See the comments on my last post for LinB’s take on the definition of a tent dress. 😉 Ah, fickle fashion terminology. Also, boo to uniforms. I really really hate imposed uniforms.
Anyway, I bit the bullet with Butterick 4249 by John Kloss. Incidentally this also reminds me of Daughter Fish’s Future Dress from way back in the mists of blogland. Mine is more fitted, obviously. Though not initially. Hers was more fun.
This dress is a fabric hog. It used the full three and 3/8 yards it called for, easily. (Well, I think it did, I’m not used to measuring in yards.) Although I did end up hacking three or four inches off the bottom, and it’s still pretty long, so I could’ve saved a bit that way. Just for reference I can get one of my Jalie maxi dresses out of about 1.5 m.
So, um, tent-y it was. I should’ve taken pictures, but, um, no.
Part of the problem is that it’s designed for a “moderate stretch knit” (probably abut 20%, based on the handy little stretch guide on the back), while my fabric of choice is a very modern slinky jersey with about twice that, plus stretch vertically too. More of the problem is my back. Or, arguably, my head. 😉
In hindsight, a slit in the back would’ve been fun, too. But I like how it sits now.
I have a really curvy lower back. I guess I mention that every time I whine about swayback adjustments. 😉 anyway, pre-sewing everything was just always loose and baggy in the back, which was annoying. Almost as annoying as too short sleeves… So yeah. I like things to fit close to my back like, almost always. Partly because my tummy’s fairly prominent (which I’m fairly good at camouflaging in blog pics) so if the back is loose I feel like I look bigger than I am.
So as soon as I tried it on, I knew I would be taking in the back. A bunch. And the sides—less, but still a couple of inches. Unfortunately to get the back where it wasn’t giving me eye-twitches meant that a lot of that fun swoosh and flow around the tummy and hips also went away. I probably need to work on that (either with a gym membership or some mental health work. I’ll get back to you on which is least likely. 😉 )
I made a couple of adjustments to the construction. The pattern had faced armholes; I used a band instead. I interfaced the sides of front opening with a fusible knit. Both of these were very good ideas. I cut the neckband on the cross-grain (pattern piece called for it to be on the lengthwise grain, not that that would have helped a whole lot with this stretchy fabric.)
Stretchy neckband was a mistake. I had to go back and fuse interfacing to it, after sewing the back pieces in place with those teeny zig-zag machine stitches that are basically impossible to pull out. Even then, I think I should’ve used the heavier knit fusible, not the featherweight stuff, though I like the weight now that it’s on. It took me a couple of tries to get the neck pieces basted in the right place. Incidentally, I think the neck piece is actually half the length it should be… I think it was probably meant to be two pieces joined at the back with a seam. I guess I could check that, but I kinda like the shorter tie. I’m not really a bows kinda girl. The first time I basted the front portions to the neck tie, it was too big and the whole dress sagged (basically the weight of that whole damn dress is hanging from your neck). I overshot a bit the second time, but I kinda like the wider split that this gives the front opening. I was a bit nervous about the neckline as I don’t usually like high-necked things, but the slit and the tie give plenty of front interest so I don’t feel at all like I have the Great Front Upper Chest of Flat Emptiness.
Stitching the neckband and turning it inside out was a bit touch and go; in theory you should only have to leave a small opening at the centre back, but in practice it got dodgy trying to stitch neatly with part of the dress inside the band—I wound up stitching just the front dangly portions of the ties inside out, then turning them, tucking the seam allowance under and fusing it in place with 1/4″ Steam-a-Seam, and then topstitching around the bottom of the neckband. On the upside, it feels just the right amount of stable now.
Anyway, pretty happy with this, despite all the surgery and limited tent-osity. This was the last sewing of my vacation (I kept doing family stuff. Jeez. Darn family, getting in the way of important things), “finished” in the afternoon after we put Tyo on a plain for Vancouver Island, but before I had to go to my first shift back at 5:00 pm. So at least I got to wear a new dress back to work. And then on my first full day back it was nasty and rainy, so I did get to wear my unseasonable wool dress. One of the best things about sewing is having winter (or winter-y) clothes that I actually miss wearing in the summer… I have read about this feeling before, but never actually felt it myself. It’s probably a sign that it’s been a good summer, though I do wish Kristin would send some of that Toronto heat-wave she`s been writing about out this way. A week or two of 40C temperatures are just what I need to get me ready for winter. (Not actually joking. If summer is completely hot and miserable the prospect of winter is much less agonizing. I think this is some bizarre mental adaptation to our severe climate…)
As it is, I’m guessing I get about two more wears out of this before winter. Here’s hoping for a nice fall!
I mean, if they are made by just hemming the edges, that’s a method prone to stretching, and they do look stretched out in the picture to me. (Apparently it was found wrapped around a wooden plate, and I almost wonder if the straps had been stretched around the plate to secure it in place) anyway. WAY whack long.
Anyway, fun experiment, and successfully completed in about a day and a half of lackadaisical hand-stitching. People who make historical costumes seem to be fond of grading themselves on their accuracy, but I’m never clear on how you would do this. So what do you think? Fabric is reasonable but not accurate—linen-cotton blend, not pure linen; thread is cotton. Completely hand-stitched, possibly with period techniques although I haven’t done extensive research into mediaeval hand-stitching (they would work for the Victorian stuff I have read, except that my stitch lengths are way huge by those standards. On the other hand the original apparently had “thick stitches” so I’m not too fussed.) I feel like overall that’s pretty good, except for the weirdness of the pattern.
I’ll forgive you if you don’t remember 
The buttons are all mother of pearl, from the Antique Button Stash—they roughly match, except for the big one at the top.
And, well, it ain’t Simplicity 7514. I did more fit-fiddling on this damn thing than I have in quite a while. At least that’s easy with all the different seams on this pattern.
I’m not sure how entirely I can blame the pattern, however. I cut a size 12 knowing it would probably be large, but that was the largest size in my pattern envelope and I was too 
AND the pattern was meant to be lined, so doesn’t have facings or any other nice way to finish the top, and again I was too 
So a few years ago I got this nice, substantial, shiny black linen with the plan of making a shirt for my husband—but it’s a bit heavy for his taste in linen shirts, so it has languished. And it surfaced during some recent stash diving, and I realized that there’s way more than the two-ish metres I had thought I’d bought—more like four or five. Yowza! And I was suddenly seized by the need for a swishy long black linen sundress. I dug up some options and posted them on Instagram, and the chorus was in favour of McCall’s 7640. And it did seem like it would be a really great linen sundress.
But I still REALLY liked the idea of a long black version of Simplicity 7514. So I dug around stash some more, and stumbled upon this piece of black bargain centre fabric ($4.00/m tag still attached) that I didn’t have earmarked for anything. (I didn’t recall right off the bat but as construction, especially ironing, went on, I remembered the reason I picked it up. 100% wool, in what I suspect they would call a tropical weight.
It’s been a long time since I made a Simplicity pattern, what with them not really being available up here any more. It was really nice, especially since the ‘vintage’ pattern (© 1997) has much thicker tissue paper than the current patterns seem to.
The skirt is very, very swishy, and the fabric has a great drape.
Can I tell you a secret? This dress reminds me of a mediaeval 
And I didn’t need to be. What a sweet, straightforward sew.
I’m not sure I did the pleats correctly—I followed the markings but then stitched them down, whereas in hindsight the pattern illustration just shows them being pleated. And my rear pleats don’t meet the way they seem to in the illustration, either. Probably because of the stitching-down thing. I like the stitching down, though, as it controls the fullness right below my waist—I don’t like gathered skirts at my natural waist as they just make me look boxy, and I was a little nervous of the pleats.
I like the lace at the neckline; I was initially on the fence about the lace at the hem, but I got it as part of the project so I thought I’d better use it, and it’s grown on me.
All in all, this was a nice, quick project with a nice fabric and surprisingly little drama. I’ll take it!
“Did you see the November mailer?” my manager asked when I got to work one day last fall. Of course not—it had just arrived a day or two ago at the store, and usually only the managers see them much ahead of time. “There’s a project you need to do.”
Anyway, with the gauntlet thrown down, the angst set in. Project budgets are limited and coating fabric is expensive. I wandered the aisles of coating, wistfully petting the meltons and boiled wools while I calculated the price of 3.7m of the fabric and came up, again and again, on the sad fact that even the cheapest polyester-acrylic coating, with nary a hint of wool, was beyond my project budget. Suiting fabric it was.
Once I had pattern and fabric at home, of course, I had to confront one very particular fact: this very fun coat pattern is, first and foremost, a McCall`s coat pattern. A McCall`s coat pattern is basically a dress pattern with extra ease. This didn`t bother me so much when I made 
Fortunately, the power of the Internet was with me. Sherry`s 
Fitting changes:
Changes to make to the pattern:
Tailoring:
All of that tailoring and it was still pretty minimal. The jacket is soft and floppy. The sleeves are the worst, although rolled up and scrunchy they are ok.
I did like how the shoulder pads turned out—I layered a bit of cotton batting with knit interfacing top and bottom, and fused them together, then shaped with steam and let cool.
I added sleeve heads, too.
It’s still an AWFUL lot of ruffles, though.
Tanit-Isis Sews 