Romancing the Dress 3: The Dress Comes to Life

I was sure I'd finally come to terms with my tendency  to romanticize the dress. How many times have I reminded myself how little use I tend to get out of the dresses I've sewn over the past few years? 

Compare frock sewing, I repeatedly chimed to fellow sewists, to the time invested in a flattering pair of shorts, pants or one of my every day  embroidered tee shirts. Just calculate the cost per wearing, the cost being based primarily on the best use of my free time. Frequently I reflected that  as a part time student and independent free-lance worker, it's only practical to accept that a dress is not a worthwhile investment of my sewing time.

And then along came Vogue pattern v8810, and once more I was hooked. Even when I created the toille, I argued with myself about the value of the project.  Right up until I cut it out of three yards of black and off-white houndstooth, home dec fabric.  (It used to be that I didn't admit to using home dec for fashion sewing, but since I saw it featured for clothing in a Vogue Sewing Magazine, I realized I'm not the only one.)

Yes, I made another dress, and I love it. Now I just need to prove my time was well spent by getting lots of wearing time in.

The technical details are in my review at patternreview.com

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

Do modern children play Button Button Who's Got the Button? We sure did. It's one of those simple large group activities where the kid who's It, has three guesses trying to read faces and hope that the face of their little chum who's got the elusive trinket, can't keep from giving away the secret of their prize. We still played it in our youth, probably because most households still had a button box or jar. Nowadays- not so much.

Faced with a desire for a nice crisp column of simple black buttons I envisioned marching antlike down the front of my recently sewn Vogue v8810 dress (Read more about it in my piece, Romancing the Dress: Part 3 ), I started looking for all the recent perfect buttonhole articles I'd been saving off. What happens to those guys? I could have sworn the Threads newsletter had a juicy one by Sandra Betzina sometime this year. Plus I was also pretty durn sure I had the same writeup in one of her books. Could I find either?

Not on your life. nor the probably ten other articles, both paper and digital, that I've saved somewhere. New rule for self, just read the gol durned techniques and think about the skill next time instead of squirreling it away for a rainy  day. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the squirrels lose just as many acorns as I do vital articles.

Here's what I did that was new and different for me, using common sense and a couple of things I actually remembered reading.

First off I looked at where the pattern piece indicated the center of the buttonholes ought  to go (I admit there have been times I eyeballed that step and was really sorry later). After I marked the line with a lovely strip of super narrow postit tape*, I ran a line of basting down the front to mark the center of the buttonholes. Of course I made a sample strip the same thickness as my buttonhole edging to use for my test buttonholes. I just drew a center line on that with a marking pen, because it will not be going out on the town.

I remembered that more than one of those missing buttonhole articles talked about using stabilizer and it sounded like the same kind I use as a second layer when I do machine embroidery on my artistic tee shirts. I quickly learned, however, that although I put the wash-away stabalizer that looks like saran wrap ON TOP when I do machine embroidery, I definitely want to put it underneath when I stitch  buttonholes. (Do you hear the faint refrain of gummed up machine noises at this point?) Thank goodness for my test strip. My  several year old machine has several different buttonholes and I tried all of them that looked right, until I found one that worked pretty well.

I measured off and marked each potential hole with two pins. I am a little ashamed to admit that I can't figure out how to program repeated buttonholes on this machine. ** Still I was pretty happy with the results. I also machine stitched the standard four hole buttons down. Are you still tempted to hand sew them? I am, but I reminded myself I had two spares in case I messed up and broke one. Hummmm that reminds me that I didn't sew the spare buttons into the pockets. Where did I leave those girls? Machine sewing standard buttons sure saves a ton of time.

I was pretty happy with the results, though one hole is messed up. Think I'm gonna tell you which one? Not on the soul of my Great Aunt Mabel! That nice little black button pretty much covers up the extra long stitches on the goofy one. What's really important is how much I've been enjoying wearing my new dress, whether or not every buttonhole stitched out exactly so.

* I learned to use a couple of different sizes of postit tape in chorus. We use it to temporarily alter the lyrics. The tape has transitioned into the sewing room. I will have to do another posting on the marvels of that stuff.

**I could pull off programming repeated buttonholes on my old one machine but not on my newer one. Yup I do have the manual for the new gal! Yup I have turned to the appropriate page! I also can't figure out how to do things like getting my husband's name to stitch out. I bought this machine used and the dealer has since closed up shop. Oh well, another rainy day activity.

Romancing the Dress Part 2: California Romantic Considers Realities of Life When It Comes to Sewing a Dress

Forever fantasizing about sewing the perfect dress
But do skirts really fit into my active and arty modern life?

I spent a lot of of my little girlhood playing with dolls. I also spent a lot of time drawing girls. Drawing girls merged into drawing paper dolls. The most important part of drawing paper dolls was creating their clothes. I particularly enjoyed creating patterns and textures for these outfits, which I made by rubbing my crayons over the paper atop a rough surface. Of course none of my paper dolls wore pants, trousers or slacks as bi-forcated womens clothing was called in the nineteen sixties.

If you weren’t around in that time, especially if you missed the early, pre-groovy part of the era, images from the time might lead you to think that American females wore mostly skirts or dresses. In fact, shorts and pants were nearly as much a part of our daily wear as they are today. However, when it came to creating artistic duds for dollies, I didn’t see any point in designing the sort of togs I actually spent most of my own time in. On television, in magazines, coloring books and  movies, and in my favorite modern and historically themed stories, girls and women wore fluffy dresses and glamorous skirts. The clothes I created for my dolls were those I imagined I’d wear myself as an adult, and they came from what I drank in from my culture. They came from images of traditionally skirted women.

As a sewist, I’m still faced with the eternal challenge of an imaginary, idealized female lifestyle, versus the reality of my own activities. What I put on in the morning reflects what I'm expecting to do. Right now that involves walking or hiking, classes, study, a lot of computer time, and (unfortunately) a little housework. I'm usually pretty darn happy, and comfortable, wearing my most attractive tee shirt and a pair of long pants or shorts, both items that style up great with a pair of sturdy walking shoes or hiking boots.

Despite what I actually wear, when I plan time for my favorite hobby, I'm tempted to sew dresses. In point of fact, I've sewn only two within the last few years. I'm relatively happy with the way both of them turned out. Yet, I’ve worn each of those frocks two or three times, both times to events, to which, I could easily have worn some of my most feminine pants with a lovely blouse, a rope of pearls and a scarf.

Still, when I open the pattern book, you know what section I turn to first.

This summer I just couldn’t resist the how-to-style examples for Vogue pattern v8810 shown in the Vogue pattern magazine. You can just guess I imagined myself hurrying off to an important meeting with a friend in that denim dress with those lovely heels and the model's jewelry. I don’t actually wear heels, and the jewelry she was wearing wasn't my style. In point of fact, I usually plan on fitting in a long walk or bike ride when I go to a meeting, but I still saw myself togged out like the gal in the spread.

Well, maybe I could still figure out a way to fit that duster style dress into my lifestyle…

Earlier in the month I created a toile of this pattern. Some stained home dec ex-curtain fabric was the perfect muslin for the fit I was looking for. I’ve also pulled a heavy black houndstooth print out of my stash, and I think there’s enough for the short-sleeved version. I’m imagining it as go-to summer and fall garment, in our temperate California San Francisco Bay Area climate. It could even extend into our mild winter as a kind of jumper over my pale pink quarter-sleeve tee or my petal pink cowl neck long sleeved tee shirt.

But when it comes down to it, even if the dress turns out exactly as I imagine it, will I really get much use out of another dress to keep the others company in their far end of my closet? I hope those girls have an active social life back there, because they rarely see the light of day.

In the meantime, I've sewn a nice new pair of shorts and another cute tee. 

But the black houndstooth print is eyeing me from the back of my sewing table.


You may also enjoy.... Romancing the Dress 1: Dainty

Romancing The Dress Part 1: Dainty

Though I was only five when this photo was taken, I remember standing on the porch of the rental house in Lansing Michigan posing for it. I remember telling my mother that I "...looked dainty". And I remember her laughing at me and asking me where I had learned that word.

We're not a 'dainty' family. We're midwestern stock - large and robust, arty, and folksy. But I can recall just how delightfully feminine and romantic this much beruffled dress made me feel. Despite her somewhat sarcastic response to my words, my mother had absolutely filled the pale blue bodice with those ruffles when she sewed it for me. And despite the black and white-ness of the photo, I remembered the exact soft shade of blue of the dress, when I was photoshopping the old snapshot.

Whenever I've sewn a dress, I've been just a little bit influenced by the memory of that dainty blue frock.