Vintage Vogue 1489: giant collared suit

After what seemed like an endless summer and non-existent autumn Sydney is finally having some cold weather. I love winter - wearing chunky knits and not having to worry about getting a sunburn from being in the sun for three seconds is definitely my thing! So it's timely that I finally finished sewing a new wool suit for work - actually I finished this about 3 weeks ago but it took me some time to find the right buttons and then get around to sewing them on.

When it comes to collars on suit jackets, I usually prefer no collar at all except it seems when the collar is HUGE! This is a 1960 Vogue pattern that is a pretty simple style except for that oversized notched collar.

Luckily this was a fairly simple project to sew because in true vintage style there was only one page of instructions for the entire jacket. I followed the vintage techniques as well, including hand basting in canvas interfacing instead of using fusible, and pad stitching that giant collar to support it.

I also lengthened the sleeves because my wrists get too cold to wear bracelet length. Apart from that I didn't make any changes - I even put in some slim shoulder pads. I used premade ones though - no one has time to make their own! I'm not sure about those shoulder pads though, they make me feel really bulky around the shoulders and I think my neck looks really short and stumpy in this.

The back view is fairly plain - darts at the shoulders and vertical darts to give waistline shaping. If only I had better posture and stood up straight then I wouldn't have those annoyng drag lines on the back! 

It took me a while to find some buttons, and I was very nearly going to make some fabric covered buttons when I stumbled accross these simple angled buttons in Spotlight of all places. I didn't do the bound buttonholes because I thought there was a high risk of stuffing them up and ruining my jacket when it was practically finished. The buttons cover the buttonholes though, and those buttons really make the jacket. At nearly $5 each they are the most expensive part of the jacket, because the fabric I've used was picked up from a Sydney Spoolettes fabric swap last year. It's a gorgeous wool, so I can't understand why anyone would give this away, but I think I've made very good use of it!

The skirt I've made to go with the jacket isn't from this pattern - I just used my favourite Burda high waisted pencil skirt because I know it fits me perfectly. This is Burda 2/2018 #119, which I've made a few times before, including this cute version in green floral barkcloth that I wear all the time.

Overall I really like this suit even if it makes me look like a football quarterback with those shoulders. Maybe one day I'll undo the lining and remove the pads, but knowing me I'll probably just keep wearing it as it is and just think about doing it everytime I wear it

Vogue 9021: it's all about the sleeves

I'm still playing catch up to blog all my completed projects - here's a dress I finished in January and have worn quite frequently since then. This is Vogue 9021 - a simple fitted sheath dress with rather dramatic cut on sleeves.

Those sleeves are my favourite feature of this dress, but unfortunately if you make this pattern according to the pattern the armholes are so low they practically extend down to your waistline and give a clear view of your chest every time you lift your arms. When I made this dress previously I extended the side seam up much higher, so I did that adjustment from the outset this time.

Those sleeves however make it difficult to wear a jacket or cardigan over the top so I'm not sure I'll wear this dress much over the winter. The fabric is an Atelier Brunette viscose that I bought online from the Maai Design on line shop after seeing so many people use this fabric. The fabric is a lot thinner than I expected, and a bit transparent so I fully lined this dress in a thin navy blue cotton poplin.

I have to admit that I bought this fabric purely because of FOMO - I saw so many great garments popping up in my Instagram feed that I simply had to have some. But now that I've made it into a dress, even though it's a pattern that I love, I just feel a bit blah about it. I can't quite decide whether it's because the print feels a bit 1980s to me or whether I just feel a bit frumpy in this, but either way I don't love it as much as this palm print version I made from a cotton sateen last year:

I didn't buy much of this fabric because it's on the pricier side, so I didn't have enough fabric to spare to pattern match at the seams. It's such a busy print that I doubt it's noticeable at all to someone who doesn't sew.

 
In terms of the pattern it really is very simple and definitely deserves to be in the Very Easy Vogue category. I did grade between sizes as usual - smaller at the top and larger at the bottom, and thanks to the waistline with darts it is easy to get a close fit at my sway back.

 

Vogue 8667 - finally got there

Every so often I glance at my UFO pile and think about finishing some of those projects languishing in it. Well finally I have finished one after several attempts and it is such a relief to get it done to a wearable stage!

This is Vogue 8667, a princess seamed dress with a rolled collar and a skirt options. Looks pretty simple right? I had originally set out to make view E - the straight skirt and short sleeved version.

I don't know why it took me so long to finish this - I just kept losing steam at every hurdle. Firstly I should have measured the flat pattern pieces more carefully to make sure I sewed the right size, because it turned out way too big. So I set it aside for a while to think about it. A few months later I picked it up again and pin fitted it while wearing it - I had to take the dress in quite substantially at the sides to make it fit across the bust. I also flattened the bust curve to make a faux small bust adjustment.

But once I had made that change the sleeve would no longer work - it was too big to fit into the now much smaller armhole opening, but making the sleeve narrower made it too tight to fit my arms! So away it went again for a few more months. Finally in January this year I decided to either finish it or scrap it, but thankfully it worked out. I changed the sleeve to a cap sleeve so I could get the shoulder coverage but not the tight feeling around my bicep - it all worked out in the end phew!

But the real star of this dress is the rolled neckline. I love the wide neckline and stand up collar - I feel very ladylike when wearing this, but it does make it hard to wear a jacket or cardigan over it.

I've left the collar at the back to splay open above the top of the zip. It is meant to have a hook and eye at the collar roll line (ie at the halfway point of collar) to make it stand up slightly, but I knew from past experiences with this type of collar that the hook and eye never stay closed and my hair tends to get caught in it instead.

The other design aspect I like about this pattern is the waist seam - it helps get a neater fit for my swayback. It causes pattern disruption at the waist line of course, but in a busy print like this it's barely noticeable but you can see from the side view that the fit is quite tailored.

The back view is rather plain and simple, with just a small walking vent

So even though it took me a very long time to finish this dress, I'm glad I didn't give up on it and preserved until the end. I really can't explain why I had no enthusiasm for this particular project - the fabric is a lovely double knit from the Remnant Warehouse in a great teal and lilac coloured print and I do love the design lines of the pattern. I guess that sometimes you just need to be in the right frame of mind.

Vogue 1156 - darts a'plenty

I've recently changed roles at my work and it has meant coming back to work full time after working part time very happily for the last ten years. It's a promotion and now as the responsible adult in the room I figure I need to look the part, so I'm really trying to step up my corporate wear this year.

First corporate dress off the rank is this grey fitted sheath dress:

This is Vogue 1156, an OOP print Anne Klein pattern that has been in my stash for a few years just waiting for the right fabric to come along. And actually I don't think this fabric is the right fabric - all those darts and seam lines are barely visible which is annoying because it was quite tedious doing all the ones in both the fabric and the lining!

Not being very blessed in the bust department those darts do create a bit of puffiness at the front of the dress that my bony chest can't fill out, but apart from that it's a well fitting dress. I made a minor sway back adjustment to the centre back, and graded out from a size 8 at the bust to a size 14 at the hip to fit my pear shape and it all turned out pretty well.

The only thing I have a minor problem with is the neckline - it is so high that I feel like I'm being choked, especially when I'm sitting down at my computer or driving. I interfaced the neckline because this fabric was a loose weave, and I under-stitched the seam allowance to the lining so I think that creates quite a hard edge to the neckline which makes it worse. I just need to find the energy to unpick the neckline and re-sew it because it really is annoying.

This fabric is a lovely soft poly-cotton tweed like fabric from The Remnant Warehouse. I bought two metres initially planning to make some trousers, but since I'm so terrible at making trousers and the fabric was quite wide I realised that making a dress and a matching jacket (which is underway) is a far better use of the fabric.

I think this is a great pattern, but it seems it wasn't so popular with all the sewists out there on the internetz. There are only 4 reviews on Pattern Review and no others that I can find. The pattern is a bit involved with all those separate pieces and darts but isn't too difficult and all those seam lines offer a lot of opportunity for fitting. I would like to remake this dress in a plainer fabric - I'll add that to my never ending to do list!

Vogue 1499: the dress to wear when the road is melting

Apologies to those people in the northern hemisphere who are suffering through extreme cold and heavy snowfall, but we here in Australia are equally suffering albeit through extremely hot days and nights. So hot......

A linen sundress is the perfect thing to wear in these conditions, and I just happened to pick up some stripe linen from Pitt Trading only a few weeks ago - a new dress and using fabric before it hit the stash is a double win.

This is Vogue 1499 which has been around for a few years but is still available because it seems to be a very popular dress judging by how many photos come up in a simple google search.

Thanks to all those blog posts and pattern reviews I found that it was possible the pattern would run a little large and be too wide across the back neckline so I cut a smaller size for the bodice and I folded out a dart in the back neckline which seems to help, although I still ended up taking it in a few extra centimetres down the centre back before putting the zipper in - thanks to my custom body form I was able to pin it close to my rounded poor posture shoulder shape:

That makes the back panel a little narrower than intended, but it doesn't look out of proportion:

One of the main things I love about Vogue patterns aside from their designer connections is their superior drafting - I love little details like how the bodice side panel is lined up with the skirt pleat where they meet at the waistline. I don't anyone else will notice this detail, but I love the symmetry of it all:

So obviously I didn't stray too far from the original version on this dress on the pattern envelope, but black and white stripes are fairly classic and show off the pattern lines of this design really well. I took extra care to make sure the stripes matched at the side and back (not that you can really tell thanks to this wind blown photo below!):

The only other change I need to make for future versions is to lower the bust darts by about 2cm - obviously as time has gone on things are in the same place as they used to be! Either that or I need to buy a super push up bra...... I might also make those cap sleeves a little wider because while they feel fine when standing with my arms down they felt a little tight while driving.

But overall I really recommend this pattern - it's quite simple despite looking complicated and was really quick to sew up. Perfect for hot summer days. Although ironically I wore this to work yesterday when it was a bit cooler but my office had the air conditioner set to arctic so I had to pop out at lunchtime and track down a cardigan to buy so that I didn't freeze all afternoon!

Swaying palms: Vogue 9021 dress and a bonus Style Arc Skye top

Here we are mid April and Sydney is still having very hot days in the mid 30s. The upside of this very prolonged summer is that I got another wear out of this dress very tropical palm print dress that I made over a month ago. It has been extremely windy the past few days though, hence the inside shots for this blog post.

This is Vogue 9021, a very easy Vogue pattern that is still for sale even though it was released a few years ago now. And true to its label it is indeed a very easy dress to sew since it has very simple lines and there's not much to it really except for those sleeves! I bought this on sale at one of Spotlight's fantastic $5 Vogue pattern sales late last year.

If you google this pattern you'll see that many ladies have made a version of this but I was particularly inspired to make this pattern by this very elegant navy version over at He Cooks She Sews! and this very pretty floral version by Gabrielle at Up Sew Late. I had been searching for some navy blue crepe to make this dress, but I ended up using a very colourful palm print cotton sateen I purchased from Gardams Fabrics in Brisbane at the beginning of this year so in a way I was very influenced by both versions.

As I said, those sleeves are the stand out feature of this pattern and the extreme batwing / fluttery shape really caught my eye.

I usually treat patterns that only have illustrations on the envelope and not photos of the actual garment with extreme suspicion and this one proves my cynicism correct - those sleeves may look lovely but as loads of people have pointed out they pretty much give a direct view to your entire torso if you lift your arms even slighlty:

This is pretty obvious though when you look at the technical drawing of the pattern - those sleeves are open to just a few centimetres above the waistline:

I tried to think of a clever solution, such as making a gusset from the dress fabric that would be sewn from the front darts around the side to the back darts, or perhaps a camisole style top to be an under layer and also attached to the waistline. But it's been too hot to think in these parts and certainly too hot to wear more layers of fabric than necessary so I just did what everyone else had done and sewed up the side seam a little higher until it was decent.

Sewing the side seams up higher does change the look and the way the sleeves fall though. In the photo below, you can see how the sleeve on my left side where I've pinned the side seam up to my bra strap looks more like a traditional sleeve than my right shoulder where it seems the fabric is just draped around my shoulders.

But it was a change I had to live with if I didn't want every one to see not just my bra but my blindingly white midriff as well, and really the change is probably subtle anyway.

Once the sleeves were resolved, the rest of the pattern is very simple and easy to sew. The back skirt has a split along the centre back seam which isn't my favoured treatment because it has the tendency to tear open but when I was cutting out the pattern I forgot to add extra width there to make a vent so I was stuck with it. The dress is not too tight though, so it should be ok.

Even though this dress used a lot of fabric because of those extremely wide sleeves, I had some leftover fabric that I managed to eke out a Style Arc Skye top. This is my go to pattern for a simple top because it doesn't use much fabric and is very quick to sew. I think this might be my fourth or fifth version.

Whilst it's still very striking in this fabric, it's a bit more versatile than the dress because it looks great when worn with pants or jeans.

I'm pretty happy that I finally found the right fabric to make this dress, and that I made the most of the beautiful fabric. Gotta love it when things just work out just the way you want them to!