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Society Dress at CalBal 2023
*, Balboa, California Balboa Classic, Sewing Pattern

Society Dress at CalBal 2023

A couple weekends ago featured the return of the California Balboa Classic! Held in January, this was the last big swing dance event I attended in 2020, so it was extra nice to see it come back. I hadn’t figured out what to wear, though, when Gertie released her new Society Dress on Patreon on January 1.

I’ve *never* sewn up a couple of dresses as fast as I did this time! The style is similar to some of my favorite dresses in my closet, with one notable exception – it’s a knit! On January 1st I literally printed and taped up the pattern and went to Joann for fabric. I made the velvet one first, and was so impressed with how fast it came together that I made the poppy dress too. Being a knit means that the fit is forgiving so I skipped the mockup, and I’m getting more comfortable with my rotary cutter too, which is a big time savings. Both dresses are a straight size 10F/G, with the hems shortened 2″. Both fabrics are from Joann, a stretch velvet and double-brushed poly. I will be making more of these! (Plus working on a new pose, lol!)

Oh! I also competed this weekend! Chris and I competed for the first time since…2017? 2016? It’s been a long time. We placed 3rd in the Pure Balboa comp. It was the only contest we signed up for, and it was SUPER INTERESTING only focusing on Pure Bal instead of getting distracted by all the flash of Bal-swing. I have a new respect for the nuances of the dance now!

One Step at a Time
*, 19th Century, Jane Austen Evening, Sewing

One Step at a Time

I’m in the middle of sewing a new Regency dress right now for our local Jane Austen Evening. (Yay, it’s back after the world’s multi-year hiatus!) I’m excited to have a new dress for one of my favorite events, it’s coming along ok, but I keep getting overwhelmed by it. It’s not the biggest project and I haven’t hit any major problems, but I do need to have it finished in the next 10 days and I hate sewing to deadlines. (When I wrote that sentence I almost jumped up from my computer to go work on it again because it stressed me out.)

It’s REALLY REALLY easy to get overwhelmed working on a big costume project. Not only is there lots of sewing to do, but you have to think of all the other styling elements – hair, shoes, jewelry, makeup, stockings, gloves, a fan, a reticule…my mind is spinning. And like I said, this isn’t even the biggest costume project. How to handle all that?

I like lists. A lot. In fact, I’m going to grab a 3×5 card in a second to write down that list of things I need to have. It’s easy to let those little things sit until the last second, but then it’s too late to, say, replace your worn out gloves or get a new fan. So I need to check on all those things while I still have time to do something about them and chuck them all in a box to keep them together until the event.

Then it’s back to sewing. It’s stressing me out, and I’ve put together loads of garments that are similar to this. The problem isn’t the project, it’s my brain. I’m trying to do the project on Easy Mode – I’m working with a great pattern (Laughing Moon #138) and not deviating from the pattern too much. I know which steps are likely to take much longer than one would expect (sleeves, I’m looking at you), and trying to budget enough time for those. But still, my mind keeps jumping ahead to all the zillion little steps that go into a project like this.

The thing is, though, you can only work on one thing at a time. It’s silly to worry about the sleeves while working on the bodice, or about the skirt while working on the sleeves. I can’t do anything about those sections yet and I’ll get to them in time. The thing that is helping me the most is to put those future parts out of my mind and to focus on what’s in front of me RIGHT NOW. Gather the sleeve caps. Sew the underarm. Attach the cuff. Finish the cuff. Attach sleeve to dress. Each of these steps will take as long as they take, and I can’t do the next thing until the last one is finished. So don’t worry about all that. Just do one step at a time.

Laughing Moon #138, under construction
AofD: A Dart with Fulness on One Side, pt. 1
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

AofD: A Dart with Fulness on One Side, pt. 1

Y’all, I made an INCREDIBLY nerdy discovery.

This sewing technique (“A Dart with Fulness on One Side”) is NOT actually used in the official, original, authored-by-Mary-Brooks-Picken version of The One Hour Dress.

Are you as shocked as I am? (probably not. I have no illusions that anyone else cares about this stuff.) But there are TONS of modern sketches and blog posts and even workshops out there teaching that the basic “One Hour Dress” gathers into a hip dart.

Which only really matters if you decide that you’re going to explore a sewing technique used in the infamous “One Hour Dress”, and then you hunt through multiple editions of the book, looking for where to use the technique, and it’s nowhere to be found.

Don’t get me wrong – the one-piece “One Hour Dress” does show a similar version with hip fullness, but that extra material is pleated into the sideseam. And there *is* a dart at the hip, but *the fabric is not slashed open to create that dart*. This means that you’re never required to the tricky bit of sewing of gathering or pleating a longer piece of fabric into a shorter piece (and having to clean finish and reinforce that slashed point at the tip of the dart).

Hip fullness is allowed in the original one-piece “One Hour Dress”,
but the main body of the fabric is not slashed into.
Source: http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/html/warm/H-SW007-04.htm

The good news is, that sewing technique *does* pop up in all sorts of other 1920s styles, including “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, which was ALSO published by the Women’s Institute, ALSO in 1924, and also likely written by Mary Brooks Picken. Just don’t be surprised when you go looking in the original “One Hour Dress” books and the construction is different from the sketches you see floating around on Pinterest.

So let’s look at places where this technique WAS used!

These examples all come from various Women’s Institute publications. This “Dart with Fulness on One Side” technique seems to have been most popular in the early and mid 1920’s, when straight, tubular fashion was at its height. By the late 1920s, it appears to fall out of favor as more shaped designs were considered chic.

From “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, 1924
From “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, 1924
From “Draping and Designing with Scissors and Cloth”, 1924
From “Fashion Service Women’s Institute Magazine”, Spring/Summer 1921
From “Fashion Service Women’s Institute Magazine”, Spring/Summer 1924
From “Fashion Service Women’s Institute Magazine”, July 1927

I’ve already finished my sewing sample of this technique, and I like it pretty well! I will share the actual sewing in my next post. 🙂

Art of Dressmaking, February 2020
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

Art of Dressmaking, February 2020

AofDSeams-compressedDownload

Howdy! Here is this month’s Art of Dressmaking download, focused on Seams. Basically, the whole reason I picked this is because of page 97, “A Dart with Fulness on One Side”. It’s the style used in the hip gathers for the infamous “One Hour Dress”, but the construction method shown here, with the stay, is different enough from the construction as explained by Mary Brooks Picken that I want to try it out and see which version I like better. (Don’t worry, I’ll do a whole post on this. Or maybe do worry? Because it’s gonna be nerdy.)

I haven’t yet decided which other technique I want to try. I’m already familiar with a lot of the examples (French seams, felled seams, various seam finishes etc.). The Open Welt and Slot Seams are intriguing to me, because I can’t immediately visualize an application for them. I’ll have to dig in more magazines to see if I can find examples of them!

AofD: Corded Shirring
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

AofD: Corded Shirring

Here is my second installment of practicing the Art of Dressmaking! The manual showed this interesting version of shirring, where you use a cord almost like a drawstring to create the gathers. I hadn’t really seen this method in use before, so I tracked down a couple examples of it. These two examples from 1921 suggest using the method with taffeta, but I did see one more from the late ’20s with chiffon for the fabric suggestion. (again, my nerdery is showing…)

Women’s Institute Fashion Service, Spring & Summer 1921
Women’s Institute Fashion Service, Spring & Summer 1921

Since these two original examples suggested taffeta, I grabbed a scrap from my Regency spencer and gave it a try. I seriously love the effect! I definitely need to figure out a way to use this technique on a real garment. I almost used yarn as my cording, but I had some corset lacing handy so I used that instead. I think it worked great! It’s much stronger and denser than yarn, so it gave great structure to the rows of shirring.

Have you come across this technique in your sewing and/or vintage journey? I’d love to see more examples!

AofD: Shirred Drape
*, 1920s, Art of Dressmaking, Sewing

AofD: Shirred Drape

Oh dear. It’s February already. I’ve done a decent amount of sewing this month, and I’ve actually been getting better about taking photos regularly, but I haven’t found a blogging rhythm for it yet. I’ll keep trying. 🙂

I’ve been hunting to find examples of the sewing techniques from the Art of Dressmaking “in the wild”, and I was supposed to post these for the challenge for January. Oops? (The great thing about doing historical fashion is that it’s already all out of style, so being a little behind doesn’t make much difference. 😉 )

This first example comes from the January 1928 edition of the Women’s Institute Fashion Service, and shows how to add a shirred flounce to a coat dress. I haven’t been able to find an image of the original pattern (Pictorial Review 3758, in case anyone wants to help me track it down), but I suspect it just has the double pointed ends at the buttonholes, and the magazine is suggesting a “hack” to spiff it up by adding a shirred drape. (OMG my nerdery is *really* coming out right now…)

I’ve done plenty of gathering and shirring in my time, so I decided to try this little drape piece to see how it would look, in case it might be something I want to add to a project in the future. Because the magazine “hack” suggested rayon, I used some rayon satin that was leftover from my Vogue cape, and I ran the stitching by hand. According to what I’ve been reading, doing finishing details like this by hand still seems to to be considered the “standard” method in the 1920s, and using a machine is suggested almost as an afterthought.

I learned a new little trick for securing the gathering threads! The book suggests wrapping the thread around a pin in a figure 8 motion to hold them.

The completed practice sample. Do I love it? eh, not really, but I think I have a better idea of how to make something like this work if/when I do ever want to apply it to a project.