Sunday 22 December 2013

Vogue Paris Original, V2323 - muslin

In love with this dress pattern!  Here is the cover of it.  It's my first seriously vintage pattern and I really had no idea how things would progress.  I decided to do a full muslin, underlined in silk, to see how (whether) it would fit and also to get the hang of using gelatin to make the silk easier to work with.  I made the muslin from a leftover piece of herringbone black wool with silver lurex threads in it.  The underlining was a silk chiffon.  I used this technique with gelatin prior to cutting and ironing the silk.

Because this was my first ever muslin, I mean an actual one, I did it in stages so it kind of felt like it took forever, although sewing the pieces together was easy.  I ignored a lot of the subtleties in the instructions and didn't do any gathering stitches except on the sleeves.

The pattern is slightly small for me according to the size chart, but came with all its pieces and they were in great shape.  It seemed like a relatively straightforward construction.  The puzzle piece on the front creates most of the three dimensional shape, and I love how clever it is (although after lots of pinning of Polly tops, I initially suspected it would be very tiresome to sew together!)  In actual fact you are supposed to gather the curves (which I didn't do on my muslin) and it is supposed to hang flat.  (Mine really doesn't since I didn't put much effort into that puzzle piece front.)  I had forgotten that in the 70's, dresses were shapeless sheaths.  Also I think it looks much better in 2 colours!









I was surprised how huge the dress ended up.  The silk underlining, which I sewed onto EVERY SINGLE piece, meant my pieces held their shape - the wool would have definitely started to stretch alone.  So there wasn't distortion increasing the size.  Seems that Vogue in 1970 already ran big!  I cut off 7 inches of the bottom (and I'm thinking of cutting off more), and I considered cutting a bit off the side seams but ended up leaving it.  On my final version I'll just cut my fabric shorter to start with.  Not sure what I will do with the side seams.

My final version is planned in silk velvet.  I was planning to underline as I did on my muslin, but my facings were really annoying and it has you hand sew down the wrist seams and such...so I think I'll just do a normal lining so I can have a neater inner finish.  I was also planning to use cotton voile for the underlining, and now I'm considering using silk or even bemberg, just to make sure it doesn't stick to me - since the velvet is quite heavy this won't be a summer dress!

I was really hoping that I wouldn't need to make any big modifications because I wasn't sure how I would face the puzzle front if I had to do an FBA, for instance.  Luckily I don't need to change anything.

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