McCall’s 5055 • c. 1959 • Sheath Dress

It’s been a minute – Hi, hello!

Things change – as ever – and between putting down vintage selling for good in spring and shifting back into painting full time, last year I sewed exactly one project. Well, times four.

Remember that 1960’s Percy the Penguin slumber bag I re-engineered at the beginning of last year? I made four as Christmas gifts and it took up what little free time I had.

But! 2024 is lining up to be all about vintage clothes again! To say I’m excited is an understatement.

In fact, this post is catch up from December 2022. (Oi.) This is my holiday dress mock up – representing the best laid plans. As is my usual way, I reworked parts of this pattern to fit how I needed / wanted and it was – as all projects before it that I’ve decided to fine tune for my own purposes – full of research, lessons learned, and new skills tested. (I only banged my head on the wall a few times.) In the end though, success(ish)!

Time to make the final version! (With my first go at pattern matching, yikes.)

Note how this pattern wants you to believe it’s easy. I’d adjust that to “easy if you sew routinely.”

But before I get ahead of myself, here’s how this all started.

I saw this flannel fabric at Joanns (you know, the super snuggle that’s not a high quality flannel and probably terrible for any non-pajama clothes, especially fitted ones), but my plan is to stabilize by underlining and shrink the fabric down to tighten the weave and just, see how it goes.

The idea for the final. (The pattern is a smaller repeat than I yeeted together here. Closer to the plaid on the pattern envelope above.)

I love the colors / pattern for a holiday vibe. Reminds me of snow covered berries. It’ll be a fun experiment any way you slice it. (Read: more lessons with a possible wearable outcome.) A trial run / second mock up with my first attempt at pattern matching, so it’s probably best this isn’t a high quality (read: expensive) flannel.

On this first go, I underlined the entire dress – the thought being I want this warmer for winter and to help with the structure. Next one I plan to separate out the underlining to an interlined shell for the skirt section (I’m a bit worried about the seat of the flannel stretching and hanging weirdly at the side seams if its underlined, best to detach the skirt pieces? Though maybe it needs that underlining for structure support? Guess I’ll find out.)

Here’s the dress without the overskirt. I sewed it from Kona cotton because I got it on sale and liked the colors. (I know, you should sew with the weight / drape of the fabric the final will be in, I went rouge.)

Pro tip – hard raking light is the best for a photoshoot /s. Though I do need to press those seams better after washing and probably pay more attention to my stitch length / tension. It’s a bit loose on me here as I can’t figure out if I’m a size 16 or 18 in vintage patterns, I seem to fall just between being tall with a wide frame but on the less curvy side. (The joys of sizing and pattern ease. Still getting the hang of it all.)

Note – I’m not wearing any era appropriate shaping or foundation wear here. If I’m being honest I take these pictures primarily for my sewing binder so I’m pretty expedient in my styling. (We’re lucky I’m even wearing a bra.) In future I do plan on wearing it out with proper shape wear. I’ll have to share photos then.

The pattern calls for a bow at the waist – stitched into the princess seams – but as I wanted an overskirt for this look, I made a removable bow to clip on the overskirt waistband instead. (All about versatile outfits!)

I did lot of small fit modifications throughout that made this a process – what I wouldn’t have given for a me-shaped mannequin while making the toile. (One day.)

The adjustments:

• Shortened the waist.
• Nipped the point out of the bust so it’s smoother as I won’t be wearing a cone shaped bra with this (a small adjustment that did so much for overall fit and silhouette) as well as taking in the princess seams.
• Taking in the sleeve seam a bit because of the bust adjustments.
• Lengthening the darts at the skirt front worked wonders for puckering that was buckling too much over my hips. (Which I’m guessing was happening because I shortened the waist so it moved that dart tip up from where it would have originally ended.)
• Took in the back darts.
• Tapered in the side seams from the mid-hip down so it nips in at the knees more. The pattern has a straight skirt that flares out a bit at the hem. I wanted to go for that shapely look (like this dress) so I measured where my hips start to curve and echoed that on the side seams. It worked out pretty well I’d say.

This was my first time doing princess seams – tricky! Here are the resources I used to get this smooth finish: 1 & 2. Also, for more videos about the making of this dress, check the stories on my insta.

While I’m at it, here’s a little trick I use for darts:

@sultryvintage

I’m late to the game posting about my holiday dress (was preoccupied enjoying the season and hanging with my loves) but I wanted to share this little video about how I mark & finish my darts! . I use a blunt tool (here the back of my seam ripper) to impress a line to guide me for a perfectly straight stitch – no need for any chalk or markers – pressing just enough for a light indentation that won’t leave a permanent mark. & I finish my darts by tucking the tails. . Can’t wait to share my holiday creation! Probably not before next year though, haaaa. . . . . . #sewing #vintagesewing #sewingtiktok #sewingtok #vintage #vintagesew #vintagesewingpattern #sewist #sewingtip #sewingtips #sewingdarts

♬ Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love

Some other additions:

• Added bra / slip strap holders (like you’ll find in vintage) to keep that sleek line of the neck uninterrupted.
• Sewed a pair of my dress shields that snap in and out for easy washing and no worries with sweat. (Read all about my underarm shields & the pattern I drafted for them here.)

Last detail (because I’m always about every little detail):

• Found a vintage metal zipper at the length and color needed (because I’m a bit of a metal zip snob? I have no idea why, I just prefer the metal over plastic).

Side note, this is the true color of the fabric. My phone’s camera rarely does greens justice and I can color correct only so far.

Now for the overskirt – *laughs in sleepless nights.*

No but really, grinding on a deadline to get this done in time so I could wear it for Christmas, I stayed up just about all night figuring out the dynamics of this overskirt, from scratch, because I didn’t have a pattern. Never having worked with tulle before, I had no clue what I was in for. Probably was better that way (or I might not have even attempted this).

I learned a few things:

1. Tulle is the devil’s handmaiden.
2. Direction of pleats set into a band will determine how flatteringly the shape falls. I really wanted it to bell out from the waist (again, as those lying pattern cover illustrations show), so it took a bit of thinking and doing. My first attempt it laid horribly flat. (Though in these photos it’s not showing the work as the wind was blowing it down flat, whomp.)
3. Tulle is the devil’s handmaiden.

Which is a bummer for me because I’m obsessed with sheer over-everythings (skirts, dresses, wraps, nightgowns. Give me all the flowy sheers). So it looks like more lightweight nightmares await me.

The band I drafted after making a belt for this set and working off the same principles. Just angled my pleats to fall the right way and stitched them into the band.

I lined up the ends of the overskirt to match with the front dress skirt darts, rolling the raw edge back in on itself to give volume and a nice visual finish. Really, I got lucky though – the width of the tulle allowed me to double layer it so the folded edge is tucked inside the band and I didn’t have to do any cutting. I bought the exact amount I ended up needing to give it a wide enough pleat and wrap around the length I wanted. Sometimes it just works out.

A few firsts for this make!

This was actually my first ever dress (?!), as well as full underlining, princess seams, and a kick pleat.

It was all fairly easy to sort out until the sleeves. I just could not make them work. I studied tutorials specific to this type of vintage dress for setting them in and the sleeve cap was simply too full no matter how I tried to work it out. If you can smoothly get these sleeves into this dress you are a powerful witch. So they’re slightly gathered, and after so many attempts – I’m totally fine with it.

This all may seem like a lot for one dress. The way I sew, I pick out staple silhouettes I know I’ll love for ages, put a lot of thought into adjusting for fit, and plan on making multiples with my fingers crossed I’ll be able to wear them for a long time to come. Bodies change, it’s the way it goes, but once I get past all the laborious adjustments of the first (or second) mock up, I leave myself such detailed notes I could sew the next ones sleepwalking, so they go fast. Well, apart from all the hand finishing, but that’s a fun meditation for me.

xx Lauren

Some fine print: All images (save the photo of the pattern) & text here are held under my copyright and are not to be used, sampled, or otherwise shared for any reasons – commercial, personal, or otherwise – without my express written consent. Thank you. The pattern shown here is an original pattern and part of my personal collection, I don’t offer copies at this time.

Lastly but most importantly – many, many thanks to my patient & generous person for listening to my sewing ramblings and taking wonderful photos. I’m lucky to have such magic in my life.

New York Pattern 1162 • c. 1950s • Peter Pan Collar Blouse

Peter pan collars, how I love thee. For ages I tried to find a 1930s blouse in this style, but this is what found me. Certainly not mad about it, it’s hands down one of the most comfortable blouses I now own. & the details I was able to include are true delights.

Pattern photo via Backroom Finds (an amazing shop!) via Vintage Pattern Wiki.

I don’t know which came first, the buttons or the fabric choice, but either way – over the moon (pun, intended) with how it all came together. The fabric is my own design – featuring Edwardian celestial jewelry – based off a few pieces in my own collection. You can read more about that here (you can even watch a video of me actually drawing the fabric design in the last slide). The design is named Le Rêve, here it’s in the “Arabian Nights” colorway – a moody deep maroon / plum – in Spoonflower‘s organic cotton sateen. I loved creating this pattern so much I did twelve colorways / versions for it, all of which you can see here.

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The buttons – legendary. I don’t know how I got so lucky with these. They’re the most unreal vintage (possibly from the 30s), mirror-backed, glass star buttons. The faceting & foil makes it so they throw off light like crazy and it’s pure magic to see in person.

I’m in a phase where I’m either learning something new with each make (because I’m still new to sewing) or choosing something new. For this I chose bound buttonholes – mostly to support the shanks and weight of the buttons – but I also decided to go all out with the finishing touches of this one as I felt like the materials truly deserved it. Took me a bit to wrap my head around these buttonholes, but Wearing History‘s really wonderful video on them saw me though figuring it out.

Another place I decided to highly finish this blouse was in the seam allowances. I found a shop that offers a glorious stash of 1930s / 40s woven rayon ribbon (often used as or called hem tape) and chose some to bind each allowance (while normally bias binding is used for this, the nature of the woven tape has the edges locked in so I found it suitable to the task & it kept things lightweight. It also enabled me to finish the seams before constructing this as it would’ve been much more of a pain to sew these onto the finished allowances).

I did have one major face palm with this make and – uhg. This is the thing about sewing that can trip you up – the myriad of details. I’m always good about washing each fabric & ribbon before sewing with it – but totally missed on catching that need with my interfacing. (The agony. I’ve since completely given up iron on interfacing and stick with using fabric as interfacing.) So in the collar, I used an iron on fusible on the underside that wasn’t pre-shrunk. Which means if it gets wet it will shrink off the fabric and cause (what I’ve read is) irreversible bubbling. Which means I’m never letting the underside of this collar ever touch water. Wash day for this one will be a special joy (additionally considering those buttons will need to be popped off every time). Maybe one day I’ll just take it apart and address that. Hard lessons learned.

There were a few other difficulties (read: learning curves) with this blouse. The pattern notes were really sparse, and the one area I wasn’t able to fully sort out was the collar attachment point at the seam. The instructions don’t make sense in how to get it to turn out smoothly from the seam (I must’ve read it a half a million times, but the issue is most likely my newness to this). I was able to work it out so it’s passable but I still need to dismantle this issue for the next blouse. This pattern is also what put me off on cutting notches. I followed the pattern pieces and the notches cut way too deep and into the seam line (face, meet palm), so now I simply mark my notches with a washable pencil.

The blouse went together smoothly otherwise. All darts, pleats, and pattern pieces lined up seamlessly (apart from that collar). I love the finishes around the neck and inside the arm holes, I used a bit of a stiffer cotton left over in my stash and it gives a great hold & structure to the look. The fit is true (roomy, but wonderfully so) and is surprisingly long enough for my frame (I always anticipate needing to add length because, tall).

Paired with a true vintage 1950s quilted skirt, vintage velvet ribbon as a neck tie, & 1959 Bulova American Girl watch.

I consider this blouse a little work of art – my own designed fabric, very special vintage buttons, details tended to – and it brings me a lot of joy as it’s also a mood I had in my head that I was able to make into a wearable garment. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it! If you come across this pattern, highly recommend creating it! It’s so comfy.

xx, Lauren

Some fine print: All images (save the pattern photo, shared with written permission) & text here are held under my copyright and are not to be used, sampled, or otherwise shared for any reasons – commercial, personal, or otherwise – without my express written consent. Thank you. The pattern shown here is an original pattern and part of my personal collection, I don’t offer copies at this time and can’t point you in a direction for other originals or reproductions.

© Sultry Vintage, 2022. All rights reserved.