongly slanting, almost horizontal darts, but I don’t really like them. For inspiration I turned to my copy of The Golden Age of Couture, and found just what I was looking for: a 1952 Dior day dress where the bust darts are replaced with inverted pleats.

I drafted new pattern pieces, and made a second toile. There was a lot about it that I liked. The high waistband piece only needs a few darts at the bottom edge to make it fit perfectly. The sleeve length is perfect; when my arms are lowered the sleeves end in line with the plain black waistband, which will extend and emphasise the strong horizontal line at that point.

The second toile

The only problem was the bust darts. I had changed them to pleats, but left them in the same place on the bodice. They were too central, and this caused the fabric to pull, creating a third pleat.

Problem area on the bust pleat

Fortunately unpicking the waistband seam and moving the pleats further towards the side seams fixed this.

Although I’m happy that I’ve now got a bodice pattern I can work from, today was a challenging day. In July I hurt my right knee quite badly, and although it has been getting very slowly better, yesterday I stupidly managed to set it back by some way. To my horror I discovered that I couldn’t operate the pedal of my sewing machine with my right foot. In theory this shouldn’t be a problem. I could use my left foot instead, how hard could it be? This was when I discovered that after almost four decades of operating a sewing machine right-footed, I just didn’t have the same motor (no pun intended) skills in my left foot. This led to some ‘interesting’ stitching, and a certain amount of unpicking. It’s 12 days to the big night; this could be a close-run thing. Wonder if the girls fancy helping me sew the hem in the taxi on the way to the venue?

Goldilocks and the Great Sleeve Mystery

This has intrigued me for a while. At exhibitions I keep seeing dresses from the 1950s and 1960s where the bodice and sleeve are cut as a single piece. The shoulder seam extends down the sleeve, and there is a separate piece set into the underarm. This appears on evening and day dresses, and both the ‘inspiration’ dresses for my Vegas Night dress have it, so clearly it was a common feature of the time.

One-piece sleeves on an assortment of dresses

I can understand the purpose that the underarm piece serves. If the sleeve and bodice are cut out as a single piece with the sleeve sloping down, it is impossible for the wearer to raise their arms. If the sleeve and bodice are cut out as a single piece with the sleeve at right angles to the bodice, the garment will pull at the neck when the arms are lowered because there is not enough fabric to go over the shoulder.

The gusset enables the one-piece bodice and sleeve to imitate the effect of a set-in sleeve, which is shaped to allow the arm to be raised or lowered.

How a set-in sleeve allows arm movement

Despite its apparent widespread use, this type of sleeve construction doesn’t appear in any of my vintage patterns; they all have set-in sleeves. So, I turned to my pattern drafting books, and this is where the Goldilocks reference comes in.

 Winifred Aldrich’s Metric Pattern Cutting is a standard textbook for a number of fashion and design courses. Unfortunately it only covers set-in sleeves; there was nothing on this type of sleeve at all.

“Dress Pattern Designing” and “More Dress Pattern Designing”, both by Natalie Bray, were published in the early 1960s.

Natalie Bray's 1960s pattern drafting books

I love just looking through them, as they have wonderful line drawings of the various styles of the time, and how to draft them from the basic blocks.

Various bodice styles, and how to draft them

From “More Dress Pattern Designing”, I discovered that the style I’m looking for is called the “Kimono Block”. The block and its variations are covered in depth, and while I definitely want to go back and read this properly sometime, it was a bit too much depth for what I need just now.

Finally I turned to Hilary Campbell’s Designing Patterns.

Not too little, not too much

This was recommended on a three-day pattern drafting course I went on earlier in the year. With clear diagrams and concise instructions for the kimono block it was, like Baby Bear's chair, porridge and bed, just right. We created our basic bodice and patterns on the course using this book, and armed with those I was able to draft my own front and back kimono blocks and of course the mysterious underarm gusset piece.

Drafting the kimono front block

The next step is the toile, and the complex-looking task of setting in the gusset.

The die is cast

Vogue 1302

Well, my plan to make Vogue 1302 has been put on hold for a while, as I simply can't find any suitable fabric that I like. I've tried three local fabric shops and various mail order companies, to no avail. Actually, I did find something suitable mail order, but at £47.50 per metre it would have been a very expensive dress. Not even the recent trip to London came up with anything that fitted the bill.

I did find my dream dress in London however, which would be perfect for the occasion (a "Vegas Night" with the Ya Raqs girls).

Embroidered wild silk cocktail dress

There are just two, slight, problems. Firstly, I am not remotely the shape to fit into this dress, and all the boning and powernet in the world would not change that.

Serious curves, and a back view

Secondly, and slightly more problematic, it is a 1962 Christobal Balenciaga dress in the V&A's permanent costume collection.

As I don't embroider nearly quickly enough to recreate the dress for our Christmas night out, I'll have to come up with an alternative. Sticking with the taffeta-like satin which I wanted to use, and the 1950s/1960s theme, I've turned for inspiration to two other dresses which I've seen this year and really liked. The first was in the Glamour exhibition, the opening dress in fact.

Inspiration number one

A 1950s red silk satin cocktail dress by Branell at Julius Garfinckel, USA. I loved the fact that it's not too fussy and is mostly about the shape, but the wrap detail at the waist gives it a certain something.

The second dress dates is from Shambellie House. It dates from 1961, and is made from pale green artificial silk. Although a similar shape to the cocktail dress above, it was worn as a bridesmaid's dress. The fitted waist section is actually a continuation of the full skirt, with the fabric taken into pleats. The seam lines are just visible.

Inspiration number two, a theme is emerging!

So, I have a definite idea. One obvious difference is that I'm using patterned fabric, not plain. I can't get any more of the fabric, and I'm not using a commercial pattern, so I'll need to draft the pattern pieces before I'll know if my idea is actually possible. Oh, and all this with less than a month to go.