back at it...

Such a long time since my last post. It is time for an update. So I am making 50s dresses for myself, daughter and mom in law. MIL is visiting for Thanksgiving and for hubbie's retirement. I sadly missed the 18th cent. picnic with my super cool group of DFW costumers between the holiday, the kitchen renovation, and the price of gas I just had to pass on this one. I will be shooting for the event in January a Titanic artifact exhibit. Until then, I just have to make my own costuming opportunity. We are going out to luch at a 50s diner just for the fun of it. Without futher wait...here is the daughter's dress.

We are using some of the new reprint retro patterns from Butterick. I thought this pattern worked up well and with the exception of the odd instructions for the neck detail I had no problems with it. Daughter's dress is in a cotton print. The bodice section is lined in cotton muslin and the skirt is lined in taffeta. The hem is a narrow handrolled hem and the dress closes on the side with a zipper and a hook and eye.

To get the fit closer to the close ease of the 50s (thank you Lauren for the great class at Costumers Lost 2012!) I decided to make the dress up one size smaller than called for on the pattern. This took out the large amount of modern ease and I did not need to make any other changes. The fit turned out just right.

Charming little bow detail

 

invisible zipper in the side seam, I am going to hand stitch the zipper at the hip a bit to fix the slight pulling, for my first zipper in easily a decade, not too bad!

We added a loose taffeta skirt lining for added swish. It also acts as a slip, something every 50s girl would have owned and sadly we modern girls often don't.

close up of my hand sewing, a hand rolled hem. This worked well with this skirt which is practically a circle. A wide hem on a skirt like this one would be difficult without a pucker or pleat somewhere.

And there you have it. The dress took about two afternoons to sew, I liked the pattern and did not run into any major hiccups. One down and two to go! Next up the Butterick 5813 in a brown mico-dot cotton print.