Making a Vintage Dress from 1944 Using a Modern Sewing Pattern- Butterick B6485

for a little while now I have been collecting these reprints of vintage sewing patterns I decided that it was finally time to actually make one and I chose this Butterick pattern from 1944 I had found this vintage rayon blend in a charity shop which was a great match for the pattern as it had such a nice drape plus the print was perfect for a forties dress I checked I had enough fabric to make this pattern in my size and also checked the finished garment measurement so that I was sure the finished dress would fit I then began tracing off the paper pattern pieces I like to trace my pattern pieces rather than just cut them out as I often make a lot of fit adjustments at this stage although for this dress the only adjustment I made was to the bodice length I took three centimeters out of the length and shortened line apart from that I traced a size 12 for all the pieces and then cut out my paper pattern [Music] you [Music] I then cut my fabric out matching the salvages of the fabric and smoothing and pinning the paper pattern pieces in place I measure in from the selvage to make sure my patterns are on the straight of brain and then cut them out once all the pieces are cut I always choke on all the sewing lines I know this takes a long time but I'd like to be really precise in my sewing and I honestly couldn't stitch in a straight line without them I also make sure to transfer all the balance marks and notches especially on the sleeves that I know which is the back and which is the front I then use tailors tacks to indicate all the balance marks and notches I know I just choke them on but it's important to be able to see them from both sides of the fabric and the chalk often rubs off after a little while I then follow the instructions and begin sewing in the pleats on the front of the dress I match the balance marks and sewing lines using a holding pin and then pin the two layers of fabric together [Music] I pin in both pleats before threading up my machine and sewing the pleats in place [Laughter] [Music] I then take the front panels to the ironing board and press the pleats from the wrong side and the right side this fabric was very slippery and it was at this moment I remembered that my sewing machine has a table attachment this made it so much easier to sew I then moved on to sewing the belt ties I folded each tie in half lengthways and matched up the sewing lines I was briefly distracted by the appearance of winning the adventure cat what you doin up there Winnie but she was soon back on solid ground and I stitched the ties leaving one end open so I could turn them right sides out and then graded the seam allowances to reduce bulk clipping both the point and the corner I then turned the ties right sides out impressed unfortunately the ironing board was really unstable and the footage came out all wobbly so I've just had to make do with a few clips that turned out okay once pressed I sewed the two lines of gathering stitches are the raw ends of each tie I then gathered the ends of the tie up and pinned them to the front pieces matching the balance marks I then stitched the gather ties in place next I pinned the side front to the front by matching the balance marks up precisely and pinning in place I then stitch this seam in place and repeated for the other side [Music] I then ran two lines of gathering stitches between the balance marks on the front yoke edge the instructions also said to then stay stitch the rest of the curved edge see here this bounce mark needs to match to this balance mark this bounce mark needs to match to this balance mark and then this section here of the main dress has to gather in and this balance mark has to match that and then these match up as well so this is right sides up and I need them right sides together so I'm going to match everything up and then pin along this edge and so they're more pinning I know my painstaking method of pinning may seem a bit extra but I did warn you that I like my sewing to be precise besides when easing into curves like now it does make the whole thing a whole lot easier to sew in the end [Music] strange that they made me stay stitch it and now they're telling me to clip it where necessary hmm so I carried on easing in the two curves clipping through the nonsensical stay stitching I had just done I then gathered up the front sections and evened out the gathers before pitting those in place [Music] then a boatload of pens later I stitched the front and the yoke together [Music] [Music] I then checked I didn't have any tucks or puckers where I had eased the two curves in I clipped the threads clip the curve and then repeated for the other front section from the inside there is then this raw edge that needs to be covered and amazingly for a commercial sewing pattern this is done with a hand finished facing the yoke facing piece is matched to the yoke and pinned in place at the armhole and shoulder before being tacked in place for the machine [Music] the curved edge is then graded down turned under to match the sewing line of the yoke and pinned in place [Music] I then hand-stitched it down with a slant hemming stitch which I have a separate tutorial on if you'd like to see the stitch in more detail [Music] [Music] I then press the finished joke and facing and of course repeated these steps for the other side of the front I then joined the two fronts together at the center front scene [Music] well I tried to stitch them together but then my bobbin run out so to rewind the Bob in and try again [Music] and then press the center front seam open with the fronts completed I moved on to the back panels pinning in the darts as I had done for the pleats on the front when stitching in darts I don't reverse the beginning and end instead I leave a long tail of thread and tie a knot this reduces bulk and helps to create a smooth point to the dart I then press the darts towards the center back I then decided that I wanted to neaten all the seams with pinking shears as the fabric was beginning to fray having a little bit of a dilemma here because I had originally intended to ignore what the instructions say the instructions say that you should put a 24 inch zip in the centre back of the dress but I hate that I think they look really ugly and also they're really difficult to do up so I had intended to instead put a shorter dress zip in the underarm seam however I've now realized that the neck is quite small on this dress hang on let me show you the line drawing so you can see it's really closely fitted and I really doubt that I'm going to be able to get my head through there so I don't really know what to do because I don't want a great big zip down the center back of my dress but I also want to be able to wear it so I'm trying to think can i I don't know I don't know what to do I'll get back to you when I figured it out so essentially what I decided to do was to lower the neckline at the center front creating a sort of slit in the front center front seam but I would be able to get my head through and then close up with a hook and I however this was made more complicated by the neck facing and took a whole lot of experimenting and several failed attempts to figure out in the end I realized that I didn't need a zip at all but I did need to create an opening at the centre back of the neck as well as the centre front I stitched up the centre back and the shoulder seams um Pizza Center front and then set about trying to make this new neck situation work or the existing facing pieces which I realized at this moment needed interfacing [Music] I've got my fusible interfacing pieces ready to go now brilliant however I think what I'm going to do is listening to they love to say podcast and one of their listeners had a tip for finishing the lower edge of your facing and that is so before you fuse it actually bag it out so I'm what I'm think I'm going to do is I'm going to try that I'm going to stitch so these are right sides together you can see it's the right side of the interfacing that's the right side of the fabric and then I'm going to stitch and essentially bag it out trim all this down and then fuse it together and then I'll have a nice neat edge to my facing hopefully let's give it a go [Music] [Music] [Music] I was really pleased with how well this worked and we'll definitely be using this technique again once I had fused the interfacing I joined all the phasing pieces together and set about trying to make it work with my altered next situation okay so we've had a bit of a change of plan I have had to put a little opening in the back neck but I'm avoiding doing a placket by just kind of facing it and they'll be a sort of like keyhole opening I might put a button and a loop there or maybe just a hook and I because I'm gonna have to move the camera don't if you can see here I thought that this balance mat on the facing matched to this balance mark but it doesn't it they just match to each other so there's something funny happening at the front here which I think I'm probably just gonna have to hand stitch up so finally after a lot of faffing I attached the facing to the neck line with my extra front and back neck openings [Music] I then clip the corners and graded the seam allowances down so that I got a really crisp edge when I turned the facing to the inside of the neckline and then under Stitch the facing by hand using a prick stitch [Music] [Music] I also having boned the facing in place at the shoulder seams this stitch is great for areas where you still want a little bit of movement with the neck complete I pinned and joined the side seams then neaten the raw edges with pinking shears and press the seams open at this point I tried the dress on to check the fear and to make sure when he liked it I was really pleased with how well the dress had turned out especially my strange neckline alteration so I carried on with the sleeves I adjusted the settings on my sewing machine and stitched two lines of gathering stitches between the balance marks on the sleeve head [Music] [Music] then remembering to return my machine settings to normal I pinned together the sleeve seams and stitch them in place then I did the usual pinking impression team before measuring and pinning in place the sleeve hem I had decided that to reduce bulk I would just pink the raw edge of my hand and do a single fold [Music] I then did a blind slip stitch to sew the hem in place then to insert the sleeves to the dress I lay the sleeve on the desk with the sleeve seam facing up and match the side seam of the dress to it I then pin the armpit of the dress to the sleeve from the wrong side of the dress working around until I reached the front and back balance marks once I reach the balance marks and match the top sleeve head balance mark to the shoulder seam and pin in place from the wrong side of the sleeve this is so that I can ease the gathers in a lot easier and then pull on my gathering thread to gather up the sleeve head adjust the sleeve head to the right length and then wrap the gathering threads around a pin to hold them in place [Music] I then evenly distribute the gathers and pin them in place then once I've removed the table attachment I stitched the armpit of the sleeve first starting at the front balance mark and with the wrong side of a dress facing up [Music] once I get to the back balance mark I reverse and take the dress out from under the Machine and then turn the dress around and go back to the front balance mark stitching with the wrong side of the sleeve facing up this way I construct the gathers and ease them in as I sew I stitch very slowly making sure that I am not catching anything I shouldn't [Music] [Music] [Music] when I get back around to the back balance mark I reverse and cut my threads this method makes it so much easier to sew in sleeves and almost always stops you getting those puckers and catches that happen so often with sleeves after briefly celebrating the success of my first sleeve I repeated all that again for the other sleeve before knit in the edges and steaming the sleeves over a tailor's ham [Music] my next challenge was the hem as this dress has diagonal or bias seams I put the dress on my dress form and left the hem to hang overnight the next morning I used this random metal thing I found in my brother's conservatory to level the hem I measured how far off the floor I wanted to finished him to be and then put a mark on my makeshift tool and folded the hem under at that mark I'm really glad I left the hem to hang as in some places the hem was double what it should have been I even Devery thing up and trimmed it down with my pinking shears before pressing the fold in place as this fabric was so slippery I added some pins to the hem fold to help it stay in place as I stitched I then decided beforehand sewing the hem to tackle the shoulder pads I found the center match this to the shoulder seam and match the edge of the shoulder pad to the edge of the sleeve seam allowance I hadn't stitched it in place with a fairly long running stitch and caught it down at the neck with a few ladder stitches I also procrastinated stitching the hand by adding the hooks and eyes at the back and front neck openings [Music] and when the hem could be put off no longer I used a blind slip stitch to carefully hand stitch the hem in place [Music] [Music] the slippery synthetic nature of this fabric made it a really horrible experience but then finally the dress was finished I got all dressed up and did my hair to look like the illustration on the pattern envelope this had to happen after I'd put the dress on of course because of the tight neckline but I'm really pleased with how the dress turned out I love the details of the yoke on the front and the really strong silhouette of the shoulders I do think it is possibly a bit big on the bust for me but I'm kind of okay with the more relaxed feel this creates [Music] most importantly I checked what one of the adventure cat thought of it and she definitely approved however sergeant tibs did not thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Retro Claude

Views: 68,736

Keywords: vintage fashion diy, sewing a vintage dress, vintage sewing patterns, vintage sewing tutorial for beginnerss, 1940s vintage fashion for women, vintage fashion for women, 1940s vintage dress, 1940s sewing patterns, 1940s sewing tutorial, sewing a 1940s dress, historical sewing for beginners, vintage sewing for beginners, 1940s dress diy, making a vintage dress, 1940s vintage clothing, 1940s vintage dress tutorial, vintage sewing patterns for beginners, ButterickB6485, SewingBee

Id: avtwP15DTkA

Length: 25min 37sec (1537 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020