Thanksgiving Dress, McCall’s 6473

I will take almost any flimsy excuse to make myself a new, pretty (silk) dress.  Most recently, Thanksgiving did the trick.  I also decided I wanted to try out a vintage pattern in my stash that’s had me intrigued for some time: MacCalls 6473 from 1962.

Autumn Apron, 50s Style

I’ve been meaning to make myself an apron for some time now, but dresses and other clothes always seemed more fun important.  Two years ago my husband and I hosted my family for Christmas dinner for the first time and spent my day in the kitchen in a silk dress with no apron.  I did the cooking and even made an apple pie from scratch and inexplicably, miraculously didn’t get anything on the dress.  I’m still completely baffled by how I managed it.  This year we hosted them for Thanksgiving.  I was determined to make a silk ‘Thanksgiving’ dress (which will likely be the subject of my next post) but there was no way I was going to push my luck a second time!  Thus, an apron became the next important thing to sew!  I have a few vintage apron patterns and decided on Simplicity 4213:

I Have a New Friend!

My birthday is at the end of September.  The 29th, to be exact, which is apparently the same as Jerry Lee Lewis and Madeline Kahn.  I don’t care too much about the former, but am a little tickled about the latter as Madeline Kahn is/was one of my favourite actresses.

Seriously, no one beats Madeline Kahn

HSF Challenge #20: Outerwear, 1880s Dolman Part Deux

Hopefully I can get the rest of what I have to say and show about my new Dolman into this second post (it would seem a bit silly to have 3 posts just about a seemingly simple-ish cape/jacket thing).  It’s probably going to be just a bit long and image-heavy, though.  If you’re just joining me now, this project is for Challenge #20 of the Historical Sew Fortnightly, which is Outerwear.  You can check out Part One of my Dolman adventure here

I’ll start this post off with the required specs for the HSF Challenge:

• Challenge: #20 – Outerwear
• Year: 1888
• Pattern: Ageless Patterns #1271 1888 Plush Wrap
• Fabric: Cotton Velvet/Velveteen, Silk Charmeuse, woven interfacing
• Notions: 7 buttons (plus one extra), upholstery braid approx. 7m, bead fringe trim approx. 7m, velvet ribbon approx. 3.5m
• Historical Accuracy: Ummm……..let’s say 75% – ish?  I used a pattern lifted directly from an original (or supposed to be), a combination of machine & hand sewing, fairly period appropriate or at least plausible fabrics.  However, the trimming isn’t quite right and the fabrics aren’t likely 100% right.
• Hours to complete: lots over the course of 2 weeks
• Total cost: I’m going to guess approx. $100 overall, over the course of some years.  The velvet has been in the stash several years, the silk only a few months, the trim was bought for the project.
• First worn: last weekend – keep reading or scrolling down to see!

So, where did I leave off…..oh yeah, the sleeve construction.  I decided probably the easiest way to explain how the sleeves get sewn into the body of the Dolman is to draw a little diagram.  This is an outline tracing of the pattern image, the dotted lines in black and red are my additions.  The dotted black line is the Dolman armhole (probably pretty obvious) and the red dotted line represents how the sleeve is attached to the body of the Dolman.  The space towards the back of the armhole is intentionally not dotted red because the sleeve is not sewn all the way around the armhole.  I hope this makes sense, along with a couple of photos towards the bottom of this post.  If it seems like I’m over-explaining this, it’s really just because of how long it took me to realize how this works, lol.