SewCieTea Dress - The Real Thing, In Liberty

You've seen the first practice dress, and the second practice dress, and finally I am showing you the real thing, made of the precious Liberty fabric given to me by my Gran.

To quickly recap the details of this dress, I wanted to make a 50s style full skirted dress, with a fitted bodice and a wide scooped neckline. Rather than spend ages hunting for the perfect pattern and then even longer adjusting it to fit, I chose to use my self-drafted bodice (used here and here) and change the neckline and armholes to suit my vision.

To make the neckline I adopted a really scientific approach; I put on my peacock dress and measured down about how much lower I wanted the front neckline, how much higher the back neckline needed to be, and where I wanted it to fall on my shoulders (mostly dictated by where my bra straps sit) and drew it on to a copy of the pattern, using my french curve to help smooth the curves. I then also extended out the shoulder seams slightly to give the impression of slight cap sleeves.

 

I fluked out with the neckline, and really liked how it turned out on the first practice dress. After some input from friends confirming some ideas that I'd had, I decided to try adding a contrast band around the neckline and at the waistline. The band at the neck is 1.5" wide, and the waistband is 1.25" (based on the waistband of the Cambie.

I also added a pocket into the RH side seam in the second version, using the pocket piece for the full-skirted Cambie. In all versions the skirt is just a circle skirt (I used the pattern piece from vogue 2902 rather than draft one).

 

I didn't make any changes after the second practice version, and took my time on the construction of this dress. The inside is almost as beautiful as the outside.

The bodice is underlined with some cream cotton batiste.

I finished the armholes with bias binding (hand stitched to the underlining so it's invisible from the outside) and did french seams on the shoulder seams..

For most of the seam allowances I turned them under and stitched them to give a lovely clean finish.

The waistband was finished with a second waistband piece on the inside, that was machine stitched onto the waist seam allowances at the top, and slip stitched along the bottom.

You can just see it above, the only seam that didn't have all of the raw edges enclosed was the pocket, where I just zig-zagged.

The side zip is a hand picked lapped zip...

I even changed thread colour for the 1.25" of the waistband!

I really do love how a hand-picked zip looks.

The contrast band on the neckline was sewn on like a facing, but on the outside. I will be sharing a post later this week (hopefully) with details of how I constructed the bodice with this contrast detail.

I am incredibly proud of the top-stitching; I love my top-stitching foot!

The skirt wasn't lined, as I wore it with my new Crinoline! (post to follow)

I'm still not completely sure about the crinoline. I've never worn one before (except for a few photos), and I was incredibly aware that I was wearing it all afternoon.

At the time it felt a tad conspicuous and costume-y, but looking at the photos I really love the silhouette of the dress with the crinoline underneath it.

So the jury is still out as to whether it will be worn with or without the crinoline for the wedding I'm planning on wearing it to in the UK in July.

However, I am madly in love with the dress, I really do think (and hope) I've done The Liberty and my Gran proud.