The bad news is that when I tried to put it on my adjustable dressform her bottom fell off! So here it is on a slightly too big non-adjustable dressform.
Next step: drafting the collar and a second draft of the hood.
I'm really pleased with how this pattern turned out - everything fit together first time and the sizing is spot on - in fact, I added extra seam allowance when I cut it out and made it up a little larger than drafted so I'd have room to take it in, and I think I should have gone with making it up exactly as drafted. Never mind, I can readjust :)
The bad news is that when I tried to put it on my adjustable dressform her bottom fell off! So here it is on a slightly too big non-adjustable dressform. Next step: drafting the collar and a second draft of the hood.
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I got my first custom order on etsy, and it's an exciting one! A grey with yellow check wool full length coat, custom drafted from a pattern in Frances Grimbles Bustle fashions 1885-1887. The lining will be black quilted satin, and there will be 35 buttons down the front. The hood is removable and lined in grey satin. PS. my toddler has removed several keys from my laptop so please excuse any missing letters - I can spell, honest! And because my sewing goal is to do things more like the Victorians, and to do that I need to see how they did it, I p[aid a visit to extantgowns.com. This is a fantastic site which gathers pictures of original garments from auction sites and private collections, and quite a few of them have internal shots as well. Everything is very neat and - well, modern looking on the insides, very different to the insides of bodices I've seen from the same period. There's even a coat with a quilted satin lining, just like the one I'll be making.
For years I've wanted to attend a victorian ball. Well, I'm still not getting to go as finances are too stretched at the moment (tickets yes, tickets plus hotel plus fabric for my dress plus something for the hubby to wear, unfortunatley not). But I am determined I'm going at some point this year, so I've started work on a dress. Since a good percentage of the potential balls are Dickensian rather than victorian, I decided this one needed to be an 1860s ballgown. After a bit of googling I found it - pink, not too frilly but frilly enough. I love the moire effect on the expanse of skirt, the unique lace drape at the bottom of the skirt and the chiffon puffs on the bertha. Its just yummy! Unfortunately I couldn't find the original source of this pic, just a few couples on tumblr. I'm trying to do better with my referencing, and since I started trying I've realised just how bad the internet community is for 'stealing' images. Using my shiny new dress form, I started by marking out the lines for the bodice. I used the diagram for a similar dress from the same era given in Janet Arnolds Patterns of Fashion 2 to determine where the seam lines should be, as I couldn't really see them on the picture. I marked the lines with ribbon, not forgetting to make sure the bust seam actually goes over the bust point. I marked the grain lines on four pieces of scrap fabric, and refered to Patterns of Fashion again to make sure the grain of each piece was aligned correctlyy. I then pinned the piece in place along that grain line before smoothing out to the ribbon lines and pinning. The last step was to mark the seam lines in pen before going to the next piece. Once you've done all the pieces, mark notches on each seam line before you unpin and use the resulting pieces as the pattern to cut the toile. Next stage is to cut and sew the toile. I always put a zip in my toiles as my hubby is not the best with pins - I think he's so scared of sticking me that they end up barely in at all. All good untill I decided to try it on with my corset, at which point I realised my corset is MUCH to small for me now. It just about does up but does very unattractive things to my bust! So I'll be coming back to the bodice fitting as soon as I can get a new corset made. Since this was my day off, I decided to just push on and figure out the skirt and trimming in toile form. The skirt turned out to be very simple - I checked the total circumference of the ball gown in patterns of fashion, which converniently also tells you what size hoop it was worn over. My hoop is a bit bigger, so I added a bit of extra for that and ended up with 3 lengths of 60" wide fabric in my skirt. I quartered the fabric and the waist, and attached at those points, then added 4" pleats at each side of those points. Because I wanted to hide the seams, I started with the back seam hidden inside one of the pleats. I then took the fabric that was left, matched middle to middle on each of the 4 quarters and pleated to fit. This almost worked out but not quite - I ended up with one visible seam. Fortunately when I went to the fabric shop, there was a 45" wide fabric option I liked - 4 lengths of 45" wide will give me the same circumference as the 3 lengths of 60", but will allow me to hide all my seams perfect. Yes, thats my messy kitchen - I took the day off to sew and I was determined that it would be a day of sewing, and cleaning could wait till the evening!
I think thats enough for one post, so I'll show you my trimming experiments next time. So in my last post I shared some of my dressing gown inspiration. After some searching on the internet I found this blog post which gave me the clues I needed to draft the pattern. I started with my basic bodice and skirt blocks. For the back bodice, I ignored the shoulder darts (as a lower armhole is appropriate for a dressing gown anyway) and kept the waist darts as they are. For the front bodice, I pivoted both the darts to the side just under the armhole, and drew a straight line from the neckline at the shoulder to 10 cm across from the centre at the waistline. For the skirt, I pivoted out the darts to create an A-line skirt shape, then added the 10cm band at the centre front. The gown was assembled using french seams, and binding used to finish the armhole. I added a wide bias strip around the front edges of the gown to finish the edges. For the sleeves, I wanted something that would echo the bishop style of the Lucile robe shown in the previous post. I refered to the instructions for a bishop sleeve given in 'Metric Pattern cutting' by Winifred Aldritch. These basically consist of slashing the sleeve from wrist to shoulder and spreading the pieces out, adding more material to the back of the sleeve than to front. You then add a little bit of length (to allow the fabric to drape down), and when assembling the sleeve you gather the long wrist edge into a fitted cuff. I.m pretty pleased with the result, although if I made it again I think I'd add another inch or maybe 2 to the length of the sleeve, and I think it need to droop down just a little more. I may have to experiment with this, as I suspect the stiffness of the fabric also has an impact on how much 'poof' you get. I decided to use some stash fabric for this project, and ended up choosing some dusky pink polyester satin. This was a mixed success - the colour was perfect, and the fabric draped beautifully and felt suitably luxurious. Unfortunately, I discovered when I wore it that the fabric creases horribly - I actually ironed it to the best of my ability before taking the photos above, but I'm not sure it'll ever be crease free again! So we'll call this one a wearable toile. Apart from that I'm really happy with this one, it was quick and easy to make so I may well be making more of these in the future. I also made a matching slip using the fantastic free ruby slip pattern.
I'm not going to tell you how I made this as the instructions on the site cover everything you could possibly need to know! As I was short on both time and money for this project, I bought 2 pair of black lace boxers in Primark and found that these gave me just enough lace to make the bodice, including matching the scallops. I did have to piece to get extra width on the sides, and make use of the stretch properties of the lace for the back. I'm so pleased with how this turned out - the bias cut skirt hangs and fits perfectly and a slip is always useful so I'll definately be using the pattern again :) I spotted a really cute dress online and thought 'I can do that!' I used the skirt of Butterick 5322 (fast becoming my Go-To pattern when I want simple pattern blocks to alter or add to something else), and drafted the top myself. This is really the simplest possible bodice pattern - a single pleat on each side, meeting at the center of the neckline. As the pleats are not stitched down, you don't even have to worry about getting the distance from the bust point right to avoid a dimple at the end of the dart - just fold things so they meet and it all work out! The sleeves I figure out by trial and error - I think the next version I will move the arm scye just a touch further out on my shoulder, I bought it in quite a lot as the pattern block was much too wide on the shoulders and I think I may have over done it just a little! All that hole-picking aside (I always want to get better!) I'm really pleased with this dress! I think I will be making another soon - probably in a lghter colour, to wear with a skinny black belt like the inspiration dress, and I may also try it with a pencil skirt instead of A-line.There's a couple more pictures for you below - the red is the original inspiration dress, and the second pic is a close up of the dress on my dummy. I decided I needed some new T-shirts, and I always have trouble buying them in the shops - either the neckline is too high or too low or too wide, and they are often to short to make it safe to wear low rise jeans (which of course nearly all jeans you can buy are) - I seem to spend my whole day pulling the T-shirt down and the jeans up. This was also a stash busting exercise - I have way too much fabric crammed into my tiny sewing room (which is also meant to be my hubby's painting/study room), plus more in my parents attic waiting for me to clear space for it! I decided to base the T on a T-shirt from my wardrobe - I love this one because it clings to my figure without being tight, and its plenty long enough, plus I just like the style. So, the top got made, taken apart and remade, and then I made another one - and I think I've got the pattern and techniques perfect! These are the things I learnt… 1) When drafting collar patterns, cut a separate under and over piece, with the under piece being maybe 1/4" narrower. This makes the collar lie flat, and pulls the seam on the edge to the underneath rather than leaving it visible. The seam on the collar also needs to be understitched to keep it nice and flat. 2) All the seams are stitched and then overlocked, with the exception of the seams between the front and back collar pieces - these edges are completely sealed away from sight, and by not overlocking them I avoided the slight bulge that I had at the intersection of seams on the blue shirt (I'm a perfectionist!) 3) How to do perfect hems on knit fabrics! On the blue shirt, I overlocked the edge and then stitched with a twin needle. This gives a very professional looking finish, which also has stretch. Unfortunately, I found that as I stitched the fabric was stretched slightly out of shape, like lettuce edging. For the second top I experimented, and found that stitching with a piece of tearaway stabiliser under the hem. I also tried using my walking foot, but this was a complete disaster with half the stitches being skipped. So here's my second attempt at drafting a skirt pattern. This time, I went for a fairly straight skirt which flares out about 6 inches from the bottom. The key feature I wanted to incorporate in this skirt was to havepockets at the side front panels. When I started to draft, I realised that I wanted the pockets narrower than the standard side panel width. This meant I had to move the waistband bottom edge down to the point of the dart, so that all the shaping was in the waistband and the front seams could be moved wherever I wanted. I didn't want the waistband to be wider, so I moved the top of the waistband down too to make more of a 'hipster' skirt (it fits much better on me than on my dummy, which doesn't really have hips!) The pockets are formed from 3 sections, a front and a back cut from the fashion fabric, and a lining piece. So, here is my attempt at making up the pattern in fashion fabric - like it from the front, hate it from the side and the back! The non-matched patterns look messy and awful! Unfortunately this fabric was upcycled from another skirt I didn't like, so I used every available com to squeeze the pieces I needed out - I even had to make the waistband facing from the lining fabric cos there wasn't enough. One the other hand, at least I didn't waste and money! I still like this pattern, and it went together well, so I will be trying it again - originally I pictured it in corduroy, but I'm a little scared to try that now - I might get rid of the little bit of flare at the bottom and try it as a completely straight skirt with the whales running vertically. I did like the front of the skirt, and I like the idea of having a diagonal pattern on the front and back panels, and vertical on the sides. Thinking about this, I'd want the pattern as uniterupted as possile, so I though about getting rid of the waistband and the centre back seam and using an invisible zip in the side back seam, and about getting rid of the side seams and using a curved dart instead. Does any one know if this is possible? I've never seen it done, which makes me wonder if there's a good reason for that! I've made a second skirt using this pattern as a base, but this time I used a contract fabric for the backs of the pleats. The grey fabric has a slight stretch, if I did this again I'd use something more like a suiting, but I had a specific colour and texture in my head and this was the closest - I'm actually glad I tried it, how else am I going to get to know how different fabric behave ;) The purple is offcuts or crepe backed satin I had left in my stash. The 'top stitching' is actually a tightly woven wool strand couched in place - I initially wanted a long running stitch effect, but even stitching with a tape measure in hand wasn't able to get the even-ness I wanted. I think this looks much better. I also wanted to show you some close up shots of the detail on the blue and white version - I love my little ribbon bows!
Wow, so much learning on this one = and I'm so pleased with the result! The first thing the teacher suggested was that I make up the basic skirt block and alter it to fit me (if needed). In order to be able to manipulate the block properly, I needed to stick to straight lines where there were straight lines - no adding in curves or corners where there weren't any before. Once I made up the block and put it on, it became very obvious that the front darts ended too far down for me, nd that it was too big on the hips. I resolved this by taking a vertical half inch tuck down the front form the dart to the hem. I then transfered this to the bock by cutting vertically from the point of the dart to the hem, overlapping the pieces by half an inch and tracing round to create a new block. If you make an lateration like this, don't forget that the front block should be slightly wider than the back block - this is so the side seams fall slightly to the back and can't beseen from the front. I just got away without having to correct for this on my alterationj. Correction number 2 was in the way I drafted the pattern - I realised later that I should have manipulated the pattern to remve the dart THEN drawn the yoke. Otherwise, I risked removing a larger angle from the yoke than from the skirt, which would of course form a bubble or pont like the one I was seeing. I redrafted the pattern from scratch and it looked much better than before, but still not perfect - in orde to get to perfect, I needed to improve my sewing technique. When I sewed the yoke to the skirt, I had stay stiched the dip in the main skirt section, snipped into the point and sewed each section seperately. This was a mistake! I sewed a test version all in one, stopping at the points with the needle in the fabric to flip the excess fabric to the other side of the needle, pivot and carry on. I added baby ribbon down the edges of the pleats to emphasize the pleats, and top stitched the yoke for the same reason! This week I attended the second lesson of a course on pattern drafting which I'm taking at the local adult education center. The pace is a little slow for me so far, so i decided to have a go on my own. In the first lesson, we measured outselves and traced bodice and skirt blocks in the appropriate sizes. In the second leson, we traced the skirt blocks onto card, and praticed two methods of moving darts - slashing and pivoting =- to create an A-line skirt. We also had a quick demonstration of how to replace darts with a yoke. The design I decided to attempt is based on a vintage pattern I saw online while browsing for ideas, and has a shaped yoke and box pleats stitched part way down the skirt. The finished item is not bad for a first attempt but not perfect either! My main issue is with the points of the yoke at the front - The fabric seems to form a bubble here - Is this just inaccuracy in my sewing or drafting, or did I do something I shouldn't have? As it currently sewn they're also a little uneven after unpicking one and resewing it to see if I could resolve the problem.
The other question which arose from this exercise is to do with keeping the balance between the front and the back. Clearly, you don't make a skirt with an a-line front and a straight back (or vice versa), but how precise do you need to be in making sure you add the same amount of flare to each? And how do you go about being precise? Questions for the teacher on wednesday. |
AuthorMy crazy costuming, sewing and maybe other stuff too blog! Hopefully others can learn from my mistakes and I can learn from your comments :) Hey you! ;)According to the stats people are actually visiting this site - I'd love to know who you are so please leave comments!
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