Finished project: No-more-sewing-slump dress

I mentioned it in my giveaway post (one last day to enter!), but I finished the dress I was working on that finally kicked the sewing slump out of me. Yee haw!

This pattern is a 1940s house dress, Simplicity 4660. You can see my copy is in really rough shape, but I couldn't resist it when I was searching for inspiration on Etsy a couple of weeks ago.

No one really wears house dresses anymore, so who cares if I wear a house dress pattern as a sundress, right? Right.

I used what I would describe as a not-really-great-quality cotton lawn from Denver Fabrics. It was kind of bizarre to work with and required every single seam to be enclosed because it frays if you look at it cross-eyed. This dress felt like it had miles of slip-stitching and French seams. But I love the print, it gave it a very farm dress feel to it.

(By the way, this hairstyle is faux all the way and doesn't use an actual bun or an actual roll in the front. Just bobby pins and a scarf. My hair has been giving me fits so I whipped this up recently for a messy, cute and vaguely retro shorter hair updo, inspired by lots of long-haired high bun tutorials. I might do a quick tutorial if there's any interest, it seriously takes no effort or time. Nope it's not vintage, but kind of fun and great for hot weather.)

Now while you can't tell because of the bow at the back, the dress buttons all the way up from the skirt to the top of the bodice. I used a skirt fastened at the waist so I didn't have to waste a button you would never see. Aren't these great?

Did I mention I sewed this dress with stash fabric and only had 2 yards, and I managed to squeak this out with about two inches of fabric leftover?? I shortened the length quite a bit (then turned up the hem about an inch too short for my taste so I may later lower it, whoops) and somehow managed to get it all to fit. It was a nail-biter for sure.

This was my first time doing a sweetheart neckline. I used bias tape as a facing for the neckline, following Lauren's from Wearing History's great tutorial on how to miter inside corners with bias tape. It worked like a charm.

I pretty much followed the pattern as written with a couple of tweaks: I make the waistband ties like a tube and top-stitched all sides instead of just folding in the seam allowances and sewing, and I stabilized the outer waistband piece after picking Liz from zilredloh.com's brain on the subject. And it worked great—thanks again, Liz!

My darts are a bit too high, but the print is so busy you'd never know. Ha!

Due to the completely gathered skirt, the pockets hang open a bit. Fortunately I lined them and finished them neatly. The gap bothered me slightly at first but after looking at some other 1940s patterns with gathered skirts and patch pockets I noticed a lot of them look like this, even in drawings.

I'm really pleased with how this dress came out! It's very comfortable, I think it's a fairly flattering style on me and I like the ruffled sleeves and tie at the back. They're cute without being too cutesy, if you know what I mean. It's a tad too tight at the waist but that would be so easily remedied in future versions by cutting the waistband pieces about 1" longer and just gathering it a little less. And I do see other versions in my future for sure!

There are a few more photos on Flickr starting here if you're interested, including the inside of my bias tape sweetheart neckline.

I'm so happy to be over my sewing slump!!

Little triumphs

I'm so flattered by all the wonderful feedback on my shorts restyle tutorial, thanks everyone! ♥

Lately I rarely seem to do little posts about things, so here's a break from my usual long-winded style. LOL

Yesterday, I spent 4 1/2 hours inserting a lapped zipper into the side seam of a dress I'm working on. You read that right, 4 1/2 hours of my life on a zipper. It was an afternoon and evening full of frustrations. I did a test run on some scrap fabric that worked well. I knew because of the 1/2" seam allowance in my vintage pattern that I'd need to add a small piece of fabric to extend the seam allowance, which I figured out (incidentally this was a huge pain in the rump and I'm still not sure of the best way to finish it all from the inside, so next time I will extend the seam allowance on the pattern pieces instead!). I did this on the underlap side, but thought I could get away without doing it on the lapped side, because the first time I tried it I felt it make the overlap too stiff. Two passes at hand picking the zipper, unpicking and several hours later, I realized I was wrong. Eventually, I was able to get it to work.

Why is this remarkable? It's just par for the course for most sewists. But I'm prone to giving up when I encounter frustrations like this. In fact much smaller frustrations have stopped me in my tracks. But this time I kept going. Even though I kept getting more frustrated as the evening went on and other problems mounted up, like the fabric getting a bit weary and saggy after all the handling. I kept on going.

And now I have my very first lapped zipper and hand picked zipper, all in one. Far from perfect, but dag nabbit, it's in, it laps, it looks pretty good and it fits.

And on a more fun and less frustrating note: this weekend I made my first bias tape for the same project! I hope to have the dress finished this week to show off soon.

(Want to learn how to do a lapped zipper? Check out Casey's 40s style side seam zipper tutorial and Gertie's vintage-style lapped zipper tutorial.  Or a hand picked zipper? Tasia has a tutorial on that, too. This Threads Magazine article is also very helpful.)