Presenting . . .

Vintage Simplicity 1633, the 9th Annual Easter Dress.

I am so glad I made a muslin for this one (see previous post), with her long torso and limbs the original would have never fit right! Let me explain a few of the details of the dress.

As with many vintage dresses, there is a side zipper. The side zipper is important to getting into the dress when there's no center front or center back opening. This pattern, like most, has the zipper starting about 2" to 3" below the armhole and continuing into the skirt where there is a placket formed before the skirt and bodice are joined. Below you'll see the instructions on how to make the faced placket. In children's wear, I find it easier to have the zipper start right at the armhole. My daughter finds it easier to get into the dress that way rather than doing her best Houdini impersonation every time she wears it.

I also put an invisible zipper into this dress. In order to do that, I needed to eliminate the placket and have a side seam in it's place. I did so by rotating the skirt to where there was a seam at the side bodice seam. This skirt is essentially 3 rectangles sewn together, gathered and attached to the bodice. Because it was gathered and the seams weren't going to be exactly at the center front or other points, it was easier to do this. You can't do this if there are pockets or other features that will get affected by shifting the skirt over. (I'll show you why this method doesn't work all the time when I post about my Easter dress.) Looking at the picture now, I should have used a beige zipper! Oh well!

The skirt band was not part of the original pattern, so I had to improvise. I did an entire underskirt of the aqua satin, cutting it 9" longer than the overskirt. I then did a deep 4 1/2" hem. This double fabric adds a little weight to the hem and which lends a bit a stability for the buttonholes. I did not interface the hem area, although I could have. The buttonholes are 1 3/4" long. I just enlarged the collar ribbon spacing to fit the width of the wider ribbon. My machine only makes automatic buttonholes up to 1 1/4". My machine does have a feature where you can custom make a buttonhole and the machine will remember the size and will make another each time you depress the foot pedal. I think there are 46 buttonholes around the bottom - I lost track after a while.

I was careful when cutting out the printed fabric to make sure that the motifs were centered front and back. With such a large print, I didn't want to have half a rose in a seamline somewhere.


No outfit would be complete without pretty jewelry, so I made her a really simple pair of earrings and a matching necklace:


Parting Shot: Today was really nice so the children went out to play for a while and my husband joined them. Guess who got to the football first?

PublishI almost have the muslin done for my Easter dress - I just need to tweak one more seam. Tomorrow, I'll stitch up the muslin for the wedding dress project and starting fix a formal dress for one of my students.