Monday, April 23, 2012

Finally Done.! The 1930's Tea Dress.

I finally finished the 1930's dress I have been messing with for the past 3 months.


 It wasn't that it was that difficult to make. But a combination of having some health issues that made me not feel in the mood for sewing, and not feeling that excited about this dress to begin with caused quite the delay in it's construction. The 1930's aren't exactly the fashion period I'm most interested in so I had to force myself to work on it when I really wanted to make pretty pretty regency stuff...
Anyway I have prevailed and finished the dress on Thursday!

The fashion fabric I used is rayon, a popular fabric of the period.

Pattern all pinned and ready to cut and yes those are my feet!

 It needed to be pinned down well before cutting because it moves a lot.  I cut the skirt and bodice front on the bias which gave it a nice drape. Once cut out I was a bit at a loss at how to mark the fabric since it is a very dark and has a busy print. Fabric maker did not show up at all on the fabric and neither did the carbon transfer paper I had on hand leave any visible marks. So I resorted to marking the darts and pleats by using the machine basing stitch to sew along the pattern markings with the patterns still attached . then I took the pattern off and marked along the stitching lines with a white chalk pencil. It worked pretty well but took forever to do.

Marking the pattern with chalk pencil

The mock up I sent to the customer fit her almost perfectly ,so the only change that needed to be done was to add some more fullness to the skirt back, because the customer felt the skirt was a bit clingy in the derriere. So all I did was add a couple of inches to the center seam of the skirt back and gathered it to the bodice.

The busy print kind of hides the butt gathers.

The original pattern had some rather bizarre glitches like the front and back skirt part being different lengths I had noticed this in the mock up but did not bother to correct it then.

Uneven hem, really who made this pattern?

 It was easy enough to fix this in the final garment by putting it on my dress form and marking the hem to be the same length all around.
So here's the finished garment.

The final product.

Just ignore the messy sewing room in the background...


I'm quite pleased with it even if it's not my style.  But since it's not for me that doesn't matter!  In retrospect this project was not too bad it all went together fairly well and the pattern ( http://rockinghorse-farm.com/?mainURL=/store/category/8lsh/20s_-_40s.html) despite the dress skirt length issue was fairly straight forward  and simple to follow though I would not recommend it to a beginner.
But the best thing about being done with this dress is that I can  finally move on the stuff for myself! So I started on my 1912 gown for the Titanic dinner at Dress U.http://dressu2012.com/titanic.htm

Here's a little sneak peak 

Dress train beading detail
 
I's just draped and pinned right now but you get the idea... well without the white sash.


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