The VE Day Frock

No doubt you'll be seeing a lot of this dress in the next few weeks. Honestly,  I'm absolutely in love with it!

If you're curious, more information can be found here

Back in July, an ad for my local theatre group caught my eye. What were they advertising for, but auditions for a VE Day performance later in the year! Oh it sounded wonderful. With a fully decorated hall, a gourmet banquet, and a 13 piece big band to sing with, how could I NOT go? Everyone was so lovely at the auditions. I was admittedly a little lost, but then again, when am I not? It didn't really help that I still can't read sheet music for the life of me, but I mustn't have gone too badly, as they didn't make me leave early to shut me up.

Well of course with such an event, I just had to make myself a new frock for it. Oh, how will I ever cope? Having to get together an entirely new outfit? What a shame!

You know, what I really love about the 1940's were the shoulder pads. I just can't get enough of them. Now I'd had Butterick's B6485 on my list for quite a while, and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to make it. After a bit of searching, I even managed to find the original pattern cover, and discovered a charming little note that had me completely sold.

The original cover of 1944's "current fashion". Kindly supplied by The Vintage Pattern Shop

As for the colour-scheme, I wanted to make Captain America proud. I seem to have an endless supply of scraps at the moment, and among all of it was enough red and white fabric and binding to make myself a new 40's bra. It really is a welcome change only having to spend about £7.50 on underwear! I treated myself to some luxurious royal blue triple crepe for the dress, and found myself an adorable white hair flower from a stall at the 1940's weekend at Milton Keynes Museum.

The fabric arrived wrapped up in
pattern paper and ribbon. Too cute!

I do adore crepe. The way it gathers and flows just makes me sigh with happiness. The only thing I struggle with its stretch and slipperiness, which
did cause a little hassle when it came to sewing the zip at the back. I might have mentioned that I'm really not good with zips. It took me a couple of goes, and a hell of a lot of basting to finally get it to lie flat. Being the klutz I am, I managed to nick the fabric with my scissors when I was sorting out the insides, but it was small enough to stitch up and hide with the very convenient bow at the back. I need to remember to make more dresses with back ties, it makes dealing with my proportions so much easier to deal with! I still had to take out what felt like half a foot from around the neck.

Being the self-conscious mess that I am, I found myself an original, seemingly unworn girdle for myself. It needed replacement garter clips, but that was easy enough to do. I'm yet to get some boning for the empty channels, but that's not really a priority anyway. The only problem is that I didn't take into account quite how squishy I am. I was a little worried that the lacing gap would be too large at the hips, but to my surprise I could have done with something about four inches smaller! Oh well, it just means I'll have a bit more movement for the performance. When I get the time, I'd like to make myself a nice corselette for the majority of events anyway. You've just got to love that full-torso shapewear!



Look out on my social media for all the photos of the event. Maybe I'll see you there!

From Diners to Dinner. I Accidentally Made a Dress Prettier?

Ok, I may have a tiny obsession with Retro Butterick patterns. Being the stupid shape I am, and not the smallest at that (41, 32, 45 measurements here. That 13 inch waist-to-hip difference causes about as much hassle as you'd expect), it's an awful lot easier using modern reproductions than the originals.

After the sleepless delirium of The 24 Hour Day Dress, I thought it would be a laugh to make myself a 1950's dress. One that didn't have quite such strict time constraints.  I had a few yards of green taffeta left over from an 18th century dress I made a while back and am yet to post, and wanted to use it up anyway, so why not? Butterick's B6055 caught my eye as one of the most stereotypically retro dress patterns out there. The second suggested fabric was taffeta, and the artwork almost perfectly matched the colour of my fabric. It was simply meant to be!

Everyone hears of the plight of taffeta. Somehow I had managed to machine sew a 1780's robe a l'anglaise a la polonaise in tafftea with somewhere over 100 5mm pleats without a hitch. Really, it would have done me good to mess up more using such a finicky fabric for the first time. I imagined it would be just as straight-forward as the last time. Oh boy was I wrong.
To be fair, almost everything that went wrong was entirely my fault. In a blur of excitement, I started the dress as soon as I'd gathered all the notions for it.

See, here's another problem I have. I get cocky. "Oh yeah, it looks easy enough. I don't need to make a toile", I think to myself. Boy oh boy was I wrong. I made the bodice and skirt, not a problem. I had taken note that, as always, I needed to bring in the waist quite a bit. I stitched the two pieces together, and attempted sort out the waist. It would have been fine, if it weren't for my freaking massive hips. I simply could not manage to get the dress to accommodate those stupid thirteen inches in such little space. In the end, I ended up going over it so many times that I all but destroyed the taffeta, and the dress in the process. Good riddance, I thought at this point.

I did truly want this dress though, so I ordered more fabric; a simple cheap polycotton this time. I hadn't added the cost for fabrics to my budget, as this was more of a scraps project than anything else, so didn't really have the money for historical accuracy.

Looking back on my mistakes, I decided to make some alterations. I did away with the pockets and completely disregarded the skirt pattern, going for the good old faithful circle skirt instead. I lengthened the sleeves a bit to hide a little more of my arms, and added cuffs mostly just because I had nothing better to do. I've got to say, getting the fit on the bodice is one of my proudest moments. It really says something though when there's a zip right down the side and you still struggle to get the waist over your bust. "Form-fitting" is what I call it.

The end result of my antics, and far too many photo filters

The original pattern photo

In the end, I had myself a dress completely transformed! The original pattern was loose-fitting, and looked most suitable for the staff of an American diner more than anything else. I felt more at home in some classy jazz lounge with my frock and a pair of white gloves. To finish it all off, I found the perfect little original 50s self-cover belt buckle that I nabbed for under a fiver including postage.

Moral of the story: don't skip toiles, kids. Don't get cocky.

The 24 Hour Day Dress

(Totally not photographed in front of a curtain hung up on the garage door)

One thing you'll soon discover about me is the fact that I'm not great at rushing a project. Honestly, who would think that the pairing of perfectionism and immense lack of skill might hold up projects at all?

With this dress, I didn't have the luxury of time. See, despite the focus of this blog, my main area of study for the past few years has been film-making. Well, I'm not really the most original when it comes to thinking up ideas, and I'd recently got round to seeing La La Land (yeah, it only took me over a year), so I decided I'd give the whole modern+retro style a try. We usually leave the task of sourcing costumes to our actors and/or fashion students, and as far as I knew, we were all set in the matter.
That was until a couple of days before the shoot. It turns out our lead actress hadn't realised she didn't actually have a summer dress that still fitted her. You can imagine the panic I was in when I got the news at three in the morning on the Thursday before our Saturday shoot. I didn't have time to buy anything online or trawl through charity shops for something, so my only option was to run to the nearest fabric shop as soon as I got home that evening, and pray that there was something I could use there.

What meets me at the very front of the shelf as soon as I get to the patterns section?

"Fast & Easy". My problems are over! Blue gingham and red binding? Sure. I'm too tired to think of anything for myself. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but the content of my video was easy enough to change on the day from modern+retro to full blown vintage.

As soon as I'd picked up all the fabrics and notions, I rushed to my sewing machine and cut, pinned, and sewed into the night.

Taken at some ungodly hour.
Still rather proud that I got this far in my sleep-deprived state.

I managed most of the easy stuff before exhaustion forced me to pause my efforts and sleep, but I was back to work the moment I woke the next morning, and was more than grateful when I had finished sewing on those six metres or so of binding, to finally have a minute for breakfast somewhere around half-five.

But there you go! I actually made a dress in less than 24 hours. It's certainly a feat for me. And it just goes to show that you don't need a proper binding presser foot to do the perfectly mediocre job that you'd do using it the first time anyway.

 

Now it can spend the rest of eternity hidden away in some closet, cause I sure don't know anyone who would want to wear such a thing.

The Start of Something Spectacular?

Well I've finally got round to starting a sewing blog. It's about time really, seeing as I haven't really stopped sewing for years and haven't got anywhere to log my process.

I had best tell you a little of what I do. I'm a bit of a vintage clothing fanatic, specialising around the 1940's and 50's, but you can expect to see designs here anywhere from ancient times right up to the 70's. That's what I wish I'd stick to anyway, but being the mess of a human being that I am, I can't just make historical clothing. Of course not. A few centuries of costume variety obviously isn't enough choice. You'll undoubtedly see a lot of hippie Pretentious Art Student™ designs around the place, as I wear that nonsense in public more than I do dresses and can actually afford to make them on a regular basis. Ironically, I can't stand dresses for day-to-day wear.

Unfortunately, it seems I can only ever start anything in a spark of impulsivity, which is a slight problem as I've now started all this without any decent photos of my projects. Hopefully I'll find some time to organise myself (as much as I can, at least. It's not a word usually in my vocabulary), so I can start posting progress, tutorials, and hopefully a few reproduction frocks to sell?

Until then, I bid you adieu!