An emergency blouse, and back to black

I had my first Covid-19 jab on Monday - woohoo! In honour of the occasion (and let's face it, any excuse to go out is worth making an effort for at present), I decided to follow the examples of @susanyoungsewing and @daisycreatesglam and dress up in me-made clothing for the occasion. But there was a problem. It's too cold for any of my sleeveless summer dresses at present, and a check of my wardrobe two days before my appointment confirmed that I own no sleeveless tops, either me-made or bought.

Of course, the only solution was to make one. A search through my patterns turned up this one, which I've wanted to make for a while because I love the neckline on views B and C. It's the right size as well, which was handy as I didn’t have time for regrading.

Style 1195, late 50s/early 60s?

Finding fabric was tricky. Because I mostly make dresses, I tend to buy my fabric in dress lengths, and using part of a dress length to make a blouse seemed wasteful. Fortunately, I discovered a piece of cotton which I'd acquired when my mum had a destash and which was, despite a tear at one end and a printing error at the other, just long enough for making a sleeveless version of the top.

This medium-weight cotton was perfect

I also found that I had three buttons which were a perfect match for the gold accents in the print, so decided to make a sleeveless version of view B.

Usually I read through the pattern instructions before starting a project but, because it was a simple design and I was short of time, this time I just ploughed straight in (you immediately know that this was a bad idea, don't you?!). It's a printed pattern, and views A, B and C use the same pattern pieces. They had already been cut out to make a sleeved version of view A, so I traced off shortened versions of the front and back with the view B neckline, and also cut out the armhole facing pieces.

Everything went together very easily until I came to attach the completed armhole facings, at which point I discovered that they were far smaller than the armholes they were meant to face. It was only at this point that I looked at the pattern envelope properly, and discovered my mistake. There are two cutting lines for the armhole, the version for sleeves is the larger one, and the pattern had been cut to this.

If only I'd looked at this properly . . .

The bodice front piece for views D and E was uncut, and this shows the different cutting lines clearly.

. . . or this

The unintentional armhole shape didn't look bad when the top was worn, but enlarging it by the 1.5cm/⅝" of a seam allowance all round might have made it too big. So instead of drafting new facings, I used the bias binding method used for New Look 6643 - fortunately I had some wide white binding in my stash.

Problem solved

The buttons are the right diameter for the pattern, but with very chunky rims, so any buttonholes would have had to be huge for them to fit through. Instead, I just sewed the buttons on and fastened the blouse with snaps.

Perfect, if chunky, buttons

The pattern has darts at the waist, tapering to the hem. I didn't have time to do these before wearing the blouse on Monday morning, and I still can't decide whether or not to bother with them. I quite like to have the option to wear the blouse untucked, and loose and boxy. For my jab, I wore it tucked in and with a belt. And I got a sticker!

Spot the "I've had my Covid jab" sticker!

I wore the blouse with the black and white skirt that I made a couple of years ago, and it was fine, but as I was getting dressed I thought, "What this top really needs is a black skirt". Hardly a radical thought for most people, but a quick glance through the gallery pages of this blog will show that I Don't Wear Black. My graduation gown a year ago was the most black I've worn since Mr Tulip's funeral, and even that felt a bit odd. But, yesterday marked seven years since Mr Tulip died, and for the first time the concept of making and wearing something in that colour didn't seem impossible. When looking for blouse fabric, I had come across some black fabric which I acquired when a friend's mum had a destash, and it's currently on my worktable being made into a skirt. Progress can take many forms, not all of them obvious.


Update: 31/03/2021
The skirt is now complete; lined, and constructed with an internal waistband of curved petersham - a new technique for me and a look which I've discovered I really like. (So when the shops reopen I will now be forced, forced you understand, to visit my local fabric shop purely to stock up on curved petersham!) Here is is with the blouse loose and tucked in, and an updated Stashometer.

I think I'll keep the option to wear it untucked

Another 3.2m used in total

Records

Blogger tells me that this is my 500th blog post - blimey! I can't believe that I've been here since January 2012, and writing a regular Sunday post since 2013. This seems to call for something a bit more appropriate than a latest-dress-project-update post, and fortunately this week I've been working on a side project which fits the bill nicely.

This week's work

I don't know if other people do this, but I tend to take notes as I'm working - jotted down measurements, reminders of something I will need to do later on, that sort of thing. Usually these are scribbled on a piece of A6, or the back of an envelope, or whatever comes to hand. It's not pretty - papers get lost or accidentally put out in the recycling before they are finished with, and if I have written on multiple pieces of paper than the one I need is always, always the last one I pick up!

I hadn't really given this unsatisfactory method a lot of thought until Jen Thompson, who blogs as Festive Attyre, posted a picture of one of her notebooks on Instagram. As well as making stunning costumes Jen collects, and uses, vintage cameras. She keeps all her notes on the quirks and details of each camera in a beautifully illustrated notebook, and at this point it finally dawned on me that a notebook for my sewing projects would be a Good Idea.

I did have a suitable notebook already but unfortunately, it wasn't exactly aesthetically pleasing.

Functional, but boring

Fortunately, also on Instagram, @wendyadamsedin has been posting pictures of the amazing notebooks and folders she has been making on a bookbinding course, and this gave me the idea to make a cloth cover for mine. Ages ago I had acquired a piece of Liberty lawn which was too small to be of much use and too pretty to throw away, and this was the perfect chance to finally use it. I selected some matching embroidery threads, and found a mystery piece of home-made bias binding which was ideal for the spine (I eventually worked out that it was leftover from the neckline of my peacock dress).

Gathering supplies - the binding was just the right length

The fabric was so thin that I had to line it with some white cotton, and used a leftover piece for the embroidered label. I embroidered the letters in stem stitch first, then did a running stitch oval around this, and laced the two shades of orange through the stitches.

Lettering and outline

Adding decoration

There are no 'in progress' pictures of the cover itself because I didn't really follow a process; it was more a case of wrapping the cloth round the book, pinning it in place, then trimming off the excess and sewing the end result together.

The page keeper was made from two circles of scrap buckram covered in fabric, lightly stuffed and sewn together, with a plaited cord of the embroidery flosses sewn into this and the cover.

I really like this little detail

And here is the end result. All my notes in one place, a cover which can be removed and slipped onto another notebook (I do have a spare) once this one is eventually filled - and all done with bits and pieces I already had. Result!

Front and back views

It's being used already

Hack it or draft it - part 1, research and planning

Q. What do you do after you have finished a dress which gave you all sorts of problems with its construction because you chose to use a really awkward fabric?

A. Obviously, you start another dress in much the same fabric!

This quarter's challenge for the Sew A Vintage Style Dress Community is 'Hack It or Draft It' - either draft your own pattern, or take an existing one and alter it. I'm doing a bit of both, converting the blouse of Vintage Vogue pattern 2859 (now out of print) into a dress. And I'm going to use one of my #UseNine2021 fabrics for it; the very slippery, very drapey, teal satin. What could possibly go wrong?!

Vintage Vogue 2859, the blouse

I made this in 2014. I've still got it, and I still like it, but I never wear it because it is so short and rides up. Judging from the images I found when I googled the pattern number, several people dealt with this issue by adding length to the blouse below the waist tie.

Note the gaps between bouse and skirt

On closer inspection of the pattern envelope illustrations, it's apparent that it was intended to be worn over the dress, not as a standalone blouse.

The black 'skirt' is actually the slip dress

The blouse has darts at the front, a wrapover back, and ties at the front. The right back goes under the left, with the tie going through a bound buttonhole.

Blouse front and back

I have decided that I don't want to just extend the top to dress length and rely on the ties to shape it, instead my plan is to make a darted skirt attached to the front and the right back, with a side fastening on the left (not my preferred option for side opening, but necessary this time) and a waist stay to hold it in place. The left back will still wrap over, and tie at the front.

Cue dropping down the rabbit hole of research. At this point I should stress that my intention is to make a '1930s-inspired' dress from the pattern, rather than something strictly period accurate, so I have a lot more freedom to pick and choose design elements. CoPA has a good selection of 1935 dress patterns, which were my starting point, plus I have a couple of 1930s copies of Vogue Pattern Book. One feature which I liked was skirts with a centre front panel rather than a centre seam.

Vogue dress patterns featuring centre panel skirts

Some styles have flared skirts, like this Butterick pattern in my collection, while others are straight with pleats at the bottom. Some only have one front pleat (or even, only one front seam) to give a faux wrap effect - these usually have a further pleat at the centre back.

Butterick 7598, 1937

McCall 8350, 1935, from Etsy

I've decided to go for a hybrid approach, with two seams, but only one front pleat. The seams will (I hope!) line up with the centre one of the three pleats on the bodice. Then, while looking through "1930s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook" by Charlotte Fiell and Emmanuelle Dirix (currently out of print, but possibly due to be reissued later this year), I found this illustration.

La Mode Illustrée, 1932

I really like the idea of the offset, rather than central, tie.

Design decided upon, it was time to create the pattern. The only change I've made to the Vogue blouse is altering the back piece so that it comes all the way across to the side seam. The skirt is based on my standard skirt pattern, lengthened, widened to give a hem circumference similar to that of Vogue 8686, and with the front split into panels. I need one side panel with a vent, one side panel without a vent, and a centre piece with a vent on one side only (which means that it can't be cut out on the fold, but needs a complete pattern piece).

The fabric I'm using is a remnant, and finding a way to fit all the pieces onto the material available stretched even my pattern tetris skills to the very limit! It doesn't help that the bodice pieces are really odd shapes. In the end, I had to make rough scale drawings of all the pattern pieces and play around with different placements.

My cutting layout creation method

As usual when fabric is limited, it all had to be cut from a single layer of fabric. The fabric selvedges were very tightly woven, causing the satin to pucker, so I had to snip into them to get it to lie flat. Of course, this slightly reduced the width available to work with. I cut the bodice pieces first, on the basis that I could shorten the skirt if necessary, but couldn't really shorten the bodice if I ran out of cloth!

Cutting out the first bodice pieces

I had to check, double-check and triple-check that I had all the different-shaped skirt pieces laid out the right way round before I cut them out. Even with all my planning, I was hugely relieved to discovered that my layout worked, and all the pieces fitted on the fabric. The ties will be cut out later, once I know how the dress hangs together and what dimensions they need to be.

Simply cutting out the nine pattern pieces took a long time, and really emphasized how tricky this fabric is to work with. I must admit that I'm beginning to have very grave doubts about the chances of this project being a success, but there's only one way to find out . . .

Fixing Butterick 5997

Back in February 2019 I posted about making Butterick 5997 and the problems with the finished article, namely the absurd amount of overlap on the cuffs and the alarmingly low front. (There was no doubt about the cuffs, but I wondered if I was being overly fussy about the front, so I asked a friend for a second opinion - her response of, "Blimey, I see what you mean", convinced me that I wasn't being fussy!)

The cuffs were far too wide for me, hence the massive overlap

The low-cut front, with a tee-shirt underneath

I vaguely thought about trying to fix it, but other projects always claimed precedence, so it just hung on a hanger for the better part of two years.

The catalyst for doing something about it was that I recently read Overdressed, by Elizabeth L. Cline (thanks for the recommendation, Juliana), about fast fashion. While I don't buy many clothes nowadays, Cline's exhortation to fully utilize the clothes you own - either by wearing them or passing them on to charity, did make me think about my unworn top. At the same time I read somewhere that charity shops in the UK can't resell handmade clothes because they lack the legally-required composition labelling, so just sell them on for scrap. I don’t know if this is true, but the risk of my top being shredded for seat stuffing struck me as a criminal waste of Tana Lawn, so there was no option but to finally fix it.

The cuffs were relatively straightforward. I calculated that there was 1¼" of excess fabric beyond the button, so I cut off the button, unpicked the cuff from the sleeve, thanked past Ms Tulip for not trimming the seam allowances to nothing, shortened the cuff, pleated up the excess sleeve width, reattached the cuff and reattached the button. There was already a pleat at the buttonhole end of the cuff, and I was sorely tempted to create a matching pleat at the button end so that I wouldn’t have to unpick the whole cuff. But if a job's worth doing . . . . Regretfully, I decided that there was no point replacing something which annoyed me with something else which annoyed me slightly less, and did the job properly. There are now two pleats at the buttonhole end.

The fixed cuff, with pleats (plural)

The only possible solution for the low front was to make an infill piece. I did consider making it from leftovers of the fabric, but decided that it would look odd. So instead I made it from scraps of plain white cotton left over from my Victorian underwear.

The first job was to work out the size of the new piece. The top is pull-on, and there would be no point in carefully making and attaching the infill, only to discover that I couldn't get the end result over my head! Once this was decided, a 'pattern' was made by laying a piece of tissue inside the top in the correct position, drawing along the finished edge, and then adding an allowance for the overlap. I hand-pintucked a piece of the cotton, and added some tiny purple buttons. Next, I sewed on another piece of cotton along the top edge, right sides together, and folded it over. This created a neat edge, and also made the insert less flimsy. I marked the outer edge of the pattern with a frixion pen, and machined the two pieces together.

Making the insert from cotton scraps

I had considered unpicking the neckline of the top and fitting the insert between the top and the facing, but this seemed a step too far. Instead I overlocked the edges of the insert, and sewed it onto the facing, close to the edge.

The attached insert, from the inside . . .

. . . and from the outside

It's fortunate that the print of the fabric is quite old-fashioned looking, so the insert doesn't look entirely out of place. Also, I think that sewing the pieces together as close to the blouse edge as possible helps to make the insert look like part of the top rather than something worn underneath.

Wearing the updated top

I doubt if this will ever be a 'favourite' top, but it has a lot of design features which I like, and I will, now, finally, get some wear out of it. It’s always very tempting to just move from one shiny, exciting new project to the next one but as with the 'Meh' skirt, I did find taking the time to finally fix this a surprisingly satisfying job.

The side view makes it clearer that the insert isn't a separate garment

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.