Surprise Wrap Dress

Have you ever finished a make and after trying it on thought, “ugh, this makes me look pregnant!”? I have a few times but now I have an excuse because I AM pregnant!

Surprise!I wrote most of this post a few weeks ago for the Singer Aus/NZ blogs when I was about 24 weeks, which was just about when my wardrobe choices had started to take a serious hit!

I lost two of my favourites, the Papercut La Sylphide (sadly now OOP) and Colette Rooibos of which I’ve made multiple versions, at around 19 weeks when baby decided to expand his residence upwards above my natural waist line.

8 dresses down, let’s keep going…

My So Over It Betty dresses and Vogue 1353s lasted a little longer due to the slightly higher waists and full skirts but ultimately I retired them around 23 weeks.

That’s 5 more gone! What’s left?

So I’m down to my Pauline Alice Cami dress, which is lasting only because it too has a high waist, gathered skirt and it was too big for me anyway, Kitschy Coo Lady Skater (yay for stretchy merino) and Papercut Clover dress which is great worn with a high belt. I only ever made one each of these dresses.

Well that’s clearly not going to cut it is it? I need some new dresses ASAP!

I’m not looking for maternity specific patterns, my sewing time is precious and everything I make get emotional investment so I don’t want to have to shelve them after baby arrives in December so I’ve been hunting out patterns that will still suit me postpartum and beyond, maybe with a few modifications.

What better place to start than the stash, let’s take a look:

So as well as making another Lady Skater and Clover dress my short list is:

Republic du Chiffon Violette Dress (cheating: I bought this one recently!) – Victory Patterns Simon Dress/Top  ⁣- Papercut Saiph Tunic

Victory Patterns Hannah Dress – Sew House Seven Tea House Top and Dress
Milan AV-JC Zero Waste Brumer Wrap Dress

I’ve also bought two maternity specific patterns because stretchy fabric is life right now and also they look so cute and fast to make:

Deer & Doe Givre Maternity version – Megan Nielsen Erin Maternity Skirt

With so many baby things being quickly added to my sewing queue I’m unlikely to get to all of these but dream-sewing alongside real-sewing is a fun way to pass the weeks.

For my first experiment into Maternity-But-Not-Really-Sewing I’m going with a wrap dress that’s been on my to-sew list for ages. It’s vintage Vogue #1679 Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress⁣⁣. This pattern is single sized, unfortunately one size too big for me, but with the general overall body expansion I decided to sew it as drafted and see how it turned out. Later I can grade this pattern down a smaller size or two.

It did turn out a tiny bit big for me but it’s been a while since I sewed from a vintage pattern and I really enjoyed it.

This dress is really well finished with full length interfacing on the bodice and skirt edges, full length facings, lots of stay stitching (I used fusible stay tape instead) and beautiful clear instructions.

Trying my best to match up the stripes!

Stay Tape along the top edge of skirt

Left: Can you see my centre back seam?
Right: Setting in sleeves with the Many Many Pins technique

I only made two changes from the instructions: No hand stitching for the wrap pass through, because a.) hand sewing, and b.) you won’t see it (it’s covered by the wrap ties), so I machine top stitched around this instead. And I continued the edge stitching from the bodice right down the skirt because I liked it.

 

I also won a game of bobbin roulette but almost lost entirely when I noticed I was running out of thread completely. The original spool was from a big box I was given by a family friend who had sewn curtains in a past life. This means most of the colours are multiples of beige and cream but there are a few brights in there that I’ve managed to use.

I originally took a photo of the old and new spools of thread thinking to illustrate that Gutermann had changed their colour numbers or NZ had different numbers but a quick internet search of their colour chart showed me 912 AND 247 looking very similar so it’s actually just that my local Spotlight apparently doesn’t bother to stock all the colours…I met their Gutermann rep once…

Winning Bobbin Roulette 

Let’s see how it turned out:

The front wrap has great coverage, crossing right over to the opposite side seam. Great on a windy photo day!

I spent a lot of time while laying out this pattern to get good stripe matching and no twinning on the bodice. I think I did pretty well, the stripes continue up seamlessly.

The skirt has quite a curved hem so it looks a little wonky inside out but when worn it’s fine.

Inside out you can see the nice wide facings, all under-stitched, interfaced and stay taped so that they lie against the body really nicely and won’t stretch out.

I only overlocked the edge of the facing (in magenta of course!), all other seams are left unfinished. This fabric won’t fray and it makes for a nice soft interior.

The extra finishing steps were really worth it to help this dress last as long as possible and make it comfortable to wear. I really enjoyed sewing this one and I definitely see a couple more in the future. Stretchy fabrics and I are best friends right now!

 

THE DETAILS:

Pattern – Vintage Vogue #1679 Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress (OOP), view A, size 16 1/2 (Bust 99cm)

I chopped quite a lot of length off the skirt pattern pieces. Next time grade down 2 sizes.

Fabric – Knit from The Fabric Warehouse

 

Sewing a foreign language

With my wedding ring crisis averted last Saturday I spent the rest of that weekend working on my Melbourne Cup/Honeymoon dress.

Said dress is #10 from Patrones 289, which means the instructions are in Spanish. I speak English (obviously) and a little Japanese which is so rusty it makes my jaw ache.

Patrones 289 Dress #10

Google Translate is close to useless when it comes to sewing instructions so I though it would be helpful for other sewers who subscribe to magazines in languages they do not speak if I documented my thinking process as I tackle a pattern more or less sans instructions. It differs for different patterns and I’ll sometimes consult instructions from a similar pattern to give me a quick feel for order, then I do some brain sewing before I get started. If I get stuck or am in doubt of the next steps I’ll pin or baste pieces together or place it on my dress dummy Scarlett to get a feel for how the item is shaping up.

This might be a bit epic so be prepared for far too many images and lots of words…feel free to skip ahead 😉

Right, lets begin: You might remember this image from my UFO post.

The pieces were already cut out (it’s the envelope on the far left) from a little while ago. I bought the fabric with the Patrones pattern in mind and I really liked my choice, a printed jersey from Spotlight.

Tangent: For those of you not from NZ/Australia you might no be familiar with Spotlight, it’s a kind of mashed together craft/knitting/sewing/homewares warehouse kind of store at the mid to lower end of the budget. I know a lot of sewers really hate them and wouldn’t be seen dead inside of one but I think they are getting better and they have their place in our sewing world. Recently I even saw the exact same fabric in a Spotlight store that I had only just seen in one of the higher end fabric stores. They sell Gütermann thread and Schmetz needles at good prices, two brands I use without a second thought, and they often have Birch and O-Sew overlocker thread on special. When I got my overlocker I was given 4 cones of (apparently) very high quality thread, the sign said $6.00 per cone retail. I chose black since I was sewing a black dress at the time but I also wanted white so I went to Spotlight and bought some O-Sew thread at $4 per cone. I’ve used both colours equally and never found a knot in the white cheap thread but the black expensive thread has had at least three (and still counting) and two of those were on the needle thread, luckily I saw them (I have high-speed vision apparently) so I guess “you get what you pay for” isn’t always true…and yes, I am aware of the irony that I got the black thread for free 😉

Ok back on track: This fabric however was not really a Spotlight success story, it was a fairly good price but the print was woefully off-grain and you can’t really correct an off-grain print in jersey. It fact it was so bad that I think it’s more plausible to assume it shifted during the printing process, jersey is tricky like that. I barley had enough for the dress but I wasn’t about to be defeated by some cheap fabric so I threw out the cutting layout and spent an entire day trying every which way I could to lay the pattern to not only match up the repeating chevrons but also to keep the important seams looking straight. I think I did a pretty good job and eventually I was ready to cut…then I made the mistake of cutting the back skirt piece on the fold…and it wasn’t supposed to be…I realized halfway though cutting but I was lucky enough to salvage it by moving it across and shrinking the outside edge seam allowances to just under 1cm, never the less it was enough for that weekend and into the envelope the cut pieces went until the other side of winter and here we are…

Ok, let’s get started: First things first, after transferring any markings I sew or baste any pleats, darts or other manipulations that need to happen to each piece before any main assembly, I think of this as the “first shaping” and helps me get my head around which pieces go together and the construction. This dress is pretty basic as far as that’s concerned, no pockets, just a heap of pleats on the front skirt piece and your basic bodice darts front & back. The faux wrap pieces on the front of the dress are attached at the armholes and have lots of  pleats too.

UPDATE: The pattern pieces below are copies of my Patornes pattern sheets, I promise I didn’t cut up the originals, see my explanation here.

Bodice front & back with darts pinned

Skirt front & wrap pieces with pleats pinned

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Next I assembled the basic dress parts, forgetting about the wrap pieces for now.

I attached the bodice front to the skirt front, the bodice back pieces to each of the skirt back pieces.

Bodice front & skirt front

Then I sew the centre back seam and insert the zipper.

Centre back seam sewn, zipper gets pinned

Now I have the dress front and dress back assembled.

Ready! My zipper colour choice was limited, it was either this dark purple or super hot omg blinding pink, so I went with the purple

There were four front wrap pieces and four tie pieces so I assumed there are two for each side, one as the outer and one as the inner facing.

Attaching the tie to the end of the wrap piece

I attached a tie to each wrap piece then lay the assembled pieces together and stitch the outside seam leaving it open at the armhole curve. Turn and press, baste open armhole edges together.

Inside out completed wrap piece, ready to be sewn, then turned…

Testing, testing & testing – Scarlett plays dress-ups

Next I pinned the wrap pieces to the bodice front and basted in place.

Attaching the wrap pieces

Nerd Moment Alert: after all that pleating – perfect 1.5cm shoulder and side seam allowances still in tact

Now it was ready to pin to the dress back and sew the shoulder and side seams.

Side & shoulder seams

After this step I tried the dress on myself. It looked a bit too big on Scarlett and indeed on me it was a bit too big also, I think the jersey I used had much more stretch than the pattern allowed for. I could also put it on over my head without even undoing the zipper so I ended up taking the zipper out and sewing the center back seam again and taking it in the sides.

I think the armhole and neck openings were supposed to be enclosed in bias strip but I did not have enough fabric so I did a basic seam edge and then hemmed the skirt. I used Scarlett’s hemming attachment for the first time and it was brilliant.

Ready for the big day

I think that’s enough pink fabric photos for one day, I promise more finished dress photos when I upload on the weekend. Photos here 🙂

Sewing in a foreign language really isn’t all that scary or difficult if you have a basic knowledge of all the main clothing items: dresses, shirts, skirts and pants. Just take your time and look at other similar patterns instructions to help you along.

Ok, I promise, that’s all for today 🙂