The Vintage Green Velvet Dress

The Inside Story

As promised, the green velvet dress from Allie on a real person, albeit a pretty glazed real person - sorry about! I didn't take a look at the pictures until *after* I took off dress!

I figured it would be fun to really dress it up, so I pulled out vintage shoes and jewelry and wore a petticoat, too. The skirt is rather heavy, so two, three, four or more very stiff petticoats would really make it stand out.

Let's take a closer look and start with the outside of the dress.

This dress has a center back, lapped zipper. There are also hooks and eyes at the waist and top of the zipper. The hook and eye at the waistline is a nice touch.

The bodice front is cut on the bias, which I'm sure doesn't come through very well in the photographs. The bias cut does provide the nice drape for the front, though. The photo below is of the wrong side of the bodice front, behind the drape. Notice that the edge is turned under and left raw due to the bias. The bias edge hasn't frayed.

The inside of the bodice is like many vintage home made dresses, with the lining and fashion fabric treated as one. This bodice is a little different in that the front lining is cut on the grain and is different from the draped fashion fabric front. There is a separate facing all around the top edge rather than the fashion fabric and lining being joined at the top and then treated as one.

This dress does not have the waist stay that the purple dress did, just a waist seam. There seems to be some sort of stabilizer/interfacing like fabric in the waist seam for support. It looks like a nonwoven interfacing. In the photo below of the inside of the skirt, you'll also see more of this in some of the skirt seams.

The skirt has a smooth section in the front and then gathers around the rest of the waist line. The front panel is cut on the straight of grain while the side front panels are cut on the bias. On the inside, there are two straight panels under the gathered side front panels. I'm guessing these are mainly for support to keep the center front panel smooth and the gathers in their proper place at the side front.

The hem is very deep, and pleated like the hem of the purple dress to ease in the fullness.

Tomorrow I'll show you my daughter's birthday dress, I just need to add a hook and eye and hem the chiffon layer on the serger.

Parting Shot: Side Project. We've finally decided to paint the living room, hallway and stairwell of our house. My husband was able to get all the taping and prep work done while I was away, so I've been working on the painting. The hallway is done, and the living room is almost done, the stairwell will be worked on next week! From the picture below, you can see that we've chosen a blue color to cover the current beige color.