How to Make a 1920's Dress // Making the 1 Hour Dress, a Sewing Diary

again I'm rocking the bold I look and pajama combo down here in the sewing room I really do need to make some like really glam loungewear to wear around the house because I work from home so often that it would be nice to have I don't want to get like completely dolled up to be at home all day she says with this much eye makeup on but it would be nice to have like 1940s house dresses and things like that so we'll have to work on loungewear sometime but not today not today hello there welcome back to the closet historian today we're starting my fall and winter sewing series here on the channel I don't know why I'm kind of breaking this into seasons I guess it's like my fashion background I did go to school for apparel production and design so now I think I'd split my sewing in the same way in my brain I have like spring summer sewing and fall winter sewing but starting with the fall projects today I'm gonna be making a 1920s one-hour dress in a nice burnout velvet which is always very full and fun and I am particularly excited to share this pattern drafting process with all of you guys because normally here on the channel when I'm doing my pattern drafting I'm using my basic block or sloper pattern basically to be able to draft patterns or to change darts and things like that too because the other things I draft usually 1940s and 50s tiles are much more form-fitting and so they require things like darts and style lines things like that but the 1920s you're just wearing a big bag of fabric basically that's kind of the look it's I mean great I think this is the the glamorous alternative to wearing the modern t-shirt and sweatpants because it's just a big blue sack fabric let's be honest but we pretend or we think it is quite glamorous so the 1920s it's such a different silhouette to any other victor time period anything that had come before and definitely had influence on fashion that came afterwards of course but that's nice thing about making 1920s closes it is kind of just big geometric shapes and looser things so I'll be showing you how to draft this 1920s one hour dress pattern I'll show you here some images of actual 1920s like pamphlets and patterns and fashion plates and things like that of very similar styles to this I'll zoom in here on this pattern here we can see we're basically going to be drawing this pattern here today very similar to these illustrations from the 20s which is why I feel like this is one of the more accurate and yet simple projects that anyone can start with when it comes to bench and sewing but not everyone is interested 1920s fashion a lot of people are interested more mid-century fashion I happen to like it all and jump around era to era so this is a project that I've done many many times before over on my blog I've worn many a one hour dress and done some variations on them so I will link to some blog posts in the description below of this video because I have done several blog posts about this style of dress before showing me wearing the style of dress so I will put my 1920s like posts in the description of this video as well but for now let's just go ahead and jump over to the blue pattern drafting table of doom and get started making this 1920s one hour dress pattern alright I have this little sheet here with lots of different stuff to talk about but we're just going to start with talking about the basic shape of this pattern it's the very basic shape of this it's like this sort of large wide I sort of shape here is the pattern we're going to be creating today this is a dress that only has two pieces it has a front in the back and they are identical so it's again a very easy project which is why they called it the one hour dress because it's how exactly so easy you can do it an hour but I highly doubt that so to make this pattern we are going to need a few measurements of course that's all we're going to need we don't need a slope or a bodice block for this pattern today because you know that's that's for fitting things quite close to the body in in the 20 we didn't worry about things being close to the body so my measurements today are 42 bust 30 waist and 44 hip of course like measurements vary day by day honestly depending on you know how many perrito's you have the day before but um today this is my measurements and what I will be using to draft my patent today so up here the other measurements you will need those were like the measurements of your body so use a measuring tape measure yourself or have a friend but the other measurements you will want are from the shoulder line to the hem of your dress so how long you want the full dress to be from your shoulder to let's say like a couple inches past your knee perhaps and then how long you want your or how far you want your drop waist to be so from your shoulder to like say the top of your hip like underneath your waist so like my natural waist probe you here on this pattern but a few inches down from your waist where like the fullness of your hips begins is where you're gonna put this drop waist on this 1920s dress so you're gonna want your full length of shoulder to hem and then also from shoulder to the drop waist area again you are kinda arbitrarily deciding this better to get it a little bit high than a little bit low for fit reasons because this is so easy to make it wouldn't be bad to make a mock-up and then you couldn't fiddle with that if you decided that was too high or too low because this is a pretty easy pattern to make you could easily make a muslin if you should so desire and now for your measurements the most important one of these is going to be actually the bust measurement because the bust measurement is what we're going to use to decide how wide the like main with the dresses I suppose so if this you're imagining you know one is the front we don't have another one for the back so we need half of your bust measurement is what the main little rectangle if you imagine a rectangle in here of your pattern is going to be half the width of the half of your bust measurement plus one and a half inches I'm just choosing one and half inches of ease quite kind of arbitrarily I didn't used to add very much ease at all and you can I mean I didn't used to so you can get away with not adding much and ease but it's actually more accurate for this to be like a loose sack of address for the 1920s because national rays are just not a very fitted time so I don't really going to add one and a half inches to the front and the back pattern which will mean three inches of ease overall all around here so basically you're doing I mean you could almost mmm gonna draw this here if you wanted this to be more of a sleeveless dress you wouldn't need these extensions and so if you imagine you could almost draw your pattern maybe this is how we'll do it today and all this being half of your bust measurement plus whatever easy one so my bust measurement today is 42 so the main body of my dress a little rectangle that's hiding in this eye needs to be 40 to bust so divided by 2 is 21 plus an inch and a half 22 and a half so this area here on my pattern it's gonna be 22 and a half inches wide I'm gonna add probably let's say 4 inches for the sleeves and then 4 inches for the hip extension as well that will encompass the extra bit of space I need for my hips but also just give me a little bit of a pleat they're a little bit more flow in the skirt a little bit more walkability things like that and then this sleeve is basically a kimono sleeve like an all-in-one sleeve like we did here on the channel before but so the twenties version of that or a more accurate and actually to a actual Japanese kimono this is getting closer it's not still not quite there but we're getting closer there to an actual kimono sleeve all in one t-shaped little sleeve here so your shoulders is here and this just kind of hangs down and creates a little sleeve shape from the nature to hang from your shoulder as usual I feel like I'm not a good job explaining but I'm trying here guys I'm trying hopefully throughout the length of this video things will make sense um so basically to draw this pattern we're just gonna draw this rectangle that is as long as you want your dress to be from shoulder to hem and as wide as half your bust measurement plus ease and then we will draw on little extensions up here at the top for the sleeves I'm just gonna make these Tanja's down from the shoulder line that's basically how I like to do these I found out something that works for me you could do the sleeve dropped lower that would be fine um it's just a bit a bit more of a drapey look you could have it be tighter if you wanted to but then you're really are gonna have to mock that up and figure out what might be too tight I just think 10 inches is a good base starting point to go from so that's what I'm gonna be doing ten inches down from the shoulder line is where I will add this sleeve extension onto my rectangle head and inside this pattern and then I will also add four inches down here that I will either turn into a little box pleat at the hip or do gathering I am actually gonna make two dresses for this video and then one I will do the Box pleat and the other I will do the gathering I've shown the different ways to control the hip fullness on these dresses before over on my blog so I will be linking that blog post in the description of this video as well so let's just go ahead and get started with this pattern hopefully as I go through making my pattern and showing you how I sew this dress together you'll get a good idea if I've missed anything here really it is quite simple you just need that bust measurement and to draw a big eye it's gonna be it's gonna be fine I think some things to talk about with this pattern though however this is the basic one where it's just like a big you know rectangles you can if you wanted to have this be a big triangle it will create a hankerchief hem i'll put an image of one that i've made like this before this one doesn't have sleeves but it has that handkerchief hem on it that way you do those is just a big triangle here and so that's one way to do this you can't of course add a seam here instead of having this be one of these for the front one of these for the back you can cut the skirt portion off and then have a different shaped one or you can cut this all in one if you have a really wide fabric but usually if I'm doing a different shape than the regular rectangle I will cut I will make a seam here and then you will have to add some allowance along this part because anytime you cut into a pattern if you need to add seam allowance so that's kind of one way to change up the skirt on this is to do it as a handkerchief hem by doing that as a triangle another way to is just to have this be wider and then you can kind of hem these two sections here and let's say like have them open and have them hang and they kind of hang in a waterfall a way along the side again I will try and find images of the different skirt variations as we go through these you can again separate along the waist here add a circle skirt on there it's not very I mean I there are so many 20 stresses that have a more circular shaped skirt but it's more of a 50s thing but you can do whatever skirt shape you want on here you can of course just do this as a circle as well the triangle a circle whatever shape of skirt you want to do in these you can this is all just very basic geometry for when it comes to 1920 styles the same is true of these sleeves too of course you could do this as a curve here if you wanted to you could do it as like a triangle and have it hang in more of a hankerchief ish way and then of course you can change the neckline if you wanted to do this with the facing and I put a Veen in here scoop this out a little bit just so it's a little bit more comfortable I never even really bother because I suffer from fashion all the time it's fine um but you can do whatever kind of neckline variations you want over here to just draw them on and use a face thing or line this garment would have whatever you would wish you can change it up but I'm just gonna doing the very basic nineteen-twenties dress like standard 1920s dress that I've made a lot a lot of times the one hour here for us today in my burnout velvet which is sitting adjust there so I'm gonna go ahead and make this pattern and I'll talk you through mine so I'm gonna go ahead and draw it out we're here to a mannequin to show you I'll just sort of talk about a little bit the measurement from the top of your shoulder to where you want the drop waist on your dress now of course this girl she's a very very flat bum but if you imagine like where the full the bum starts that's where you're gonna want to like on this girl from shoulder to drop-waist like to the fullness of her lack of bum here would be like 18 inches problem where I put it put it a little higher so if your mind like the bum starts here you want to kind of do the drop waist right before that fullness starts like a curve comes in here so from the shoulder down to where the drop waist begins for this girl's pattern I would put it at 18 on my body personally it's actually like 22 so like the distance from my shoulder to where like the main fullness of my hip is is probably 24 so I want to go above that 20 to kind of see what I'm saying so like you don't want like the hip measurement is taken at the widest part of your body so like across the like widest part of your bum and then all the way around like an evil level even level evil level and human level so like that on me is 44 inches but you want to start your drop waist above that that way that ease is already there in the pattern when it comes to start going over your body so like I'm this girl it would be up here at like 17 or 18 is where that drop waist should be on her pattern on mine it's gonna be at 22 so measure down from your shoulder or have a friend help you measure down from your shoulder to like above where your hip fullness your the width of your hips and your bum begins and that's gonna be where your drop waist is it's below your natural waist you're gonna choose a lot you can even like you can go a little bit higher if you want to it doesn't really matter that it's as low as possible like just as long as it's between your natural waist and where the fullness the fullest part of your hip and bum are so you want to be in that zone somewhere again also for like imagining from shoulder to the hem line of something like this girl doesn't have legs but if let's say this is her knee you know I would want to figure out okay maybe I'll make this dress 41 inches on her so from shoulder to hem would be 41 and then from shoulder to the hip fullness would be again like 17 or 18 again she just doesn't have a bum so that makes it hard to explain um so that's you know how I would do it on this imaginary foam person for me my shoulder to drop voice is gonna be 22 inches my shoulder to hem it's gonna be let's say 45 today so again I've written my choices or measurements down here 45 from the top of my shoulder again if we imagine our pattern looks like this so the full length of this is gonna be 45 this distance here from the shoulder to the drop waist is gonna be 22 so that's where I'm using those measurements that's where I got those measurements that's what we're doing then of course the distance across the center here is my bust measurement 42 divided by 2 21 plus the one-and-a-half inches of these so it's 22 and 1/2 inches across this pattern and then of course front and back it totals up to be be 42 plus 3 you know 45 so it's me 45 long and 45 wide but you know it's a very geometric pattern so that's just how it works out for me again these things will not come out the same if let's say your waist measurement is larger than your bust like I've never made one that way just because I've only ever made things for myself ever since University at least I've only ever made things for myself so I've never done it before but I would assume just go like the reason I'm using the bust measurement for the main rectangle in here of the dress is because that is my large like one of my larger measurements down here I'm adding fullness so after this line after the drop waist I can add as much as I want you know to the sides and that will help with the hips so if this was if your hips were let's say here my measurements are 42 30 44 right so I only have to add a little bit more extra on from here to get from 42 to 44 but let's say your measurement was you know 60 hip and a 42 you just add more here so the hip isn't a problem and if you have let's say we have this central waist section we have this top sling section and then we have a skirt section if your waist measurement is larger than your bust measurement then just you know make this widest part of your pattern your waist measurement theirs like of these two measurements bust and waist for me you choose the one that's larger so for me the larger one is the bust that's the measurement that we'll use for my main triangle if your larger measurement is your waist that's larger than your bust just make this triangle with your waist measurement instead that's why you want to take all three of those measurements because for me this one's not gonna matter because none t20 stresses don't aren't you know concentrate on the waist I'm somebody use my larger measurement of those two but if your waist is your larger of those two then use that as the rectangle in the center Oh God hopefully that made sense I've never made one that way but I assume it will still work out because and then just add on again more for your slaves like I'm about to do it should work out just fine it's just we want to use the larger of those two measurements because you're just encompassing the whole body and it's like a sheet of fabric anyway because the 20's are funny that way um so that's kind of the work around there as far as I would understand it that's what I assume would work fine as well if your waist measurement happens to be bigger than your bust I mean like whatever your hip measurement is no matter how much larger or smaller it is than your other measurements you'll just be able to add an extension or just keep if you for example if your measurements were 40 30 30 or something like I don't know if your hips were just as narrow as your waist for some wild reason cuz you're a mannequin then you would just make this pattern like so you can I don't have to worry about adding any hip fulness then just make it straight from there and just add on for the sleeves and you'll have a t-shaped pattern instead I don't really it doesn't really matter which letter it comes out to be as long as it comes out looking like a flowy little Twenties dress right so those are some workarounds for if your measurements are very different from mine feel free to ask me questions in the comments below and I'll try and answer them to the best of my ability as usual as well different if you have a question on like I don't know if this will work because of my measurements let me take a crack at it let me know in the comments below but anyway I've started drawing my pattern here I have a very large piece of alphanumeric paper here I will link to where I buy this paper in the description below a lot of people do tend to ask me about it it is called alphanumeric paper because there are numbers and letters Wantage grade on here so you can buy it I think with like dots instead and times you hit called dot paper as well I bought on a big I buy it on a big roll from a company called Atlas levy levy I believe that's what the paper company's called it's not too expensive actually and I love having it for pattern drafting because of course you can have these large sheets of it that's very useful especially for a pattern like this where it's only two pieces but two very large pieces so I'm just drawn a rectangle here and this is an 18 inch ruler so this rectangle is 22 and a half inches from that side to this side so that is my half my best measurement plus the ease that I want to use for this pattern so this is the base you know the triangle or theam rectangle I keep talking about in the center of this pattern so now we're gonna add on these little extensions up here for the sleeve like I said I just come down 10 inches so if I imagine I'm gonna come down 10 inches from the shoulder line loop wherever that is here I think hopefully see this ruler at the right directional this way so 1 2 3 7 8 9 10 so I'm just gonna go ahead and come down 10 on each side you can fold this in half as well like if you wanted to make only half of this pattern you could I'm just making it in full because I like to use full patterns sometimes to see if I have see if I have enough fabric so if I'm like laying out fabric in the big floor of the basement area of our house I'm like laying out fabric to see if my circle skirt pattern will fit on it to see if my 20s dress pattern will fit on it sometimes I like creating my patterns in full but you can you know this is 22 and 1/2 you could do 11 and 1/4 and then just do one little extension for the sleeve and one little central the hip I just like making it in full especially because I'm explaining it here to you and I want you to see the whole thing so again I'll come down 10 on this side and I'm just gonna come out 4 inches for my slave extension here that's just usually what I do for these and I found it worked over the years again maybe you start with 4 and then you can change it to whichever you would like that kind creates a little short sleeve on this pattern so I'm gonna go ahead and draw on my 10 by 4 extensions onto my rectangle okay so that's what that looks like this again this main big rectangle here is my 1/2 bust measurement plus the ease and then I just put on the extra little sections to create the little kimono sleeve up here the imagine this line you know goes away it's just a big t shape up here this just falls into a little bit of sleeve my shoulder is like right in here somewhere so this just falls off my shoulder and we'll create a little bit of a kimono sleeve when this is done you can skip this if you wanted to just put some bias tape around this area leave it as an armhole that would be fine too again I will show an example I've added a cowl to this one but this is wished with just without this little extension on it it's just using this area as a strap although I did add a cowl-neck to that one as well which maybe we'll do some time and people are interested in more 1920s one hour modifications do let me know in the comments below if that's something you're interested in knowing how I modify these more I haven't done I'm gone that crazy with them but I have done these ones where it's a handkerchief hem and then count before it's not that difficult look a mug if you would like to know about that one too but for this one I'm just doing the basic one hour so I'm added on my 10 inches down 4 inches wide little sleeve area to the top of my pattern here and I'm gonna go ahead and add on the little section down here for the hips all right so this is our show because it's such a big pattern those are my little sleeve extensions I just added up there 1 2 3 4 inches across these dots or numbers and letters stuff like that or not exact measurements so I don't use them to measure I always use my ruler but in general you can kind of see that's 4 inches um and then for the hip area I came down what remember I had decided it was going to be 22 inches from my shoulder to my drop waist so from my shoulder line to my drop waist I measure 22 inches down and then I actually measured 6 inches up my sister that I wanted more ease throughout the hip mostly because I wanted 3 inches on each side of my plate that I'm gonna be doing in their table stop squeaking at the side seam at the drop waist I'm gonna be doing a little box pleat here so this fees that I've added on the six inches will become three inches on one side and three inches on the other of this pleat the dotted line represents that this gonna be inside I will sew a line of stitching on the outside but the pleat of course will be inside the garment like this again I'll show you that when we get to the sewing of it but I just decided that 6 inches sounded like a good number for me you can add on less if you would like just as long as it encompasses your measurements so again this width here at this line this pattern is already you know 40 what was it what did I say it was 42 plus 45 inches wide okay I didn't do math so right here because my bust measurement plus one and a half on each side so my bust measurement plus 3 is 45 inches which is 45 is bigger than my hip measurement which is 44 this will already encompass my hips but of course I want to add a little bit more just so I have some flow in the skirt so I found this six inches basically again always I'm like am I making any sense at all hopefully I am we've been doing a little bit more math geometry today so maybe I have no chance for me but I've just added on 6-inch extension for the hip on that side six inches extension for the hip on that side I'm gonna go ahead and cut the pattern out so you can see what it looks like again from down from here I just how long my rectangle is my full length so from here to the shoulder line this is my hemline to the shoulder is the 45 inches I decided on how long I want the dress to be too so that's all you know using very simple measurements to get this huge large wide I shaped pattern I'm gonna go ahead and cut it out now so you can see how this big guy corresponds to this one that I drew for you to explain it isn't the easiest pattern to video here on the table being so large as it is again you can create this pattern in a half form just go ahead and have all the measurements and everything we've been talking about as we go especially if you don't have wide paper or anything like that it might be easier to create just the half version of this pattern I suppose but something I do want to talk about now now that I have it cut out and we are looking at it and you might have noticed I've already added some is seam allowance so because you are doing you are adding so much easy for example this is more ease in the hips than I needed I mean I didn't even need to add these panels because my measurement was gonna be wide enough to encompass my hips anyway so I didn't technically didn't eat out add all this ease so if I were to instead of adding some allowance here just eat up part of this eat out of this pattern fine I wouldn't lose the fit that way but because up here in the center portion of my pattern here where it is my again 22 and a half because of my half measurement half of my bust measurement plus the one and a half inch ease I want to keep that one and a half inch of ease that I put in there so in order to keep that three inches through the center of this pattern I don't want to eat away any of that with seam allowance so I'm going to add seam allowance so that I will add a half inch on each side of the pattern on our side seam I don't know why I quoted that because it is our side seam that's what it is um so I'm adding half inch seam allowance along the center of this pattern along the waist zone of this pattern so that I can retain that three inches of ease that I put in there because I do want this to be sort of a looser more of a you know languid twenties look here so I'm gonna keep that three into the bees I put in here by adding seam allowance along here I'm not gonna add seam allowance along these added sections because I don't even need this ease so it's not bad if I lose half inch of it same up here on these sleeves these are four inches long you can make your sleeves longer or shorter of course whatever you would like but I'm just going to end up with three and a half inch sleeves because I will just I don't need to add any more length on to this that's fine I'm not too picky about it but then again along the top edge of my pattern if you imagine this is the center front of a very high neckline um we're looking at this drawing here again this is just this is where your you know your neck and your head will go this is a very high neckline the way that you handled this shoulder seam or the seam like along the neck and shoulder basically you can do this in many different ways the way I normally do it is I come up you know from the side seam up here so I'm at this line basically with my pattern - the sleeve basically this is the zone where my shoulder would be you can go ahead and stitch this and I leave the neckline up like the opening here at the neck large enough to pull over my head of course so you can come in as close to your head as you would like but you want to leave enough room to pull this on over your you can't also let's say if you wanted to just sew a little bit of this down here at the very edge just sew a little bit of it so that the rest of this hangs a little bit open depending on how drapey your fabric is it might cowl a little bit all on its own but what I often do up here which is kind of a fun way to do this is I've here the shoulder i hem the front I have in the back pieces so it's all finished up here but the shoulders are not sewn together and what I do is I use beads and just sew these shoulder seams front and back together using beads too as like a fun look you can also use ribbon um you could do ribbon on each side and then tie a bow up here to hold the shoulders together a lot of different options I will show you what I mean by using beats when we get to that step because I will be doing it for this velvet version here and then I will show you doing it just like a normal shoulder seam along here for the other version of this dress I will do where I'm going to be using the side gathers as well so I wanted to show you a couple of the different variations of the ways that I finish these so that's what I'm gonna be making two dresses today but the velvet one I will be hemming this top edge hand hemming and actually using seed beads and some glass beads for a little bit of a sparkle appear and of course if you do not sew along this shoulder seam at the top of this sleeve and dress if you just let's say tack the front back together here with some beads as I will do this part here if you don't sew it together we'll hang a little bit differently so you will see how that works out in this version of this dress as well I'm again having trouble explaining hopefully this is making some sense oh my goodness um but in any case your shoulder seam you're going to need and your neckline hem area you're going to need a little bit of the allowance so I have added on a half inch of seam allowance to the very top edge of my pattern as well wow that is what I really need to tell you and I told you all that other stuff as well you know that's what you're becoming used to here on this channel isn't it I'm over explaining for you but hopefully that means that everyone has their question answered before they need to ask it will see again ask me your questions in the comments below as needed as usual and now I'm going to take this out and lay it on big section of floor so you can see the whole thing at once I mean get a good look at this pattern before I go ahead and cut it out of my velvet here she is the full 1920s one-hour dress pattern again will cut one for the front one for the back sew them together along the sides OOP hem the bottom hem the top and that's how we're gonna be making this first one and again you can create this pattern and a half I even have it folded here so I'll show you what that looks like in halfsie form so if you were to fold it along with center front that's what your pattern would look like you have your hip extensions your sleeve extensions full length of the pattern etc etc again I do want to encourage you to make these a little bit longer than you think you need to a lot of times our modern interpretation of 1920s fashion shows it as being super scandalously at the knee or even above the knee a lot of times it was still below the knee on nineties fashion if you look at fashion plates it's all about creating a long lean line and part the way they do that is having the dresses be longer so a MIDI length is much more appropriate so that's why this one is 45 inches I will actually be reconfirming in my head because that was a couple of days ago I decided that I want to reconfirm in my brain that that is how long I wanted it because I may add even more length because you can always cut a little bit off but you you know it's less pretty to have to sew anything back on so I am gonna go ahead and lay out my velvet and cut this little guy out I don't have any particular tips on cutting this pattern out each fabric has its own you know set of requirements I guess we should talk about fabric choices for this pattern over for 20s things in general so let's go back into the other room we'll do that so let's talk a little bit about fabric selection for a project like this I ever really talked about fabric selection for my projects that much as we go just because I forget that it's something that not everyone knows to be honest it's I've been selling for so long that I have a feel for it what textiles to use for what but I forget that that's not something that is readily known or taught even when I was in fashion school they did not tell us what fabrics to use for which desired end result it was an annoyance it's a pet peeve of mine that they don't teach that enough so I better not skip it here today myself so for something like the 1920s one hour dress you don't want to use a very stiff fabric in fact a lot of things in the 1920s are not done with a stiff fabric is a I think this is like a 12 maybe this is a plane we know what the 12 this is like a twill cotton twill here it has a little bit stretching it also super cute fabric I have addressed me out of this and I realized I have enough here to make a pencil skirt and I don't know why I haven't done that yet so I'm won't be doing that soon but this is a slightly stretch thicker twill twill weave again is like almost a denim it's a thicker stiffer fabric it has a very stiff drape to it so like if you were to make a 1920s dress out of this it wouldn't have the movement and drape you would want to see in something like that this is better for like pencil skirts or structured jackets more better than mid-century things or if you were doing a 20s project at will high-waisted sailor pants maybe but not or like a little jacket maybe something that needs the stiffness and thickness but you wouldn't want to make an action 20s dress out of this I'm sure someone can make it work but as a general rule this would not be a good fabric for the one hour in my opinion something more appropriate would be this this is a silk fabric this is a crisper silk still actually funny enough this wouldn't be bad to work with it all it's not like a chiffon which I'll show you in a second but you can see it has this flow to it there's it's a certain thin it's kind of it's on the thinner side as well but it has this drape and fluidity to it that is going to help create that language 1920s silhouette so this although a tighter weave and therefore not so bad to sell with I guess this would be I mean I'm not sure what this fabric is it has like crepe feel to it so I guess I would say it's like a silk crepe borders georgette or something I just bought this at a discount fabric store where it was not labeled and I don't know the difference between like a georgette a charmeuse all those kinds of things I'm not fancy enough to know sadly enough I wish I had a better textiles class where they taught us that but instead they showed us what silk looks like under a microscope which doesn't really help me make clothes unfortunately but again we're getting back to my pet peeve now aren't we so this is a like flowing silk and this would be a very good fabric 1419 always whenever in fact I bought this fabric to make a 1920s one hour but now I've been thinking about making a blouse that I've instead so it's still sitting here in my stash this one might be good for a 1920s day dress this is just a rayon crepe very lightweight from Joanne's again has the lightweight fluidity that we are looking for in a fabric for twenties one hour we don't want a stiff drape we want a fluid drape so this one is a rayon crepe which is fine I think you could also use a rayon shally I don't know if I have one nearby this one is a rayon shally but again it has the fluidity in the fabric or like the flow enos it's what we need here of course a chiffon is also going to have that same kind of flowy drink we need and because it's so thin it does well and like gathers while staying flat whereas if you were to like gather something like this it would become very puffy where when you gather snow like this it remains quite smooth still because the thinness and the drape of the fabric so that's good if you plan on doing any gathers if you're doing the gathered version of this or any accents with gathering so chiffon is good for that kind of thing and of course this just has a very 1920s look already I think you may agree and then there are like fancy fabrics this one is a polyester net with sequins on it but this has uh almost I would say this is on the verge of being too stiff to make a 1920s one hour out of because the nylon or polyester ish kind of thermoplastic fiber this netting is made out of has a stiffness to it whereas if it was made out of something like say a silk it would drape a lot nicer because poly there's something about thermo plastic filament fibers that still have a certain stiffness of them which isn't always necessarily the case because this is a polyester chiffon here and it's much flowy but like this is not a chiffon base it's like a tool base and the weave of the base underneath these sequins makes a difference in how it drapes so while this still has enough drape I would be careful about doing a circle skirt in this it's gonna have more of a body to it then perhaps you would like for 1920s things but a one hour out of this would be very pretty in this my sequin in fact this is a fabric I got at a local fabric store that they do not have anymore and I wish they did because I wouldn't mind having one hour out of this and having a basic black sequin one but they don't have any anymore so I just had this one piece left I've used it to like insert into a sheer panel before so I keep kind of scraps this big around in case any T's in the future but that's just some basic you know options that are sitting around in my studio that would work this if you wanted to do more of a daytime dress you could use a cotton I just wouldn't use like a cotton twill a cotton sateen anything on the thicker side is it going to be a no-go Swiss dot a light lighter weight eyelets perhaps a wall or a like a thinner fabric even like a seersucker as long it was on the as long as it was on the lighter weight side I think would work like a white seersucker 9021 hours would be very summery and there's like a dress actually in Downton Abbey that's very similar to the one hour that I think like she's somebody's cousin or something I don't remember this character much I'm sorry I haven't rewatched down to in a while but she wears this white dress to like a tee picnicky situation and it's almost a nine to twenties one hour and just a very lightweight cotton so you can do it with making cotton day versions obviously but just don't use something thick like a twill or like a denim practically it's just not gonna have the right drape to it so that's no review a little bit of fabric here I'm gonna be going ahead and using my polyester net and rayon velvet burnout which my fabric here that I'll be using today again it is a poly net in here but it is much more of a chiffon style structure not a tulle structure so it still has a lot more drape to it unlike that sequin one this one still has a kind of like flow of a chiffon even though it is again a poly fiber in here it's just arranged in a different way so this one works a little better this one is not a knit by the way this is a woven fabric a lot of times you can find burnouts lores and Velvets that are knits I don't like working with knits I'm definitely showing you this pattern thinking that you're going to be using a woven fabric not on it so I'm sure how this pattern would behave or how this project would work in a knit I'm sure it's possible and would be very extra comfortable but I use woven fabrics so that's what I will be using today so I've been trying to work out a way to kind of explain how to know how much fabric you're going to need for one of these because sometimes if you have a wide enough fabric you can get away with having only like a yard and a half of fabric depending on how big your pattern is so like I said I've promised this is a project where you don't need a ton of fabric it is true depending on the width of the fabric and the width of your pattern so for me here these are all drawn to scale by the way so basically I've just drawn these rectangles to represent yardage this is a 44 inches wide fabric and then 36 inches you know for a yard in another 1/2 yard so folded this fabric if it were folded selvage to selvage like this would be 22 inches with a fold you know and then over here I've drawn a mock-up of 54 inch wide fabric which sometimes you can find fabric up to 60 inches wide depending on where you're buying fabric at the normal like kind of lower to mid range fabric stores it's rare to find wider fabrics like at Joanne's I don't find 54 to 60 with as much as I do 44 44 and 45 is pretty standard or inches wide it's pretty standard in the US and craft stores and so like that but for like designer fabric warehouses places like mood places like discount designer fabric places you can usually find wider fabric and of course you're gonna need less of a wide fabric so this is 54 all laid out with the 36 and then folded in half to get the 27 hmm I can do math again can I um so drawn to scale here each of these is this is an eighth of an inch to an inch basically the scale we're going with here so I have my little pattern this is for a 42 bust 45 lengths so with our 6 inch extensions if we imagine that this is what did I say 22 and a half plus 12 so it's like a certain you know you could obviously you can make these thinner if you want to fit on less fabric if you would like to or you could add seams into this if we're trying to cut this all as one piece and we needed to cut two of them front and back how are we going to fit that on fabrics so if I have a 45 width fabric and I want to make this 45 inches long of course that doesn't leave us any room here so that's that's no good to cut it this way if we cut it parallel with the selvage we can't fit two across even if we were to like you know hypothetically I borrow this one even if we were to fold this pattern and put it along the fold here and cut them like that we'd still need three yards basically because this pattern fits let's say we fit it well here of course we don't we just have this excess down here this is coming in to about a yard and a half would make me feel comfortable to cut one side of this and then I would need another year and a half to cut the back so I would need three yards of 44 inch width fabric to do my pattern here I'm saying even if I did it on the fold I would still need one and again now if I come over here to the 54 inch wide fabric I can technically cut it going this direction perpendicular to the selvage so I can cut it this way and then I can get away with doing one two yards so if I have a 54 inch fabric I only need two yards to make one of these dresses instead of three so it really does depend on how wide your fabric is again I could go this direction and I would still need three yards but because this fits this way on a wider fabric I only need one and then again two yards so I'm saving myself a yard of fabric by buying something with a wider width if that makes any sense hopefully it does now of course my pattern he's kind of on the larger side if you are a smaller person with a smaller pattern let's say yours you only have a 36 inch bust so that's and maybe you don't need to make it as long because you learn not wanting to make it as long or you are shorter or whatever um so let's say you are a smaller person you're down here at 36 bust now this one especially if you make it shorter make it a little shorter you might just be able to fit it on here and so that's you know you could get away with getting almost like a yard and three quarters if you wanted to be really particular and not have much extra but again you could definitely get away with only two yards even on a 44 inch fabric and then again you could put this on the fold again down here but it's better if you can if you have a shorter dress less than you know 45 inches then you can cut it this way on even the short fabric so depending on your size is how much fabric you're going to need definitely over here you can have even less of course so imagine II have enough room to spare here you would only need you know almost you know a yard and three quarters again so depending on the size of your pattern and how wide of a fabric you're looking at will determine how much fabric you need for this project so it just really depends on the size of your finished project just you know if you imagine the widest bit of your fabric and the or widest bit of your pattern you know whatever your middle rectangle is plus the extensions you add and maybe you want to be able to get this you want to be able to cut out to on only one yard of a wide fabric you only have one yard of a very wide fabric so you put that down and you notice my extensions hang off the edge well if you know like me for example that your pattern here is wide enough already for your hips and you don't need all this extension just make your extension smaller just make them that whatever access you have here so this would come in like three inches and I would just have smaller amounts of fullness and the hips but because everything I already had enough fullness anyway then this was just more decorative I don't need to have that much decorative fullness at the hips I can bring that in and fit it onto a yard and a half of a wide fabric of course it's less of a problem if your pattern is less wide and you can get away see like this one the four inch sleeve extensions fit on here no problem so if you just shorten these six inches to four inches as well again you could get away with having less than a yard and a half of this wide fabric so just thinking about how much fabric you need for a pattern like this really comes down to how big your pattern turns out or how wide your pattern comes out wide and long and how the width of your fabric that you have available to you you ok so I have my that's all cut out here it's still pinned to the paper my two layers here something I just wanted to mention if you are using something like a velvet fabric like I am this fabric although a fund a little burnout blend here the velvet does still have a nap which means it has a direction to it basically like you've imagined the little fur like surface of a velvet the hairs for lack of a better term point in a certain direction the fibers all point in one way so for me they all point this way it's best it lays smooth or like your hand flows across the velvet smooth in one direction you will feel it like the fibers resist your hand almost it feels rougher trying to go a different way so what I always try and do is make sure that the NAP of the velvet the direction of it points down from like this is the neckline up here so pointing down from the neck that way if I you know hold my hands next to my waist things like that everything always just points down and you want to make sure the front and the back of course point the same direction so depending on how you cut out your pieces you know if I were to cut them cut them this way instead then it would be across my body the NAP which isn't technically ideal usually with a velvet you do want to cut it this way where the hairs again the fibers point downwards so it's smooth against the hand when smoothing over your dress and then of course up is has like a certain resistance to it it doesn't feel as nice so that's just nothing to keep in mind if you're using a fabric like this or using velvet ever is the NAP the direction of that the way the fibers lay in you know a velvet like this you can really not see what I'm talking about but trust me you can feel it they all lay in a certain direction so I wanted to make sure that the front lays with the NAP going down and the back lays with the NAP going down as well with a print like this where some ferns are pointing up down sideways it's hard to know which way is up and down if you have a more directional print where like all the flowers are like this then you will know on the back they need to point up on the front they need to point up and then you want to worry about this kind of thing but but this kind of a print it would be easy to get turned around so all my velvet faces downwards here and my neckline is up here I'm using my little sleeve extensions here at the top so notice how my two pieces cut out here and for my first sewing step of this particular dress I'm gonna be making this the way I usually make my more formal ones and then we will talk about a different ways to do this in the second dress I'm gonna be making a plain black rayon crepe more of a day-to-night version of this as well where I will do some different finishes but for this one this is how I do my more formal ones how I finish them so looking at our pattern here in a miniature version again because talking about this thing and it's kind of massive is annoying so here we are at a miniature version again what I've done here this again is the neckline this is the hem these are a little side seams what I'm going to do and I know you know again this is the lazy way to finish your interior seams if you wish to do a fine Couture kind of finish on these and you wish to do French seams whatever you want to do on yours go ahead for me I'm gonna go ahead and on both my front and back pieces which again are identical and both look like this I'm going to Serge the under side of the arm area or the sleeve area along the side seams and along the extensions I guess I probably won't Serge along the bottom now that I look at it so skirt excuse this but basically I'll leave where this pencil line is the neck line and the hem of the sleeves I won't Serge those because my finish does in a different way but I will go ahead and use my black surging thread here and I will surge the underside of the slave the side seams and then the sides of the little hip extensions basically alright so I have my edges that I was talking about surged now and I'm just starting to pin the dress together what I'm going to do is I'm going to sew the areas I just search basically sew and sew the side seams from the underside of the sleeve the sides skip this portion of the fold over here I leave this open but sew the rest of the side seam down here some so this along the sides of the skirt along the size of the middle not this portion but yes this portion yes yes this is the top shoulder neck area here's my little sleeve extension area I have the bottom of the sleeve pinned down the side seam skipping the skirt extension here but along the skirt yes I'm gonna sew along here along the waist and here all is one I will have to clip this little area here of course that the corner will lie flat on the outside but that's okay and then I'll show you what I'm going to do with this fullness continue to control it and make it into a pleat here but I'm gonna go ahead and pin the other side here on camera and then sew along here Boop and then along there as well and then I shall come back to you [Music] [Music] okay so I just went ahead and sewed those seams here I would like to note here as well this is the underside of the sleeve I sewed in from there backstitch of course sewed in I just left the needle down in the fabric pivoted the dress and kept sewing the seam here and I actually did stop about a little I mean it looks about over 1/2 inch but a half inch before this line here so I left a little bit of space here a little bit of wiggle room that we will use so a backstitch in stopped a little bit before the end of the this seam here give myself a good half inch there then of course this side extension area is left open but then beside the rest of the side seam along the skirt is sewn closed again back switching at the start sewing along that seam to the hem and then back to chin down here now this fabric says I can't iron it actually the instructions from jo-ann's are to not iron this or not dry clean this interestingly enough it's hand wash fabric um what I'm gonna do is going to very lightly iron it with mostly steam and see if I can't press these seams open a little bit just because I don't know what this nonsense about not ironing is about I guess this nylon which is what this isn't actually poly it's not it's nylon rayon blend I guess this nylon perhaps can't handle being ironed but we are about to find out the hard way in this little corner here also I do need to cut into this corner just as we snip our corners in our curves in life it's are some of the kimono sleeves as I can move and that will just be open in here which who is a dangerous time you can you know correct this with some sort of or reinforce this a and then also put rayon seam binding in here do more surging do more surgery in here to strengthen this area if you should so desire but as I'm lazy and it's not like I'm going to be wearing this more than once or twice a year perhaps because I don't do anything fancy I'm not too worried about it getting a lot of stress so again you know me don't you after watching several of these videos so I'm gonna go ahead and clip this corner here and then I will try and press what all right remember a minute ago when I said to leave a half inch of space here I was mister enduring I mean to say Goa have inch beyond aha this is what I actually you know I was Miss remembering I knew there was something to do with the half inch down here but it's not that you leave a gap of a half-inch it's that you sew a half inch down into this corner here so so what happens down here and we will use that when we are using this extension to make a little pleat here so this is the side seam here this is the under side of the sleeve chillin up here so this is a side seam on the main body of the dress this is where the hip extension is so this little guy what are we gonna do what are we gonna do with him you know it's just chilling here um what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this and if you imagine this is kind of ironed out here and I'm going to pin it down like that effectively creating a little box pleats all along the side seam area here so I'm just going to you can see that half-inch sewn down here as useful because that's where I'm going to pin this just straight across and then I will put a couple of pins here and then from the right side because we are obviously inside the garment right now from the right side I will sew a line of stitching to hold that down you can't don't have your machine stitching for this you could do like a hand stitch this and make it quite invisible if you wanted to you could on the other side I really especially in this fella I don't think you're gonna see my line of stitching very much depending on your fabric if this is going to be a very obvious line of stitching you could do it by hand so that it's more of a Couture finish you could cover it with applique with a bow whatever you want I don't mind the stitching showing because I don't think it will show that much so I'm gonna go ahead and put pins here to hold this pleat open here and then I will show you what that looks like from the outside or the correct side the right side and then I will just sew line of stitching yeah all along here on the outside of the garment to hold that plate down and that will be our side fullness contained so let me pin this I have the other camera going pin this here [Music] so here we on the right side out this is our side seam this is like the front and the back here of course still right now they're both identical so these are what the pins look like you can see them through the fabric here on the right side and this is the sort of pleat we've concocted here at the side seam so they will just be this little pleat here I'm just going to go ahead and do a line of stitching since I can sort of feel or see the other side through here i will stitch from the top down and i will do a little bit back stitching here stitch along and it'll be back there and i will just do that using the it seemed on the other side as my guide so using the seam allowance it's not like I'm just guessing is basically what I'm saying I will be stitching along using the fabric pushing through from the other side as my guide to know where exactly to put that stitching so I'm just going to go ahead and Stitch that pleat down into place and then I can do the other side of the same way [Applause] so you can see my pins are still in here but this just has a line of stitching holding that pleat down on the inside now so now we have this lovely box pleat here at the side seam that will allow so actually fullness over the hips and a little bit more drape and flow in my skirt I will go ahead and just trim my threads here it just Baxter to the cart and start of that but you just want that to be perpendicular to your side seam of course so you know try and keep everything straight and even while you're putting it I will go ahead and come in here and take my pins out and cut my loose threads and then I will do the other side the exact same way and here is what that pleat looks like on the inside all sewn down now so we just have this lovely box pleat in here and I will go ahead and again do the other side exactly the same manner racing out that our pleats are done and the side fullness is contained in those pleats down here for the hip extensions basically now I'm gonna come up here and deal with the top of this dress basically so we sewed along this seam I clipped this corner so that this would lay nice on the outside like this so is there a little kimono sleeve where it's cut inside like that so it opens up and lays nicely I did end up putting an extra line of stitching in there I do believe I showed that just because after talking about it even I didn't feel confident so I put an extra bit of stitching reinforcement in this area hopefully I won't get a lot of stress but up here in the top of the garment we um nice big t-shaped dress right now I have these raw edges new all along the neckline and the sleeves what I'm going to do is I'm going to surge along all that I wasn't originally going to but I've decided that turning this twice and like hemming it it's gonna be too annoying so I'm gonna go ahead and search then all first and then I will show you exactly how I'm gonna be finishing basically this whole edge so here we are the top neckline in this sleeve hem sort of area here are all surged now you don't have to have a surgery you don't have to do it this way I just knew it was gonna be easier on this this is not the most fun fabric to work with it will fray easier not like crazy bad but easier than most and just any time you're working with velvet it's always a certain kind of certain kind of temperament as as it was used to be basically I'm but so you don't have to Serge this you can just turn it twice a quarter of an inch quarter of an inch to use up that half inch of seam allowance we added and then I'm just gonna go ahead and put pins all along the edge here and I will hand stitch this to be hemmed all along the neckline here all along the sleeve hems and I will show you what I do to put a beads put beads put beads on the outside of that but basically if I'm gonna be hands touching it anyway I might as well add a little bit of embellishment while I'm in here but you'll notice I don't I haven't technically the shoulder seam should be in here somewhere this is the top of the sleeve here here's the shoulder and then here is the neckline it's all course straight line on our garment here but I haven't cell in the front to the back at the shoulder that's because I will be doing that by hand at the very end here so I'm just going to go ahead and and this little edge here will be left open at the edge of the sleeve which I again will show you um so I'm just gonna go around this whole rectangle of the front neckline and say the back neckline this whole rectangle area here and I will just be folding it over that stitching and then using that stitching kind as a way to help me fold over into a quarter inch double turned hem so I've devised a little way to explain where we're at currently where I'm at on the actual dress so if we imagine this little paper version is what we have I have sown along this underside of the slave hmm down the side and we have done the pleats down the sides on both sides here so we have like kind of you know from the bust down of this dress done other than the hem and up here the shoulder seam is still open so although like here along the bottom edge that is sewn so this can open up it's all open up here right now so basically I have this rectangle of serged edge that I want to hem and make look nice so I'm gonna go ahead and turn that this edge inside a quarter of an inch and then a quarter of an inch again and then sew it down hemming it by hand with little beads on the outside so that looks really nice and fun so here I'm sitting at my desk I just have some seed beads and some little black glass beads here and then a beading needle which is bent because the beading needles are really thin and so quite flexible and easily bent doubled just regular thread here just coats and Clark poly-cotton blend thread and then I have the this is actually a neckline edge but I will do the same to the edges under the necklines first front and back and then I will do the long edges of the sleeves but I just have this turned you know once down and then again turned and then pinned this is gonna be the outside so that's the side I'll put the beads on so I'm just going to be basically starting off down here at the corner securing this hem down but if it had just stitches on the outside I will have little beads on the outside so I'll go ahead and start doing that I have the other camera on so hopefully you'll be able to see what I'm doing on that it is gonna be black on black on black kind of things here so we'll see if how visible it is but hopefully they're explaining it you get what I mean [Music] [Music] so I just want to show you guys what exactly I'm doing so basically you can kind of see here I've got stitches on the back side holding the hem down and then on the outside I am just using two seed beads alternating with one of these little glass beads I have here so I'm just doing stitches in the back like longer ish stitches to be honest on the back and then putting beads on the front instead of just having little prick stitches along the front or on the along the outside I mean to say I'm gonna have these beads so just doing long stitches on the inside and beads on the outside to finish this top edge and I will do the same along the sleeve hem as well here we have my lovely velvet one hour here and this is our sleeve extension area those four inches we added and then of course the neckline and this is all just hand with beads so the inside has stitches and the outside has these little glass beads here and then it's still open there's no shoulder seam put in there yet and then I went along the edge of the sleeve as well here so what I'm going to do to sew the shoulder seam as it were is I'm going to first of all I'm gonna leave a section from the shoulder to the edge of the sleeve open so there'll be like a slit up here basically and I'm just going to use a bead to sew the two points here at the very end of the sleep together so just have a little bead there in between what I can't move with my left hand so just a little bead in between those two points to hold that together so there will be an open section kind of if you imagine this to the shoulder this will be the sleeve here and it'll be open with like a slit there and then I will use more beads and use those to sew a section of the shoulder close so coming up if we imagine this sorry where we added that four inches on our pattern for the sleeve coming up from there starting here and then going in for maybe I don't know I guess I'll pin it and try it on and see how small I want to make the neckline here cuz of course I want to be able to pull this over my head but at the same time I also because there's no closure on the stress you know you just it's big enough that you just pull it on so I want to leave enough room for my head coming in from here to leave that neck opening large enough but then I also want to make it small enough that this lays quite flat and nice still because this neckline of course is as high as possible in fact but there's no scoop out for your neck at all so it's gonna lay quite high and in order for that to lay smooth I do have to come in on the closer end you could of course add buttons here with some loops so that you could still pull it on and then loop a few buttons or beads clothes to have that neck be tighter once you were able to pull on your head if you want to add clothes or things like that I'm just going to go ahead and put a pin four inches or like let's you know it's only three and a half now but in parallel to the underarm I guess what I'm trying to say put a pin there probably come in three inches so that all closed with fun glittery beads here they're just going to be you know stitching with by hand just taking bits of each side stitching that together using beads in the center to create a kind of fun little sparkly shoulder seam doing that one little bead down here and that's how I'm going to sew the shoulder seams for this dress and then later when I have the dress on you will see better what that looks like but really I'm not using any particular technique here I'm just going to be using you know some hand stitches messy they may be up close who knows and some glass beads here to finish off the very top edge of this dress and then all that I will have left is the hem [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] ok so I have my sleeve and shoulder seam beaded nonsense all done I'll show you guys what that looks like so this is just where the shoulder seam is I just basically whip stitched I think is what this is called if--like Stitch the two sides together like this and just added a bead on to my stitch as I went basically and it feels quite secure and of course leaves me with this sparkly little geode almost seam here where I have beets in the ditch of the seam and then the rest of the neckline is open but it's all hemmed with the beets of course so that's pretty finished there and then this little keyhole on the sleeve I just left open and then did a single bead to connect those two points at the very end so just has a little bit of subtle black-on-black sparkle up here I just think this is a really fun way to finish the formal versions of these it reminds me a little bit of the way fortuny used beads to close up seams of course I'm hope fortuny but you know I can this is as close as I'll ever get so might as well go for some beads along my seams here so that's what the shoulder seam looks like there stress is nearly finished now you could add of course more embellishment anywhere you wanted you could add fringe you could add tassels this looks really fun with like beads or tassels here because this hangs down off the shoulder you know like like that so you can put a little bit of weight that's the other thing about doing beads like this is it lends a little bit of weight and stability to the sleeve so this gravity pulls it down a little bit more with that glass along the edge like that so it does help it drape a little bit nicer too I think um so all I have left to do on this 1920s one hour is the hem and what I'm gonna do for this guy gosh I just really can't decide I pulled out some round seam binding that I was thinking of sewing some of that along the edge and then turning the hem up and hemming along that round seam binding I can't decide if I want to do yeah let's do that okay so I'm gonna go ahead and sew well I really just don't need it because of this to them what do I want what do I want and then that lining will show through the sheer parts but it would be a nicer finish I think I'm just going to fold this up like an inch and steam it and hem it honestly you could fold this again you know twice here you could do the same finish along the bottom hem with the beads we could turn this just by itself a little bit you can hem things any way you want but for me weirdly enough I think I'm just going to turn this up one inch it would be so much nicer to use that I guess huh but I just don't care it's only me who will ever know [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I choose which corners to cut and where to save time and I don't care what my hem looks like inside sorry not sorry um so I'm gonna go ahead and just press my hem up here about an inch a little over an inch really and I'm gonna go ahead and hand stitch that down I don't think I'll use beads on this one but I'm just gonna go ahead and stitch that down and then this dress will be finished but we do have another one to make today [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this gal this lovely first one our dress in the burnout velvet is finished now I just have her hanging on our little rack here with a fun necklace I'm sitting around but we can see what the neckline finish looks like with that little beading up here on the seam and the sheer sleeves and all that good stuff so of course I'll be wearing this with a black slip of course a green slip would look nice too I do need to make some new 1920 slips so perhaps we can do that as a video in the future if you guys want to see something like that I you can just wear your regular 4 to 40 slips underneath it most the time you can't really tell unless the really sheer fabric but I try and make when I make 1920's style silk slips I just make it so that the neckline of the slip is straight across just because a little more of a deco style as opposed to like the v-neck or like more shaped 1940s or 40 slips but I think you can wear them just fine as long as it's something more mostly opaque like this guy you won't really be able to tell what style of slip you're showing you're wearing underneath I don't think it matters terribly too much unless you are in quite dedicated to 20 style and you would want to wear 20 Stein all the time in which case you're gonna need some 9 to 20 style slips obviously but just for the occasional 1920s wear such as myself I think you can just wear your any dress slip underneath this really I just need a new black silk one because mine got thrown into the washer and dryer so my black silks slip I ended up shrinking into a camisole and won't really do the trick anymore so I need to make a new black silk slip but until that I will just wear this with my normal ones so I'm very happy with how this one turned out and now it's time to make another 1920s one hour in a more day tonight fabric I have a black rayon crepe I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to cut that out and this is I'm sorry I don't have the face camera on well I'm talking to you about this I don't have any makeup on yet today um I'm gonna go ahead and cut out another one of these one-hour dresses in the exact same pattern in black rayon crepe just a plain black round crepe I found at Joanne's it's very lightweight it's very flowy and I'm just gonna make another one of these where I instead of doing all this fun beating and stuff up here just sew up the top of this shoulder seam as I would normally on any other garment and then I will do gathering down here instead of this box pleat for that next one so this one's about that pleat in the side and I will do gathering here instead which comes with its own sets of fun time so I will show you that and what that looks like in the end so I'm gonna go cut that one out probably Serge it if it can take it again my first to mention when I did this because I searched all the edges on this nicer fabric I did Serge a the swatch of that first like a little test piece to make sure it could handle being put through the serger because I didn't want these two needles to Brandon Lee pull on these threads or whatever so I did test the fabric to make sure it could handle being surged which is what I will do with the rayon fabric I'm about to use again as well so if it can't if it does strange things to it if it pulls at it if it wrinkles it if it does odd things here the serger I will go ahead and use round seam binding on it instead but hopefully it'll behave through this again you know do they use sergers in 1920s no but I'm not a reenactor I am a vintage fashion lover so I'm happy to get the look in an easier modern way if possible so [Music] all right so here I am with my black version of this dress I've sewn it up to the point that I had with the last one where I sewed under the arm along the side seam left this top of the hip extension open again and then sewed the side seams down here as well and of course everything is searched like I did the last one as well including up here along the arm is surged and along the top neckline here now the difference is instead of leaving this area open and hemming it with beads and doing some fancy things I'm just gonna go ahead and sew to a neckline here so this is like such a boatneck it's a very high boat neck there's no shaping at the neckline at all I'm leaving it straight you can get away with this I think it looks really nice with long necklaces with xx things as we can see with this one here I think it just is really nice having that straight line across the neck with a long necklace I think it's quite elegant you can of course again if you wanted to have a neckline here on your pattern and then finish that with a face with a facing or aligning you of course could but for me I'm going to be leaving it straight again for this one but I will be closing the top of the sleeve and shoulders seam unlike leaving it open as I did in the velvet one so I'm just gonna come in eight and a half inches from the outside here of course that's the four inch sleeve extension and then another four and a half inches basically for my shoulder seam leaving me some room here again to pull this over my head like I you know like I need to do we have this style of dress so I'm just gonna come in eight and a half inches from the edge there and I'm just gonna sew all across here then this neck edge I will because this will be sewn and this will become seam allowance it'll be turned under and I will just go ahead and either turn this twice probably turn this twice and just prick stitch sort of hem blind hem this down for the neckline opening and that will be that for the top of this dress and then I will do the hem of the sleeves the same way it is turning twice ironing that down hand stitching it down so I'll do that and that's how I will finish the top of this dress here this is the more simple straightforward way of doing the one hour of course is to not get fancy up here like I did in the last one and just go ahead and sew that top of that sleeve and shoulder shut [Music] so I just sewed those shoulder seams here and then left the middle open for my neckline of course and just pressing the seam open and then pressing that seam allowance down that half inch all the way along as well you can hem it as this or you can go ahead and tuck that underneath and then do it as a little tiny hem which is what I will be doing when I finish this I'm ever just gonna leave this pressed for now and move on to doing the side hip fullness situation for this version of this dress and then I will go ahead and do that hemming by hand here along the sleeves and then probably hem the dress as well the bottom of the dress all at once and do all my hand sewing sitting down at once find a nice podcast listen to while I do that or something like that but before that we have to control the hip fullness on this one and we are going to be doing it in quite a different way than the nice simple and very straightforward blocks plate that we did of the first one so for controlling the hip fulness added onto this particular one our dress I'm going to finally be doing one with the gathering in the sides you see this on a lot of the patterns this is how the actual one hour dress I believe is supposed to be done I usually do the box play because it's nice and sleek but most the time you'll see this shown in the twenties images we'll try and put some here as being gathered in you'll see a slit is cut into the dress body and then this is all gathered into that area this is a bit hard to understand I think especially if I'm just like looking at an old images so I am actually going to show you on a piece of muslin first before I do it on this dress just because it might get lost the details might get lost in this black crepe and I really want you to see what is going on so I'm gonna go over to the table and show you with muslin do I have a sort of boomers one side of the dress as we can see here's our little hip extension just as before this if you imagine the rest of this would be the dress over here this is the rest of the sleeve this is our side seam this is our little faux hip extension area that needs to be gathered into the dress last time we did this as a pleat you will you'll remember or in our velvet version we used this to create that box pleat in this one we are going to gather it in order to do so first we have to cut in a long pair or M along that line not even parallel just on continuing this cut line we're going to cut in three inches into the dress I know this seems like a wild idea and I agree with you but that's what we are going to do you have to have if you were just to gather this there's nowhere for it to go in the dress because the dress ends here and you would have this big fat section of gathering that would have nowhere to be sewn in so you need space to sew that gathered in gathering in so what I'm going to do is go ahead and go to slice with my scissors down to this point then I'm going to put two lines of gathering stitching in this little extension part here so I will go ahead and cut that and then show you what I mean hmmm I suppose if you were being very very proper about this which as we know I cut corners so I am NOT you would perhaps do some sort of stay stitching around this or basting around this area single layer to make sure that nothing crazy happens but as long as you're doing this I'm not flinging it about it should be fine I think so what I've done another just cut in again imagine the rest of the dress is here this is just a muslin version this little cut here I'm going to have to do right here on my actual dress I'm gonna have to cut in three inches here and on the other side as well three inches here it will be nerve-wracking to cut into my project which is why even I'm practicing on the muslin first so here we are you're going to put gathering stitches along here not through these two layers hold on let me open up this dress this is the side seam try to remember where we are I guess if we're looking at this little guy we're over here I'm going to open it up so we're looking at it like from this direction so we're looking at the side seam and the skirt side seam as well and you can get a different kind of bird's-eye view of this whole situation opened up imagine this is the front of the dress this is the back of the dress and this is one of our side seams so last time we put this and we made it into a box pleat opened up here obviously I didn't have to slice for that this slice was not needed and we could just go ahead and box pleat this fullness down and we sewed a line across this pleat top from the outside but for this one we're gonna take all of this fullness here that would be put into the pleat if we were doing it that way we're gonna put two lines of stitching along the top of this to gather it in and then we will sew it together by pinching this gathered area and the rest of the dress together here and sewing from tape words nothing encompassing this gathering and then tape arranged nothing again so I'm gonna go ahead and put my two lines of gathering stitching in all along the length of the extension and that 3-inch cut so from here to here along this floppy die I'm gonna go ahead and put in two lines of gathering stitching using my largest stitch length on my machine and then I will come back to you and show you what comes next and I'm gonna go ahead and pull on these two threads to gather this down to fit into this slashed area so I'm gonna go ahead and put my camera camera phone down and gather all this using these two threads pulling on those together this down into a space that will fit into this slash we have cut [Music] okay so I've pulled these threads in order to gather all this area up until it is smooth and the gathers fit this are basically synth until this length here is the same as the length of our slash here so that's all gathered in here and then you just do want to space the gathers out so it's not like all gathered on one side or the other it's trying scooching around with your fingers until there's like an even the gathering is even evenly spaced out I can't speak anymore again imagine this is like the front in the back of the dress this is along your side seam keep keep track of where we are so now in order to sew these gathers here you know hypothetically if you were doing a gathering I gathered skirt on one of these this is to do it without having to kind of separate piece so usually were I to do a gathered skirt I would want seam allowance to be there because basically you're putting in a seam here where there was no allowance made for it because you cut this out of one piece if I were to do a guy that skirt on one of these and I weren't trying to do like a one hour dress I was doing something more you know planned and proper I would go ahead and cut along here and add seam allowance to this top you know bodice quote unquote pattern and skirt pattern so that I can have seam allowance along this seam and there would be a seam across the center of the dress but I could also put gathers in the center then all along and if I wanted to in little collections whatever I wanted to do but this however with the one hour dress pattern it's just along the sides where the gathering is and there is no seam allowance other than the kind you kind of pinch out so like this you're losing an inch here a half inch from the top and a half inch from the bottom and like your hem will come up a half inch even nobody know no pattern I've ever seen for this compensates for that lost space down at the hem it I guess you could like re even out your hem which in this crepe fabric I'm using I'm gonna have to anyway because it's a pain he has to cut it straight let me tell you um but I never seen a pattern I locate an extra space down here along the hem to account for that shrinkage but I think it's because a lot of nineteen twenties dresses they do have a hem that curves like down here it kind of curves a little bit and so because this will create a slight effect like that it wasn't considered a bad thing so I I don't think if I were working with a fabric that would hold its grain and it was nice I wouldn't bother to reach her the hem I don't think but I'm gonna have to kind of put this on and have someone help me pin the hem because it's all wonky already anyway because working with a very slippery rayon crepe always so fun working with flowy fabrics but you can see why you need a flowy fabric if you're going to be gathering all this into such a small area you don't want to be poofy like this you don't want it to like poof out of the hips because I mean it is a certain style of 20s dress called the robe to style I'll put one here does have poofy hips so you can get away with it but you just want to make sure you're making a conscious decision if you want something like this as opposed to something over more of a sleek line and you just wanna know what you're getting yourself into so um all that to explain here I have this gathered I'm now gonna go ahead and take these and this is the inside of the garment as we can see because we have seam allowance here and pinch these together and pin along here to create a seam here which is of course corresponding to right here where we slashed it so I'm gonna go ahead and pin this and then I'll talk to you about it [Music] this is that slash edge to our gathers here and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to sew this with a half inch seam allowance here but I'm going to fade it out like almost like you would to a dart point out here at the end so I need a like at least probably a quarter inch here starting wanting to have a half inch seam allowance in life but tapering it down to nothing at the sides basically is how I'm gonna do this one is so kind of a Halfmoon here with this machine and taper it into nothing that captures that gathering in I'm gonna go ahead and sew that and then I will show you what it looks like it's kind of hard to explain perhaps it's easier one no hot that dark line of thread to show what I mean alright and here we are back inside I did get a little bit messed up because I forgot to change my stitch length back to something small so I still have done the large stitch length I do think actually I tried to start from a taper and come in and then taper back out I do think actually would be easier if you started here at the center and started at a half inch like this and then taper it out to one side and then tie it off that I normally do my darts I just tie off the threads like that after I come off the edge I went about an inch off of where the gathering ends by the way to taper that and then to come back here in the center again start someone again back and forth and then come and do the other side the same way and come off the edge I think it's just easier to taper when you're ending your sewing as opposed to starting on a taper so I think it's easier to start here in the middle and go off and then start here in the middle again and go off and then just tie those ends done as if you were doing a dart you know that's not that dissimilar from a dart if you look on this side it looks almost like a double-ended dart it's not that different you just have this gathering in here and I think if I were to do this which I'm about to on that black dress I would press this down even though that might poof out these gathers a little bit will see I have a pretty flowy fabric over there so this is what that would look like on the inside of the garment which I might end up encasing this or surging along this edge and thing so that that isn't free and on the outside if you were to turn your dress right-side out this is your side seam again like front and back of the dress imagine this is what your little hip fullness looks like on the outside now it's creating a little bit of puckering here but I think the weight of this when you had it on would hold it pretty straight again this is ending almost like a dart you're making you're taking seam allowance out of a garment where it was not added in the pattern because you know you're cutting in here and there's no seam allowance for that seem to happen so that's why you're getting this puckering here which I why which is why I always do these as a pleat instead because I don't understand why they thought this was a good idea in the 20s but clearly they did a lot of times you'll see these dresses have some gathering here inherent in the pattern too and I think that helps camouflage what's happening here if you plan in your pattern if you add in a couple of inches of ease here if you make this longer in anticipation of gathering a little bit here and do a couple of gathers here or even a couple of pleats here to create a little bit of a shearing or gathered section across the waist here it really will camouflage this situation but that's why I think you know if you want to do gathers for the skirt on this even if you only want to do them on the side like this I would still just put a seam along the whole dress here and then you would have seam allowance which doesn't which means this doesn't happen you don't have to taper into anything you can just have a seam here and it will be fine you could even if you wanted to you know do a pin tuck along that whole way but I just don't see any reason why not to just cut this into two pieces and do the gathered skirt that way this is something that really mystified me when I first started doing these nice choice dresses and I still don't really get why it was done this way other than that you don't have to have a seam across the center front but like in the center back but like I'd rather just have a seam here who's gonna be like oh my God look at that seam across your dress like no one cares I'd rather have a seam then have these little weird puckers but we're gonna add them onto this dress that I'm making right now and we'll see how the finished thing looks maybe it pulls straighter and looks nice when it's being worn and there's that so I'm sure many of you on the internet will be able to tell me a solution to make this look better but I'm just the way as I understand the 1920s patterns said to do it this seems to be the way that they suggest is just to do this and I guess because sometimes they have the gathering here that's really what is camouflaging the sins I'm not having seam allowance here it's not my favorite method but it is one of the methods suggested in period-accurate nonsense so I'm gonna go ahead and do this to my black dress over there look at this mess honestly I need to clean this room so bad that you guys so I'm gonna go ahead and do this the slashing into my project and the gathering and all that jazz on my black version I might not film that much of it because I've gone in Taneatua on the muslin you can see it much better on this and it's honestly gonna be stressful for me to do it on the on the actual project so we'll see how much if I get that recorded I'm sorry for not doing it super detail over there but I think I tried to cover it as much as possible in a way that people can see and understand [Music] [Music] [Music] all right whoo the camera is so mad so so angry with the lighting in here so I'm telling you trying to film things on black fabric it's too bad that I like making things in black all right so I've gone ahead you've done that same thing we just did with the muslin to my two hip extensions on this dress and I do think it lays a lot smoother you know tapering outs nothing again like I did the muslin it looks a lot smoother in the round so that's a nice thing to know what puckers a lot less so if you have a less stiff fabric if that is going to look better which is good to know this is what it looks like on the inside I did go ahead and take this seam afterwards and go ahead and run through the serger again so I don't have any raw edges along that little friend there from having cut into the fabric there so everything's encased in surged here along this seam and I have my gathers in here so I'll go ahead and turn this right side out so you can see what looks like from the outside and hopefully the camera will stop freaking out so this is what it looks like from the outside of course one side here and the other side here we do still have our little bit of puckering from not having seam allowance mm-hmm funny how because on a dart I guess you have bust full till this area if you have a dart going like this and tapering off to nothing it's fine but for in from the side less so I don't know but the gathering looks like this on the outside I think it looks quite nice of course this is along this is the sleeve extension up here so this is along in the side seam area on each side and now I'm gonna go ahead and do that little hemming I talked about up here at the neckline holding that in and again quarter inch around the slit the like split that's in here for the neckline and then along the edge of the sleeves as well so I'm going to go ahead and go actually have dinner and then come back down and do all that hand hemming up here and then I will go ahead and also hem the dress itself as well now I do apologize for the loud air-conditioner in the background but again there's just nothing I can do about it at this current time my apologies so here is the finished burnout velvet version of the stress the first one I made with that box plate to control the hip fullness on the sides and then the beading up by the neckline and along this shoulder seam and along the hem of the sleeves here again you know just a very simple column kind of dress I have enough ease in this that it moves around when I shake a little bit not that you'll find me shaking very often seeing as I sadly do not dance and cannot Charleston but here is the finished velvet version I'm really happy with it I'm sure I will get a lot of wear out of it I do like wearing this style of evening dress or cocktail dress really out because you kit is so comfortable you can really have a quite glamorous look but still be very comfy and eat as large a meal as you want go for dessert I find these very useful for things like going to the symphony the Opera the ballet the theater not that I get to go very often anymore but back when I used to go more often I would wear things like this just because it's very comfortable to sit in and be in an all all night when you're going to like a longer event or things like that things where you're sitting the whole night if you're gonna be standing you know you can get away with corset tree and more uncomfortable quote-unquote things but if you're gonna be out for like a four hour long event you kind of want to be comfortable and 1920s is there for you so you can still feel glam but also feel comfy and then of course here is the second version I made in a black rayon crepe this crepe is from Joanne's I'm actually quite happy with it although it's a pain in the bum a real pain to cut this fabric to like lay your pattern out you really have to fiddle with it to make sure it's not moving around on you too much like if you breathe on it wrong it'll go off grain and Skoosh around but it wasn't so bad - so it is actually a little bit thicker than I thought it was going to be in practice basically and it was nicer to sew than I thought it would be I really thought that the gathers over the hips on this we're going to give me a lot of trouble in fact I really like how it came out I'm happy I've only ever done this version of the sides in muslin as like a mock-up and I didn't really like the way it looked in Muslim so I've never actually used it on a dress but I'm quite happy with how this dress came out and I'm so pleased to finally have a plain black 1920s dress I made one out of a polyester crepe once but I just didn't wear it as much as I had planned on because poly is just not as comfortable not breathable doesn't drape as nicely all the things and so this one I'm sure now I'm going to get so much wear out of having a finally plain black also for evening you can dress this up a little bit more for it evening wear because it's just a plain woven fabric but it's not too daytime it's not too evening looking so I think this dress can be worn for day or for evening here I've paired it for day with a wool hat and some gloves in my 1920s / Edwardian shoes from American Dutchess these are gorgeous shoes I don't remember the exactly I think I may be the theta I can't remember what they call them I'll put the name of them here these shoes are available in black and an ivory leather from American Dutchess and they are gorgeous they have this sort of skeleton effect on the front love them you can put any color ribbon you want here I've left them actually with the ribbons that they came with but these are very accurate 1920s or like early 20s shoe I think this works through the 30s the shoot styles didn't change that dramatically when it came to something practical like these and then I do have these other beaded shoes you'll see me wearing one of the clips here from again my American Duchess but these ones are no longer available so I do apologize for that but there I had to snap them up when they weren't because they're gorgeous um so that's where the shoes and these outfits came from is American Duchess or royal vintage one of my favorite shoe brands sister brands as everyone knows I will link them in the description below because I just do love their reproduction Footwear they're the best as far as I'm concerned and I did end up making a little like shawl a scarf sort of thing with the extra fabric for this one so it matches so I can wear it just as a little matching scarf tight and a bow use it as a sash around the drop waist if I want to change it up a little bit with this little matching sash if I should like when I have leftover fabric I do try and either save it for a project if it's a big enough piece or something like this where it was a long rectangle piece I think you might as well just throw into a little scarf to wear because it will match the dress so yeah so those are two options that I like for working around the 1920s one hour dress pattern of course this did not take me one hour these two dresses took me a week here to pull together for all of you especially because I do a lot of little hand sewing things with these but it would take a lot less time if I was working with like a lightweight cotton and doing a simple summer little version of this if you'd like to see something like that in the future do let me know in the comments below or let me know any other deco era kind of projects you're interested in seeing from me of course I'm always open to hearing new ideas or what you guys want to see from me in the comments so leave me all that kind of stuff down there and thank you as always for tuning in today I hope this video was helpful for any of you trying to start into 1920 sewing or just wanting to an easy 20 s project as we enter the 20s here god help us but as always thank you for watching today and I'll see you again soon bye [Music]

Channel: TheClosetHistorian

Views: 257,856

Rating: 4.8180933 out of 5

Keywords: 1920s dress, 1 hour dress, one hour dress, diy 1920s dress, sewing, vintage sewing, retro sewing, costumery, DIY, twenties, 1920's, 20's, downton abbey, cosplay, costume, great gatsby

Id: LsmLtA4nJjc

Length: 105min 26sec (6326 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 30 2019