Simplicity 5683, circa 1973: ruffled sundress

In early February I suddenly needed to prolong summer by making a backless ruffled sundress...and conveniently I had just the pattern!  This wonder was printed in NZ and says it is misses size 12, with a bust of 34".

I haven't sewn any big 4 patterns in ages!  I just kind of hoped this size would fit...forgetting that you are meant to size down from the envelope not size up.  My bust is in the 32-33 range.

I made this dress in the short version, with a ruffle.  There was no ruffle length for the short version so I basically made it as long as I had fabric for.  I also made the ruffle less high because I thought it would overwhelm the short dress at the current length - I did about 2/3 of that length.  I guess this all means I'm over my hatred of gathering. I also learned just how much you need to gather a thing to make it look good - in my opinion the ruffle would be better if I could have made it longer and gather it more.

The bodice was self lined after you apply the ruffle, and then there are more gathers under the bust!  The waistband is two layers, and the skirt is a true wrap skirt, with the right side going under the left.  It felt like it took forever but that's just because I had a bunch of couchsurfers so I wasn't sewing all the time.

My fabric is a loom woven raw silk from Nepal that I brought back.  It has a lot of texture because of the handmade nature of the fabric, but overall I took that into account and didn't have trouble gathering it, though it became very dense in the gathers.  It is generally well behaved and pressed well.  I hand washed it for prewashing, which is what I do with all fragile silk.  I tend to machine wash other silks like charmeuse that I think can handle it, as it makes an easier to care for final garment - I generally hand wash those garments but I like the security of knowing they can tolerate a machine wash.

The bodice looked pretty small to start with so I couldn't judge by that - but the final product is just way too big.  There's no one spot - the bodice has too much fabric, and in my pictures I have the waistband wrapped really tightly to keep everything in place.  I just feel overwhelmed by this dress.  Luckily I have a friend who is taller than me and just a bit bigger everywhere and who doesn't feel a need to wear a bra, so she has won a new dress, yay!!

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.