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Every now and then you need simple and uncomplicated sewing projects. Up to now, my “quick and relaxing” sewing projects turned out to be quite the opposite. In this case, I fell in love with the dress spontaneously and it was sewn without any serious incidents. Although it’s plaid fabric. This is probably due to the simple cut. A top with darts, little sleeves and a pleated skirt. That’s it.
Since the plaid fabric is a bit elastic due to a small proportion of synthetic fibres, I have lined the top with the same fabric. I didn’t want to lose this slight stretchability. What came as no surprise was, that the darts and the side seams had to be adjusted. Darts of vintage dresses have never fitted before. Either the darts are clearly too high or far too low. But that was easy to fix. Nothing new about these dresses is, that I had to raise the waist by about 2 cm, but I can always use the original hem length.
A little bit more challenging was the skirt: How should the folds be laid, so that they are even at the end? With a lot of back and forth I finally found the right pleat depth. And than I went crazy with tacking, otherwise the folds simply didn’t look nice enough – due to the stretch the fabric moved a lot.
When everything was finally tacked together, the sewing started. I had to do some tricks with the side seams, so that the checks of the upper and lower parts came up against each other. The concealed zipper was quickly sewn.
The jacket
While I was still sewing the dress, I also started to work on the jacket. This is after the same cut as the spring ensemble (not yet translated). I realized that I hardly have suitable jackets for my vintage dresses and something to combine for cold days would not be a bad idea. Apart from cutting and gluing the interlinings, I had finished sewing the jacket on one afternoon. The only thing I had to do was to turn the lining over later. Its is black outside (for the maximal of possible combinations) and the plaid is only inside. Since buttonholes are not my thing, I inserted a combination of push button and deco button.
The belts
My highlight of the whole look are the belts – which I almost forgot to sew. I had told the photographers, with whom I was working together, that the dress was almost finished and ready for photographing at the end of the week. But at this time the hem was still missing, the lining had to be sewn tightly into the dress and the jacket had to be thrown together completely. The belts were not even started yet. So I sewed until late into the night on the day before the photoshoot.
The great Hepburn inspired photos are from Dani (Fotospuren) and Marco (Mr-Foto, Fototeam Luzern). The photo shooting was fun (a few tourists were inspired to take pictures as well). And it was really hard to make the selection for this post.
Conclusin: Easy to sew, nice pattern and to wonderful belts.
Pattern: Dress from Beyer Mode 2/1959, Jacket from Neuer Schnitt 11/1962
Changes: Top added width at the waist, removed 2 cm in lenght
Time: around 2 weeks
Material: Dress: Plaid fabric myTex, Jacket: matt black cotton satin, silver Venetia lining
PeterSilie & Co 