Fab fifties

It seems that fifties fashion is back - AWESOME! Maybe my most favourite fashion period. This month's Burda magazine has a feature on 50s inspired clothes, and I already have quite a few vintage patterns waiting to be made up... in fact Jackie was based on a 1950s stle pattern. I love the fitted bodice and wide skirt style - so flattering (as long as the skirt is the right length of course!), though I'm not sure I'd go FULL 50s and wear the full petticoat / crinoline, it looks gorgeous. Again, born fifty years too late (I reckon nicest to be in your early twenties in the fifties to make the most of the gorgeous clothes!). On that note, we have just started watching the first series of MadMen, the series from the US about advertising in 1950s Manhattan. It's AWESOME. Not least the clothes. Office politics in those days... wowzers. Anyway, work wardrobe then was great. Pencil skirts, silky blouses, tight tops, 3/4 jackets. So flattering. Which brings me onto my next project I think - the skirt and blouse from August's burda issue, and maybe a second frilly blouse. They both look fairly easy, and the blouses both have sleeves (eeek!) but as they're not set in they probably don't count for my Virgin Sleeve Challenge...

Wondering whether I need to bother making a toile of the top or whether it is easy enough for me to just crack on... hopefully the latter, although I don't have any chiffon-y type fabric (though I do have some spotty satin stuff which might pretty cool for the one without the frill). Wonder if chiffon-y fabric will be hard to sew with... and cut out... maybe I will try and get to Goldhawk Road on Saturday morning.

Roll on the weekend - maybe I might actually get some sewing done, wedmin appears to have taken over (churches booked: 0, venues booked: 0, guest lists finalised: 0, minutes spent awake in the dead of night worrying about foregoing lack of progress: too sleep deprived to remember).

Jackie Oh..

So here is Jackie, modelled rather fetchingly by Maud. I wore this to a wedding and I think my daddy managed to take some nice pics, but sadly I don't have any of those yet. I had to finish it the night before I had to leave for the wedding, and ended up doing an all nighter... like an essay crisis - sewing crisis!

In real life, the fabric isn't as shiny and weird as it looks in the pics. The fit is ok - nice around the midriff but the shoulder straps are too long (the ribbon pinching was an attempt to shorten them!) - my alteration clearly not needed and in any event conducted with little or no accuracy.... gagh... oh well, I'll learn for next time. It is also not tight enough at the back. and gapes a little - requiring perfect posture with shoulders pushed back to keep it flat and nice! Comes as a result of not really fitting it properly I guess. But now I have Maud....

The invisible zipper also isn't great - not that invisible - but now I have a new zipper foot (though between you and me, there are about a billion bits to it and am frankly terrified at thought of taking my presser foot to bit in order to attach it).

So many lessons to learn from this one I think!

And I shall call her.... Lisa

Long time no post... I have been away on hols (hooray) but am back now and raring to sew... (geddit??). Jackie was a hit at the wedding - though annoyingly I soon found out that my strap adjustment was a little over-zealous... and the bodice wasn't as close fitting as it should have been at the back - forcing soldier-like posture to keep it all flat. Some pics to follow when I find some nice ones (could be some time)...

So today I wandered down to Goldhawk Road to buy some fabric for some of the millions of dress patterns I appear to have bought but been too nervous to try.... It's the first time I've been down there - happily it is only about 20 mins for me on the tube. There were some gorgeous Swiss voiles in one of the shops for £25 p/m, I was going to buy some but didn't have a good pattern in mind and am not yet feeling confident enough to draft my own.. but I managed to find a lovely maxi dress pattern which would be perfect for some of the bordered fabrics. Very Cavalli... I did managed to get some lovely blue cotton with a sort of woven stripe, and another blue cotton with a fine purple satin-y stripe. I thought it would make a lovely dress, but then realised loads of the patterns I have say 'not suitable for obvious stripes'. Goddammit. Also got a heavy woven cotton in lavender and a sort of aqua / turqoise colour. And some lovely wooly boucle type stuff of which I have grand plans to make a Chanel-style suit for the winter... Though given I have made about four things in total so far - none of them involving sleeves in any format - that may be a bit ambitious... Anyway onto the current project.

In a massive pattern splurge in Peter Jones on Sloane Square, I found Vogue pattern V8232 which I thought was a really nice simple design that I could make up in loads of different colours / fabrics. And it was in the 'Very Easy Vogue' section. Hurrah! I am going to make it up in the plain blue cotton (and think I will line it) and then maybe do some funky decoration-type-thang with grosgrain ribbon... And I shall call her 'Lisa'.

So far I have cut out the fabric - am about to start on the lining. I am sooooooo slow....

Spotty Marie skirt

I made this from the free pattern on Burdastyle and hemmed it to a more flattering length. It was actually a bit tricky to get the hem right as the original pattern has facings for the hem which is a sort of tulip shape. I cut and hemmed it shorter so it didn't have the balloon / tulip shape. I also lined it with the help of Connie Long's book 'Easy Guide to Sewing Linings' - basically the quick-lining technique. Lining really makes it a lot nicer to wear, and the whole skirt feels a lot more substantial. I did managed to prick my finger on a pin and bleed on the lining a bit which was slightly annoying. I am now deliberating whether to use this skirt shape for Jackie. The shape will probably be a bit fuller made from silk, but that might be quite nice... Hmmm. I will also need to move the zipper to the back, as the Jackie bodice opens at the back but that will probably make it neater to finish.

Jackie part II

So I have just finished the bodice! I lined and stitched it all on machine - no hand sewing whatsoever - thanks to this awesome tutorial I found on BurdaStyle which shows you how to do this cool inside-outsidey magic seam thingy. In the end I found it easier to follow than the one on Threads I referred to in my previous post.. not sure if they even do the same thing, but I will be using this method a lot going forward.

I did use the Threads quick-lining technique to start with - it basically involves cutting your lining from the garment pattern pieces and sewing the facings to the linings and thereafter treating it as one unit. Here is a pic of the lining with the facing pinned to it. I have never sewn lining fabric before - slippery little sucker...

The inside-outsidey magic seam thingy I used for sewing everything together. The picture to the left was taken after I'd sewn the neck and armholes and before I'd sewn the side seams. I have left the back open as once I have made up the skirt bit (hopefully that will be a lot less fiddly and time-consuming) and joined the skirt to the bodice there will be a zipper there. Hopefully I've left enough of a seam allowance. The lining technique is awesome and for this project has worked well - I'm really chuffed with the results of my first attempt at lining something! I think when I sewed everything together I should have trimmed the seam allowances down at the armholes as there is a little bit of bulk there... but I gave it a good iron and it seems fine. I've been amazed at how easy the silk dupion has been to iron. Which makes up for the fact that it FRAYS ALL OVER THE GODDAMN PLACE. Ugh.

I'm really glad how the straps turned out - I hate hand sewing (it's always slipstitch isn't it?!) and the pattern for Jackie calls for hand sewing at the shoulders. Yawnarama. But the inside-outsidey magic seam thingy lets you sew the whole lot on the machine then turn it the right way and press it. It looks much neater and more professional than my hand sewing, that's for sure...

I didn't do anything with the seams on the inside - just pinked the edges - maybe I should have used some seam binding or something? I did that for the seam joining the silk bits of the upper and lower bodice and it looked very neat but you can't see it as it's hidden by the lining. Hopefully it will be ok, I can't see me wearing this dress every day! Though if I can finish the skirt bit I'd like to wear the dress for my cousin's wedding at the end of May... but first I have to figure out how to make the skirt...

Jackie

So I am part way through my lovely oyster silk version of the 50s delight below. Actually, I think I need to name it - how about Jackie? I decided that I didn't want a button fastening at the front but instead a zipper at the back, and though I haven't got as far as the skirt bit yet I am thinking of having a more tulip-style skirt instead of the full skirt the pattern uses; the silk dupion is quite voluminous and I don't want it to end up looking like some sort of 80s wedding dress… But for now I am just making up the bodice.

When I made the practice version, the gathered seam under the bust did not lie quite under my bust but instead sort of across it (a factor of my freakishly long upper body as opposed to the size of my bust, sadly) so I needed to make an adjustment for this in the silk version. What I ended up doing was extending the length of the upper bits of the back and front pattern that make the straps. So far it seems to have worked but I haven't sewn everything together yet. To remove the button closure facing stuff from the front of the bodice, I just folded the front bodice pieces back to the 'centre front' line and cut them on the fold. Again, seems to have worked so far but I haven't really fitted it properly yet. Is really hard to do with pins sticking everywhere… perhaps I should buy one of those Lady Valet dress forms… For the back, in order to leave enough fabric for sewing in the zipper, I added an extra 2cm to the centre back seam allowance.

Anyway, the cotton version of Jackie was a cream colour for the bodice, and it was quite translucent and you could see the folded darts a bit. So I wanted to line this version - also to make it nicer to wear. As I have only ever made two other things before - both of those being massively simple - and the dress pattern does not have instructions or patterns for lining, I am having to figure it out by trial and error. After a bit of searching I found an awesome tutorial on Threads which shows a great quick-lining technique . If this is the quick version, don't know that I'll ever get around to the 'slow' method…! I have sewn the facings to the lining pieces (which are just cut out from the same pattern as the bodice pieces) and now am about to sew the lining/facing unit to the front fabric… it is all pinned and ready, hopefully will get around to doing that tonight. Am a bit nervous about turning it the right way in (which involves pulling the back sections through the shoulders - sounds confusing to me) and pressing it but watch this space….