Monthly Archives: May 2016

May 23, 2016 · 6:09 pm

An Evening Jacket for the Ages

“Very up and coming” for the Fall of 1962, according to Vogue Pattern Magazine, was “the striking medium between a straight line and a bold curve – the gentle convex ‘barrel’ shaping of this coat:”

It is from this time period – perhaps a year or two later – that this Designer Pattern comes:

I don’t know many of us who want to look like they are in a barrel, so it was my intention to take the best parts of the design of the evening jacket and then adapt it to a more current look, or at least to one that did not scream 1963/64

The details I loved about it were: 1) the shaped, two-part collar, which doesn’t really look like a collar, rather as an extension of the body of the jacket, but with more definition to it:

2) the dipped back hem of the jacket:

I purchased the yellow silk taffeta from Britex Fabrics, while the dress fabric, also silk, is from Mendel Goldberg.

3) the below-elbow length, kimono sleeves with their clever built-in gusset, and 4) the prominent, offset buttons:

The top buttonhole is a slot-seam one, while the other two are bound buttonholes.

Less attractive to me was the fullness of the body of the jacket.

My muslin (toile) showed me that I needed to eliminate quite a bit of that fullness from the pattern pieces. I took 2 inches right out of the back of the jacket, making for much less to be gathered into the collar:

Even with two inches removed from the center back seam, there is still enough to gather nicely into the collar.

I also took a large wedge out of the each side of the back:

The dark blue line on the left is my re-drawn seam line. The original seam line is marked in red.

Then to add a little more shaping, I re-drew the side seams in the side underarm sections:

Again, the blue line on the left is my re-drawn seam line.

Because the buttons are such a prominent feature of the jacket, I knew I had to find the right ones. The pattern called for them to be 1¼” in diameter. That is a big button! I also knew they had to be a bit fancy or elegant, and I envisioned mother-of-pearl as the ideal composition. It took a while, but I found these buttons on eBay, and they looked just about perfect to me: right size, beautifully carved mother-of- pearl with a swirl design which I thought would add just the right contrast to the silk taffeta of the jacket. As it turned out, they were also the right price (always a welcome surprise!), and more beautiful when they arrived than I had anticipated:

These buttons have a substantial heft to them, making them well suited for their application on this jacket.

After getting the body of the jacket together, I tried it on to look at the length of it. Fortunately I had cut my pattern with about an extra half-inch in the length, and I used it, plus another ¼ of an inch, as it just looked better a little longer.

Another plus to lengthening the jacket is that the sleeve length lined up more attractively, something I didn’t realize until I saw these photos.

I did my usual flat applied piping along the edge of the lining:

Here is the piping sewn in place.

The green piping picks up the green in the dress. I opted for an off-white lining, which is a little boring but that’s okay.

And I added the label I had:

A few wrinkles left over from the jacket’s first wearing!

I have to say, I really love this evening jacket. I have decided it is going to have another life – with another dress, this one constructed with the double, slanted flounce on it (see pattern above). It would look fairly fabulous with a black and goldenrod printed silk – or navy, white and goldenrod printed silk… I’ll be on the search.

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Filed under bound buttonholes, Buttons - choosing the right ones, couture construction, kimono sleeves, Mid-Century style, piping, sewing in silk, Silk taffeta, Slot-seam buttonholes, Uncategorized, vintage buttons, vintage Vogue Designer patterns, vintage Vogue patterns from the 1960s

Tagged as Britex Fabrics, Choosing buttons, couture construction, Etsy vintage patterns, Evening jackets, fashion sewing, Jacques Heim, Kimono sleeves, Mendel Goldberg Fabrics, silk, vintage fashion, vintage Vogue patterns

May 15, 2016 · 6:31 pm

Those Sneaky Pattern Instructions!

Is anyone else out there in Sewing Land regularly deceived by the conciseness and orderliness of pattern instructions? They look so innocent all neatly delineated on those folded sheets that fit into pattern envelopes. But lying beneath the surface are hours and hours of precise pinning, basting, stitching, and, at times, head-scratching and seam ripping!

The construction of an entire coat or jacket can fit on one side of one sheet of instructions! That which is illustrated and described on this sheet of paper, measuring approximately 19” x 15,” can take hours, days, and even weeks to plow through!

As one who likes step-by-step, clearly delineated and enumerated guidelines, I relish looking at pattern instructions and innocently thinking about how straightforward and “simple” this is all going to be. And I am regularly fooled. A good example of this is my current project, a silk jacket to pair with my recently completed dress.

These small sketches included on the instruction sheets of many vintage Vogue patterns are so helpful in the visual information they provide.

I got a good preview of the construction idiosyncrasies when I made my muslin (toile). The pattern piece for the kimono “sleeve back” struck me as unusual.

Here is that sleeve piece in the fashion fabric, with silk organza underlining basted to it.

After reading the instructions, it still did not make sense, until I actually put the sleeve together. That little pointed end works as an underarm gusset, which is quite clever, and as it turns out, I believe it will be very flattering. Putting this part of the jacket together is delineated in steps 6 – 12:

Step 9 deals with this particular pattern piece.

Here is one-half of the jacket as I have it completed at this writing:

It took at least 4 – 5 hours to complete just this part of the jacket, and I still have the other half to do! Granted, I regularly add effort and time onto this type of construction as I catch-stitch all the seams to the silk organza underlining. For this jacket, with all its curved seams, slashed darts, and tight corners, I am not sure it would turn out successfully without the control that catch-stitching those raw seams provides. So – it is time well spent.

But still – how can those “easy to follow guides” be so sneaky?

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Filed under couture construction, Dressmaker coats, kimono sleeves, Mid-Century style, Silk taffeta

Tagged as couture construction, fashion sewing, Kimono sleeves, vintage Vogue patterns

May 4, 2016 · 5:53 pm

Wedding Ready

Why is it that we so often think every wedding to which we are invited means we need a new dress? Sometimes it is warranted; maybe we really do need a new dress! Maybe what we already have in our closet isn’t right for the season or the “ambience” of the wedding site. Maybe the couple getting married is very dear to us, and it just seems right to celebrate this event with something new and special. Maybe the wedding season is busy enough that we really cannot wear the same dress to multiple events where we will probably see many of the same friends and people. But maybe, just maybe, a wedding invitation is exactly the perfect excuse we need to indulge our love of fancy, dressy clothes.

Fortunately, I have not only a wedding to attend, but also, the following weekend, another elegant evening of “cocktails, dinner and dancing,” so it just seemed appropriate – necessary even! – to make a dress/ensemble that could suffice for both. Well, the dress is done, but not the jacket.

Front . . .

. . . and back

This is, of course, the pattern I had to alter in order to fit it onto my available fabric.

I made a couple more small changes to the dress. I broadened and lowered the neckline by a small amount, to make it more pleasing on me. I eliminated the neck facing and used the couture method of finishing that edge, with the dress lining brought up to the edge, fell-stitched in place, and secured with small back stitches. I also decided to make the center back zipper a focus when I found a vintage spool of green silk buttonhole twist in my collection. Using an idea I had seen one of my readers do (thank you, Cissie!), I pick-stitched the zipper with the twist, leaving a little trail of bright green dots along the center back.

In the Department of “Nothing is Easy,” I ran into a problem with the fullness of the “half-skirt” on the front of the dress. You may recall from my last post, that I doubled one of the back skirt sections to use for the front skirt (replacing the diagonally shaped flounces as shown on the pattern which required more fabric than I had.) When I made my muslin (toile), I did not realize that the front skirt was fuller than the two back skirt sections. I had all three sections of the fashion fabric sewn together, with the seams all catch-stitched, and the lining attached too (in order to treat both pieces as one in the ruffling process.) I was half way through basting the skirt onto the body of the dress when I realized there was too much fullness in the front. I had to take it all apart, and figure out where I had made the mistake. It turned out that the front section of the dress was narrower than the two back sections sewn together. So I had to do some calculations, coming up with the fact that I had to take 4.5” off the width of the front skirt. That took a whole afternoon of sewing to take care of that adjustment!

The skirt was attached to the bodice in an rather unusual way as you can see in this photo and the instruction sheet below.

I also had to figure out how to line the top part of the dress. I finally decided to leave the top part of the lining hanging loose inside the dress – and it actually works beautifully!

The skirt lining is not attached to the bodice lining at all.

Two small interesting design notes on this pattern are worth noting. First, if you look at the pattern envelope, you see small neckline darts on the back of the dress.

When I studied the pattern, those darts were not there! Either the artist made a mistake, or the darts were eliminated when the pattern was drafted.

Another interesting design aspect is the center back seam in the skirt. Usually center back seams are there because there is an opening that the seam needs to accommodate. That is not the case in this dress, as the zipper does not extend into the skirt. However, even though it is very subtle, it just looks better to have a seam in the skirt that matches up with the center back seam of the bodice section.