Mad Men Dress Challenge 2: The Betty

Well, here it is. After months of work, and learning new things, and a few screw ups, here is my Mad Men Dress Challenge 2 dress: The Betty.

So, it's not an exact replica, I know, but it is as close as I can get it. So, here's the rundown.

THE GOOD:
I am so immensely proud of all the pattern changes I did with this dress. Considering I really have only just started sewing a few months ago, I've impressed myself. I have changed the shaping of the front dart, added a bust dart to get rid of front neck gape, altered the way the back pieces came together, and added shoulder darts, to get rid of the back neck gape.

The Niagara River and a giant cliff right behind me. I live on the edge to bring you the best photo shoots. You're welcome.

THEN, I made the two back bodice pieces into one piece, accounting for the lack of zipper, seam allowances, etc.; I separated the one front bodice piece into two pieces, adding a button placket to both sides. I then drafted my own button placket stabilizers, and drafted my own collar (!). It's nowhere near perfect, but I'm pretty stoked.

I also changed the skirt pattern so that instead of two small pleats on the front, the skirt was box pleated, showing the green stripes at the front, just like the original Betty dress.

This is the best I can de-wrinkle this material to show you my box pleats. I know, you are not impressed. I am. Deal with it!

 I learned how to use my buttonhole maker (This was frustrating because it was just a tiny step that I kept skipping over.), I made some bias binding without one of those bias-maker doohickeys, and closed the armholes with said bias tape.

I am laughing at.....

...this beast.

I took my time, and ended up with some killer top stitching on my button placket. Like, killer.

I feel pretty good about my pattern matching on the skirt portion. I matched it up on the sides pretty well, and also, where the seams were on the front middle, and back middle, I made sure that the pattern followed exactly so that you can hardly tell there is a seam at all. Hooray!

THE BAD:
In order to get into the dress, I knew I would need a side zipper in addition to the buttons, just because of the way the dress is drafted. Well, I wanted to put in a lapped zipper, and I nearly cut off the fabric I needed to do so. So I did a sort of hack job of fixing it, not helped at all by the weird-o stretching ways of the fabric (see below), but it doesn't look horrible. I was rushing to be finished (I was excited) and next time I will try to remember to think things through more.

Here I am trying to show you my zipper, but I didn't tell Trevor that is what I want to show, so you get this awkward photo. :)

Also, on one of the armholes, I didn't think the bias binding through as well as I should have. So instead of a pretty finished look, one of the armholes is just haphazardly stitched together. Again, I need to slow down, especially near the end.

That's right, you have the pleasure of seeing my stupid faces. :)

I think the hem might be a little off, but it is hardly noticeable, no biggie there.

The collar, although in "the good", isn't perfect. It sticks up a wee bit in the back, and I had to tack the front bits down so that they stayed where they are supposed to. I think it is because on my muslin, there was more seam allowance to keep the collar in place, whereas here, I miraculously managed to create only a tiny seam allowance. Which, worked out not in my favour, go figure. But that can be easily fixed next time. Plus the front where it meets in the "centre" isn't quite perfect, but hey! Get off my back, wouldja!?

See, I am unimpressed with you for not getting off my back. GEEZE.

THE UGLY:
This fabric. I don't mean that the fabric itself is ugly. What I mean is I should have waited before choosing my fabric. Or at least I should have researched it. But I grabbed it because it was almost the exact colours I was looking for. Oh well, live and learn.

Weird-o wrinkles. Like my new pin? We went "antiquing" for the first time!

This fabric, to put it kindly, was a major bee-otch to work with. It is a woven 100% cotton. I prewashed it like normal. BUT, the green bits are woven much more tightly than the ivory bits. Which means that this fabric warped and went crazy on me basically. So no matter how much I pressed this stupid stuff, it always ended up wrinkled. That sucks. I mean, I could have went back to the store and got a new fabric, but once I start, that's it, I'm not stopping. So anything that was cut on the bias ended up twisting really weirdly. My sash, for instance, which I threw together because I didn't know if I would have time to make a belt (I don't), is messed up, bad. It's not really noticeable when I wear it, but, really, it's screwy and not pretty to look at on its own.

Look how wrinkled the skirt looks!

 So there it is! I've learned so many new things from making this dress! Like I've said before, I don't even watch Mad Men (I don't have cable), but, it is hard not to notice the fashion from the show on the world wide web. I have been wearing this dress non-stop, basically. It will be a while before I get to make another dress (June), but I can't wait until I get to do so! I look forward to using all my new skills and I will force myself to take my time more often.

Oh, and before we are done here, would you like to see the most awkward photo shoot modelling pose of the year? Yes you do.

"I'm just casually walking in the woods."

Did you participate in Julia's Mad Men Challenge? Have you learned anything new lately?

{Overall, my feelings on this dress are that...}

Sneak Peek

I'm nearing the end now, have a tiny peek at some of the work I've done!
 (Also, the sewing is why I am M.I.A., sorry, but when I get close to finishing a project, it consumes all of my time. It may even consume my SOUL! Muahahahahahaha........)

So FLIPPIN excited!

{Something good}

Progress Part 2

I don't want to be doing this update. Really I don't.

Why?

Because I'd rather be sewing, of course!

But here it is, just for you, an update on my Mad Men Dress Challenge 2:

In the last progress post, I showed you what my muslin looked like after about a month of futzing around with my darts. I still wasn't happy with them. I tried using Gertie's method on changing the darts to be more flattering and I kept ending up very....nippley.

Y U NO WORK MUSLIN?

Well, I am happy to say that not only did I figure out the problem, but I have done A LOT.

After sorting out the nipple darts (which I may do a tutorial on another time), I had to futz around with the sizing by bringing the zipper in and out, again and again, and I had to fix the neck gape. When I was finally happy, I transferred everything to my pattern. Check it out:

See how many times I changed the zipper placement?

A new shoulder dart to get rid of neck gape.

The front

The back.

The alterations transferred to the front bodice.

I added the bust dart to get rid of my massive neck gape.

Check out all the alterations to the darts! And these are just the ones I put on the pattern. This doesn't include the ones I did on the muslin alone!

The alterations to the bodice back.

The new shoulder dart to deal with the back neck gape.

Well, after getting to this point, I did even MORE stuff. Though I did not take many process pictures. So here is a quick run down with a few final photos:

Next I traced my pattern pieces onto some kraft paper to make new pattern pieces. I extended the back bodice on the new pattern pieces along the centre seam by about a 1/4 of an inch to account for the zipper width which would no long be in the centre back of my Mad Men dress. Then, I extended the front centre seam by about an inch to account for the buttons and button placket. After that, I drafted the button placket and a collar, both on my own! (Well, okay, I was using my sister's pattern drafting book to guide me. But I have never taken any sort of pattern drafting course of anything, so this is a big deal for me!) Then I got to work!

The left side with the button placket sewn on.

The right side and the interfacing for the placket laying over top.

The back bodice.

And all together!

So that's all I have photos of for now. I've been trying to take more progress photos, but honestly, I just don't want to stop what I am doing to take photos! Ha!

Anyway, I can't wait to finish and show you my dress! So I am going to go work on it now. Right. Now. :)

{One day...}

Progress.

It's been forever since I've talked about sewing. Last time I mentioned that I was going to use Maddie's tutorial on making a sloper. I tried, got frustrated, and changed gears. I am still going to make a sloper, but I think I'll wait until the summer when I have more time. So instead I've been working on altering the Simplicity 2444 dress in preparation for the Mad Men Dress Challenge 2 and for the navy polka dotted dress I've been meaning to make for months now. Here is a quick peek at the muslin I've been working on. Although it looks pretty bad in this picture, I've actually made quite a bit of progress:

  

Now, you can see I've circled where I screwed up sewing in the sleeve. I know that on a muslin, you don't really have to sew in a sleeve, but I've never done it before so I thought it would be good practice. I found out that I cut the sleeves a size too small because they are so tight that I can't really move around in this bodice with the sleeves. Like, at all. They have since been removed, I figured I'll work on them later. I don't need sleeves for my Mad Men dress, so I'm not too concerned right now.

I am also pointing out some major sagginess under the bust. I've fixed most of this simply by bringing the bodice back in significantly, but there remains a little. I've tried to alter the darts the way that Gertie suggests, but I ALWAYS end up looking, as Trevor puts it, nippley. So I'm going to work on the darts a bit more and see if I can't figure it out with the pattern making book my sister lent me. And who knows, when I insert the button placket, it might completely change the fit again.

As for the Mad Men Dress Challenge 2, I actually chose my inspiration dress a while ago:

I don't even watch mad men, but I like this dress and I can see myself wearing something like this so, why not? I said I wanted to be more social this year, and this joining in this challenge would be a great way to do so, don't you think? I've been debating between making a real button up front, and making a fake button up front. I am leaning towards real, that way I can learn some new techniques, but again, we'll see when I make a muslin of the top with the collar and the buttons.

I've already started to look for fabric. I think the fabric is going to have to be inspired by this, but not exact. Which is fine. But I haven't been to Fabricland yet. Not that I have high expectations for finding a fabric that looks like this. Of course, I could try to make a fabric like this using different techniques, but hey, I've got a day job and a night job to hold down, so I don't think that is going to happen.

Thanks for reading this little update. I can't wait to get my muslin done and get started on my dress. Are you sewing in the Mad Men Dress Challenge 2?

{Somebody}