I have never been one for sewing, the mere thought of using a needle and cotton brings me out in a cold sweat. Throughout our childhood our mother made all our clothes and I was often envious of friends who had dresses from the big department stores or, if they were really lucky, from a boutique. As a teenager I would always rely on my younger sister to repair my socks and tights; yes, back in the day we repaired and reused rather than throw away and buy new; when I had snagged them on the last tree, fence or gate I had clambered over. In school I fared no better. In junior school it took me six weeks to stitch six red felt dots onto a strip of green felt and attach some elastic to make a hair and. I never did finish the needle case. Secondary school was no better, in the first term of our first year our needlework project was to make a yellow gingham apron ready for our cookery classes in the second term. Oh, I managed to put a pocket onto the bottom half, gather it into the waistband and attach the whole lot to the bib. I even managed the shoulder straps and ties. Feeling well pleased with myself I held it up to admire my handiwork to find The pocket was upside down and on the inside of the apron! Things just went downhill from there. After blowing up two brand new sewing machines in my second year it was suggested by the needlework teacher that maybe dressmaking wasn’t my forte. Over the years I have, when I’ve wanted something specific, broken out the trust Toyota sewing machine and had the odd attempt at making stuff but as the machine got older and clunkier I would start many a project but give up halfway, disheartened as it shredded my fabric. Then, last year, I acquired a newer, hardly used sewing machine from my granddaughter; granted it’s only a basic model but it’s so much better than the old one; which I can set up, and leave out, on my skip-ratted drop leaf table in the study. Which recently encouraged me to have a go at making a shift dress which, although not perfect, is wearable. So as you can see, dressmaking is really not my thing. Until “The Challenge”.
Back in February my sister asked if I fancied going along to the steampunk event in her town and attending the Saturday evening ball. As a long time fan of dressing up for a variety of events from goth to steampunk to 40s/50s/60s revival it was a no brainer. Of course I said yes. Then I realised I’d need a ballgown. Fast forward to May. I still had no idea what I was going to do about a ballgown. And time was running out. I went on the trusty old internet and searched for ballgown patterns and came upon one I liked and which could be used for ballgown or daywear.
I ordered the pattern and spent the next few days eagerly awaiting it’s arrival. The minute it was posted through the door I ripped open the envelope and pulled out the instructions to discover I had bought the size 6-12 pattern instead of the 14-18. It was then I realised what a challenge and massive learning curve this was going to be for someone who has avoided dressmaking for the best part of nearly 60 years
Fabric requirements and measurements in hand I headed off to the local fabric store, a small Aladdin’s cave of fabrics, to find a suitable fabric. The ladies there were really helpful, advising me which fabric was the best for what I wanted and for value.
Half and hour later I left with 5m of orange taffeta, 5m of brown satin lining, 3m iron on interfacing, cotton, zips and sundries and for the next ten days all domestic goddessing ground to a halt.
Amanda has told me that she often makes the lining of a dress first to make sure it is going to fit before cutting into the more expensive fabric so my next task was to cut the bustier lining out of some white cotton fabric I’ve had stashed away for several years. My idea was that if the lining was way to small I would have to bite the bullet and buy the bigger pattern. I tacked all the pieces together and asked Netti to pin me in to check how it fit. It didn’t; until we realised I hadn’t lined it up correctly and the waist was too low so I was trying to get the narrowest part to meet round my widest part! Once adjusted it fit with room to spare.
Another day another task. Cutting out the coat. Once again I took Amanda’s advice and started with the lining. Once the lining had been cut it was time tack it all together. I tried it on and was really not happy with the fit, it just didn’t seem to sit right. After fiddling about for a bit I realised where I had gone wrong. As, like my sister, I have a short body; heck, I’m short all over; the whole thing needed yanking up at the shoulders to bring the waist line up. Frustrated and dispirited I decided to put everything away and start again the next day.
Thankfully, before hacking several inches off the shoulders, I checked what I would need to do to keep the correct proportions for the armholes. It was whilst checking the pattern that I had a lightbulb moment. I should have shortened the pattern along the fold line to bring the waist up to where it should be before cutting out. Maybe, I thought, I could do the same with the lining. I ripped out the tacking, laid the adapted pattern pieces on top of the corresponding parts of the lining and pinned in the fold. I set up the sewing machine, whizzed across the folds and checked against the pattern before stitching up the lining. It worked, everything fitted in the right places.
The next job was to make the loops for the lacings on the back of the coat. This turned out to be a pig of a job which involved stitching a very, very narrow tube and turning it right way out. Easier said than done. Using a huge darning needle I attached my strong thread as instructed but do you think I could get it to pull the fabric through? I was just about to give up and resort to using ribbon for the loops when it finally turned. I pressed the tube flat and cut the loop lengths.
Once I had my loops I could stitch the back of the coat together which was another fiddly job. It did look good though. It was now time to assemble the coat and put the lining in. Thankfully the outer matched the shortened lining. Once the lining was in place the instructions said I had to understitch around the seam allowance. Since I’ve never heard of this technique I had to resort to YouTube to learn how. It took a few attempts due to having to unpick where I’d managed to get the fabric folded under the foot whilst I was doing the understitching. Still not sure I got it right but I gave it a go and it seems to have done what it should.
The coat was taking shape. It had pockets, loops and lining. I had learned about interfacing and understitching. It was now time to tackle the sleeves. This should have been a simple task, even I have put sleeves in before now. Think again. They weren’t just sleeves, they were sleeves with a cap at the shoulder and frills at the cuffs. First I had to make the shoulder caps and attach them to the coat. To do this I had to run two lines of “easing” stitches around the edge so I could ease them into the armhole of the coat. I must have run and unpicked those easing stitches a dozen times before I gave in and did it by hand. I tacked the caps in place and set about making up the sleeves.
After making up the sleeves and sleeve linings I had to make the frill and attach the frill. I had decided to use a meter of brown and gold lace, bought way back in 2012 to make a vintage top for Bozzie and never used. Being idle I used the selvedges rather than mess about hemming the frills. I had to sandwich the frills between the main fabric and the sleeve lining before turning the lining to the inside. Then came the really hard part of attaching the sleeves to the coat. Like the caps they had to be eased into the opening but; possibly since they weren’t double fabric and interfacing; they were much easier to ease in. I finished off by slip stitching the top of the sleeve lining to the coat lining.
Now that I was seeing the results of my labours I was eager to get started on the rest of the outfit. The next morning I was back to crawling about on the sitting room floor cutting out the pieces for the skirt. How hard can one dirndl skirt be? Harder than I thought! It was only three rectangles of fabric stitched together. Only, once again, I forgot that the pattern was for a giant beanpole rather than short, dumpy me. Fortunately, just as I was about to make my first cut into the fabric, I did a double check of the instructions and realised my near miss error. I seized my tape measure and took my waist to ankle measurement. Then I realised that I would have to divide this measurement between the main skirt and the pleated frill. My head started to swim as my very unmathematical brain tried to do the calculations. I adapted the pattern pieces to my workings out and said a little prayer as I started to cut the pieces, hoping that I had got my calculations correct. I whizzed down the straight seams of the skirt but in my haste I managed to stitch one seam on the wrong side so had some unpicking to do. The pleated frill was made from ten rectangles sewn together and hemmed before having the pleats pinned, pressed and tacked in place. It took hours, especially when the iron got too hot and melted a hole in one of the pieces of fabric. Typically it was slap dab in the middle so I had to unpick it, cut another piece to insert and pleat. Once I had finished pressing in all the pleats I attached the frill to the bottom of the skirt to find I was one rectangle short. More pleating and pressing to add the extra panel and it was done. I was super careful machine stitching the pleats in place but I still had several mishaps where the fabric got caught under the foot whilst understitching. It was so frustrating but I persevered and eventually had them finished.
The yoke of the skirt was made up of double thickness fabric with interfacing sandwiched between the layers. By the time I had applied the interfacing to one side of the yoke pieces our part time puppy appeared to have made off with one of the remaining pieces for which I hunted high and low, to no avail, and ended up cutting another piece. Which, as I found later, had been cut slightly on the skew so didn’t quite sit the same as the other pieces. Now all I had to do was attach the main body of the skirt to the yoke. More of those “easing” stitches that don’t ease and again I ended up hand stitching them. It took a few trials and errors to get all the gathers to fall evenly around the skirt but eventually I was satisfied. Putting the zip in presented my with another problem since I had not realised that the waistband wasn’t included in the zip measurement. More unpicking. And somehow the gathers had moved to the edge of the fabric so I couldn’t make a clean turn back for the zip. I pinned and tacked the zip in place before badly machine stitching it in place as I don’t have a zipper foot. I knew it wasn’t going to be perfect but at least it would be hidden by the coat. I sat up late that night finishing off the skirt with the waistband.
It was time to start on the bustier. I cut out all the pieces and laid them out in order.
I had been convinced by Netti to use the lace I was using for the frills on the coat over the lining satin which meant I had to somehow attach the lace to the satin
I ironed the interfacing to the satin, tacked the lace to the right side and, feeling pleased with my progress, made up the bustier.
Oh, how soon failure and disappointment can descend when, with assistance from Netti, I tried it on. There was no way it was going to fit. Until we both realised that I had done it again; forgotten to alter the pattern! Since I had no more of the lace and very little of the satin recutting was out. I decided that I would do the same with the bustier as I had with the coat lining and take it up at the waistline. It actually worked quite well especially when I disguised the seam line with a row of cogs. To add a little extra width I used the piece for the back and cut two matching strips of satin and attached them to the edges where the zip would be. I felt quite proud of my ingenuity. The next job was to sew in the boning. I had ordered this a few days earlier and had looked at it in dismay; how on earth did I use the stuff? It was a huge coil of flexible plastic which had sprung out everywhere. I was so determined not to ask for help from Amanda or my mother I spent the next half hour or so perusing numerous videos on that great educational resource, YouTube, once more before attempting a few practice pieces. Although it can be sewn straight to the fabric I decided, since I also had a load of cotton tape hanging around, to make casings for the boning. That way, I reasoned, if I put it in the wrong way I could easily change it round.
Boning in place it was now time to add the cotton lining, which I managed to shorten quite easily. It turned it the right way out and it actually looked like it was supposed to. Not perfect by any means but it wasn’t a pig’s ear. The zip was a bit of an issue though since I had followed the pattern instructions and bought a twelve inch opening zip and the only colour I could get, I thought, was gold. As I was now running out of time Paul tried to adapt it to fit the bustier and I unhappily tacked it in place. At this point I was so despondent that I was contemplating going out the next day and buying a corset.
I didn’t but what I did do was nip down to a newly discovered haberdashery in town for all the bits I needed for the finishing touches to find they had a fantastic selection of zips, including a brown 10in opening one. I made my purchases and rushed home to unpick the gold zip and tack in the new one. I now discovered that I really did need a zipper foot so I texted my mother; who definitely has one; and took myself over to put the zip in. Back home I tried the whole outfit on to make sure nothing major needed to be done before sitting up half the night adding all the finishing touches.
When I showed my outfit to Amanda she admitted that she had geared herself up to having to make approving noises about a less than adequate outfit and had been so impressed with my effort she had to make me a superb hat to compliment it.
