The second dress I decided to try my hand at, this summer was another vintage pattern by Simplicity. Pattern 5869, copyrighted 1965, is of a loosely fitted dress has elastic waistline casing, slit neck opening, collar, and back zipper closing. I choose to go with view 1 which included cuffed sleeves.
The pattern also included a pattern for a matching wide brim hat, however the fabric I decided to use for this pattern was just enough for the dress alone. Speaking of my fabric choice, I choose what I would say is a polyester type fabric (still new to identify fabrics) that had a blue, red and white floral pattern to it. I purchased the fabric at an antique store and kind of had a 60’s vibe to it. I also felt that the fabric looked kind of British and because of this I’ve decided to call this dress my “Tea Time” dress.
The fabric being a bit on the stretchy side gave me a little trouble but on the whole it went real well. The pattern is a size 16 (36 bust) which is a little small so I added 2″ inches to accommodate my 38″ bust size. I didn’t do any extravagant pattern grading or anything, I just added 1/2″ to the sides as I cut out the pattern. Since the dress was loose fitted anyways, the extra side allowances seemed to be prefect. I was also lucky that the sleeves which I only gave a little extra allowances to, fit nice and loose on me.
The material as I said I think it’s kind of a polyester/knit, so when I was making the “V” neck collar I accidentally clipped too close to the point on the “V” line and the fabric tore. I couldn’t just sew up a sort of hole as it was, and I couldn’t just leave it because I knew it would eventually expand. The solution I came up with was to sew some faux buttons on to the front right under the “V” line. The first button would be sewed as an anchor to stitch back the rip in the fabric, while the other two would be to accent the first.
A while back I bought a gallon jar of buttons for about $30 at an antique store. The collection came with lots of buttons, the trick is finding matching buttons. I dug around until I found 3 white buttons that where about the size I needed and had a nice design, one I felt would fit the look of the dress.
After getting the dress all put together the pattern called for an elastic waist in a casing. I had never worked with elastic and since the dress was so nice at this point I was afraid that I would ruin it by adding elastic. Thus, I opted to just place my invisible zipper and call it done. Since there is no elastic the dress is really loose, so I wear it with a belt to pull it in at the waist.
When wearing this dress I paired it with my red,white and blue vintage hat, and red, white and blue vintage wicker purse. I also wore my red peak-a-boo heels, which I only wear on days I don’t plan to walk too much. All in all I’m happy with the dress and love the way it looks. Now it’s time for me to be off for tea, cherio.
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