The Easiest Button to Button - Butterick 5603 strikes again

Introducing the latest part of my soul, and it's not a horcrux (I'm not so tricksy with a wand and my face doesn't look melted plastic).

It is a Mad Men inspired, button riddled, red extraveganza. Or Butterick 5603 if you want to simplify it.

I'm more than a little bit excited about this dress and for a few reasons.

One: it fits (that's always a relief - my energy IN compared to my energy OUT ratio is seriously out of wack at the moment. Apparently walking up the drive way twice does not burn off a box of doughnuts. Whatever.)

Two: it's red. Enough said.

Three: It fits. Oh wait.

Four: It pulls in and pushes out in all the appropriate vintage ways. I do love me some vintage.

Five: (and this one's my favourite) It has a row of the loveliest fabric covered buttons all the way down my centre back. And who doesn't love buttons. Seriously.

OOoooh yes. Aren't they wonderful? There's 12 buttons folks, and yes dad, I did actually count them correctly this time (father-daughter inside joke).

Why do I love these so much? I can't quite explain it?!! There is just something so immensly satisfying about seeing a row of neat(ish) little matching buttons nestling between each verterbrae.

You want to hear something that makes these buttons even more exciting (to me any way) ...

The button closure at the centre back is ... fake....
Yes sir-ree! I have a fraudulent button closure! Scandelous!

Check it out.

Looks pretty convincing right?!! I knew I wanted buttons down the centre back to mimic this delicious Joanie look which is so vintage appropriate.

But here's the problem that happens with buttons. There always seems to be a bit of pull and stretch where the button meets the button holes and this can look pretty unflattering in the 'rounded' areas. And God knows I have some areas that are rounded.

So to keep things stable and neat with maximum support; I faked it. How cheeky of me! I unashamedly love the result!

     

  

I instead closed the dress with a sneaky invisible zip on the side seam.

 

So sneaky!

Curious about how to make a fake button closure? If you're interested I just might do a tutorial.

This is the third time I've employed the use of Butterick 5603 and that officially puts this pattern in my box of favourites.

Here are the other two vintage dresses that I have made with the aid of this pattern. One 'Peggy Olson' dress and one 'Joan Holloway'. You can see the blog post by clicking on the pictures.

On all three of these versions I altered the skirt to make a pencil shaped skirt. You can see my detailed photos on my skirt alterations on my Peggy Olson dress post.

Side note - how cute are these shoes?!!! They have bows at the back for crying out loud!

My original inspiration for this dress is the fabulous orangy/red dress worn by one of my growing Mad Men favourites: Megan.

I am also in LOVE with the green bow dress worn by the girl on her left (our right). Though in this photo her face looks like she's thinking about vomiting, not how wonderful her dress is. Attitude much?

The dress is made using wool faille that I purchased from Tessuti Fabrics.
This is the first time I have sewn with faille and it was an absolute delight. It was like sewing with butter. It was so soft my Janome would start purring every time it bit into it. The faille has such a lovely drape to it that makes me want to sew up my next ten garments in this fabric.



The dress is fully lined, except for the sleeves. The skirt hem is blind hemmed and I had the buttons covered with the same dress fabric at Button Mania. The woman at Button Mania is superb and she also does fabric covered belts. Her work is precise.

 

I added a brooch for a simple vintage touch which breaks the solid red of the dress in just the right way.

I bought it recently from a little store in the city (Melbourne) and I held it greedily to my chest like Gollum and 'the ring'. Note, there was more than a small part of me that was a little bit dissapointed on discovering that the brooch didn't render the wearer invisible.

 

I added sleeves, just like with my previous two dresses.

 

And a collar front and back, just like the inspiration dresses.



You can see how I drafted the collar on my previous 'Peggy Olson dress' blog post.

I really love the shape of this dress. I love how it's not flashing too much flesh, but it's still feminine.

 

 

This is my third Man-Men inspired dress to add to my collection and something tells me it's far from my last. It's a style that just keeps on begging to be made.

Mad Men Q&A's and Inspiration

How's everyone going with their Mad Men dresses? I have already received some amazing submissions in my inbox that I can't wait to share with everyone. Golly there are some talented people out there!

Haven't chosen a dress yet? Check out the addictive Tom & Lorenzo Mad Men page for endless inspiration. A few readers have pointed me to that website and I couldn't believe I hadn't see it sooner. They do a 'Mad Style' post for each and every Mad Men episode with an abundance of screen shots of the many dresses to drool over.
I have also started a pin board on Pinterest with some Mad Men dresses I fancy, that you can check out also.

Here's a few QA's that have popped up recently that perhaps some of you have also had tinkering around in your noggin.

Q - I don't have a blog, can I still submit a dress?
A - Heck yes! It's open to everyone. You do not need to have a blog to participate.

Q- I have a dress in mind that isn't based on a particular dress on Mad Men, but it has the same style/feel as the clothes from that time. Can I still take part?
A - Absolutely! Any dress that is from that vintage is more than welcome.

Q- Can I submit more than one dress?
A - Yes! The more the merrier! Or, if you've got a 'Mad Men' dress that you made previously you can submit that also.

Q- I have chosen a dress based on one I've seen on Mad Men but I want to make it in a different print/colour, is that OK?
A - Definitely. The theme is Mad Men but you can take the inspiration and change it to what ever takes your fancy.

Happy Sewing everyone!

P.s. - I may have just purchased another overlocker. I am out.of.control

A Seamstresses Guide to the Galaxy - Vogue 8280

The other day I had one of those fantasy scenes in my head that they have in the movies.

You know in a scene where a character meets someone, has a bad experience and it's then followed by an imaginary, impulsive sequence of how they wish they could react, usually something along the lines of punching that other person in the face or screaming at them some crass profanity. Then it cuts back to reality where they have not acted out but instead they just smile and be pleasant and act like the person hasn’t just infuriated them.

Well I had one of those scenes not so long back – in a big-chain fabric store in Melbourne. Now when I say fabric store, this place is now less of a fabric store and more of a $2 junk shop. You are more likely to find a back scratcher or a nose-hair trimmer in this place then you would a metre of silk.  Thank God for fabulous stores like Tessuti or my sewing projects would be severely jeopardised.

My altercation occurred in the middle of the day with a good-looking young girl, around age 18 who worked at this store. She had cut the wonderful fabric that I used to make this dress. She held it up against her to fold it (I had purchased quite a bit) and I noticed how well the colour looked against her face. You know how when you hold up a colour to your face that really suits you and your face just warms up and looks healthier? That's what happened with her; she looked lovely!

So I told her.

Me - "Oh my goodness, that colour really suits you, you should get some!"

Her reaction? Wait for it ... she pulled a vomit face. Yeah, that's right, she screwed her face up and pretended to vomit.

*insert violent fantasy scene here*

Um ... what the H? She then proceeded to tell me that she didn't like 'girly' colours.

Ok.

This is where I employed some serious calming techniques to stop my self turning into the hulk in the middle of a busy store. Wow. A girl who works in a fabric store and doesn't like 'girly' colours? That's like a painter hating paint or a kindergarten teacher hating children. 

Breathe.
Any waaay. I smiled and nodded and walked out of the store and held my new purchase to my chest for support.

The good news is I like the fabric and I made a lovely new dress with it.

The dress is the Vogue version of the galaxy dress, pattern number 8280. It's been around for a while now but it's only recently that I really started paying it some attention. I've seen some lovely other versions out at the moment and nothing motivates me more than envy.

I like the feminine shape of the pattern and combined with the rich colour of the fabric it gives a nice vintage feel. I fell in love a while back with a Joan dress from Mad Men (let's be honest, who hasn't) because of it's shape but mainly the colour. I'd been on the look out for a similar colour ever since and was very excited to make this find.

Let's just take a moment to appreciate the awesomeness that is Joanie.

Ok.

The fabric is a combination of 45% silk and 55% polyester. It's the same as the black fabric I used to make the skirt part of my The Survivor dress. The silk gives the fabric a richness and vibrancy, while the polyester gives support and strength. If the store stocked more colours I would buy up on all of them.

I fully lined the dress and I added a pink bow as a subtle detail and to break the solid colour.

I made up version B of the dress.

I love the sweet-heart neckline and the puffy sleeves.

I made this dress up in a size 12 bodice, size 10 sleeves and size 14 on the skirt from the hip down. I was smart enough to make a muslin first and I highly recommend any one considering making this pattern that you do the same. It's a lovely pattern but I made quite a few adjustments.

At the end of the day if I was to make this pattern again I would probably make the whole bodice in a smaller size. A lot of other reviewers (why do I only read them now?) commented on how the size runs a little big.

I am short in the torso so one of the first things I did was remove 2cm from the height of the bodice.

I have a full bust, but it starts higher up on my frame so bodices always seem to swim on me at the top. I removed about 3cm from the back starting at the arm hole as it was gaping.

You can see in the above picture the dart I made at the arm hole and also the adjustment at the bottom to remove 2 cm from the height of the bodice.

I 'pinched out' the excess fabric on the front bodice and ended up removing (by making another dart) about an extra 1cm not too far down from the waist dart apex.

I must say it is quite difficult pinning adjustments on your self, I don't know why I didn't use my dress form this time around, but once I had started I couldn't stop!

The fabric was gaping at the side seam under my bust so I also increased the bust dart on the side by an extra 2 cm. You can see in the above picture on the side how I've penciled in two new lines.

I removed a fair bit of excess fabric from the flange pieces as well by creating a dart. On a side note, what sort of word is 'flange'? 

And finally I reduced the width of the sleeve at the hem by a whopping 5cm. You can see in the picture below that I sliced off 2.5cm on both the front sleeve and back sleeve. I have quite skinny arms and when I first tried on my muslin sleeve I almost had to turn side ways to walk through a doorway (slight exaggeration).

I also didn't add any netting in the sleeves as the fabric had enough stiffness to it that it didn't need it.

The result was a nice snug fit. I'm sure there are more professional ways to make these adjustments but I think it worked regardless.

I do feel like such a lady when I put this dress on. It certainly encourages hip swaying and hair flicking and I just love the colour of this dress!

Maybe I should walk into that fabric store with this dress on and get all Julia Roberts on the staff member and reenact the scene from Pretty Woman where Vivian walks back into a fancy store, arms laden with recent purchases and exclaims to the horror of the shop ladies 

"Big mistake. Big. Huge!" [turns away] 

On an exciting note, look at these fancy patterns I just purchased from the Vogue Patterns website. I'm always impatiently waiting for more pattern designs and I'm excited about a few of the new ones.

There's something crazy going on with the neck band and shoulder straps and I think I like it!

This one definitely looks like a cocktail dress and will be great for those nights when I want to get a little vampy. I could imagine this in a bold red or electric blue.

Oh yes please. I love the drape and the pleats (which you can't really see with this print - check the line drawing below) This dress would look awesome in a mustard drapey silk fabric. I'm probably most excited about this little number.

I love all the fancy pleating on this one and the elastic waist band. Hello easy eating!

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And just when I think I'm almost up to date on my 'must-sew' list, I've just gone and added another six.

It's a hard-knock life.