In the meantime I have made good progress with the theory (Recreation: Vintage dress) and have finished my pattern! 🙂
My Inspiration:
It certainly won’t look quite like my inspiration, the Retro Butterick ’52 pattern B5033, but it fits me and my body beautifully and – and that’s the main thing – I like it that way.
I also changed the back and made a halter dress out of it, that’s why it can’t look quite like the original! 😉
My final test-version:
Of course I only took the upper part of the skirt for the test, you don’t have to test everything and waste material, but how the pleats fall and whether everything is right with the waist size is important, at least to me. Especially because – in contrast to my inspiration – I also added pleats to the back skirt for optical reasons. (I’m still a bit unsure about the pleats though, because in general I don’t really like them! So it’s possible that I might end up with a simple flared skirt WITHOUT pleats instead).
And this is how my pattern pieces look like:
Body:
I used my own basic-bodice with a high neckline for this and since I still had the test bodice from my last dress (the striped dress), which also had a high neckline (because of the colar), I took a relatively practical approach.
The first thing I did was to put on the bodice and draw lines to the front bodice to indicate how the halterneck should run towards my neck and how the curve of the neck should be. I did this all in front of a mirror.
After I had taken it off again, I cut away the excess fabric along these lines and I also removed the upper back (I cut across the whole back, starting at the armholes).
However, since my basic-bodice has waist darts at the back, this cutting line still looked a bit crooked and lopsided right after cutting. But that was quickly corrected. I wanted to eliminate the darts anyway, because I don’t want to have an extra seam on the two back pieces. (If you like, you can also work the back in two pieces and use the lines of the dart for that!)
In addition, the bodice was now too wide. You need more width for freedom of movement when there is a real/whole back. But since I didn’t have that anymore, I took away the width at the upper side seams to get a tight fit.
Collar:
I already had a collar pattern from earlier dresses, even though I of course had to adapt or better shorten it. For a halter dress, the collar has to fit tightly around the neck, because that’s what holds the whole dress. For this reason, unlike the original, my collar also has a collar stand. (Important: Work one side of the collar stand longer (i.e. overhanging) than the other at the back neck. You have to work a buttonhole for the fastening in there.
Skirt:
For the skirt I took a slightly flared skirt pattern with straight grain and added pleats. (Front skirt: an inverted box pleat in the middle and then 2 normal pleats folded to the center on each side | back skirt: 3 pleats folded to the center on each side).* With a straight grain the width of the skirt “falls” to the sides and in the centre front and centre back are the pleats that give additional width. Luckily I already have some skirt patterns in different widths, lengths and shapes. I just had to make sure that the pleats wouldn’t make the skirt too wide for my planned material. Because this (main fabric and lining) comes from my stash.
* However, I have changed the position of the pleats slightly (in contrast to the original), so that the last outer pleat is no longer an extension of the waist dart, but is positioned a little further inwards, towards the centre front. Reason: My experience! When a skirt pleat is positioned as an extension of the waist dart, it opens up in a really weird looking way because of my body shape, and I don’t like that!
And of course – I want pockets, but I already have a pattern for these.
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It remains to be seen whether everything will work out in the end as I imagine it! Keep your fingers crossed for me!
I will report! 🙂
Belongs to this Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CqU0EXVN1cA/