1930's Cream Maternity Dress

As I sit soaking up sweet baby snuggles, I've found a few moments to share one final Sunday-best maternity dress made in the last trimester with baby #2.

At 38 weeks, I asked my mother-in-law to snap a few photos on my phone before baby's nearly imminent arrival. I think she did a fabulous job for her first dress photography, don't you? 😃

You'll have to excuse my lack of shoes... we grabbed the photos quickly, and I didn't want to take the time to get my shoes and put them on, so here you see my natural bare-foot state when I'm at home, or anywhere that shoes aren't pretty much required. 😉 😛

This dress was pretty quick to make actually. I used the same pattern I drafted for the purple flowered dress, with just a couple adjustments. First, I cut off the kimono sleeves where the under-arm seam met the princess seams. With the sleeve off, I altered the pattern for the shoulder gather detail. I slashed the shoulder perpendicular to the shoulder seam, and slit it parallel to the shoulder seam from there to the neck and arm-hole seam allowances to add fullness for the gathers, without changing the neck or arm-hole measurements.

 

I originally planned to do a flutter sleeve, but after one mock-up decided the material was going to be too heavy and stiff for the light and flowy sleeve style. Instead, I put in sleeve B from Simplicity Pattern 8248. They fit perfectly without any modification, much to my delight!

Next I drew new lines to make a narrower skirt flowing from the bodice for a more 30's look, and to conserve fabric. I really like how the narrower skirt turned out, especially the smooth look of having the center back of the dress on a fold!

The material was purchased years ago with a different 1930's dress planned, but I never got to the project. I had 3 yards... in two pieces... a 1 yard piece, and a 2 yard piece. I'm very glad it was 60" wide, instead of the narrow 45" of the previous 2 cotton dresses! With careful placing, I found I could fit the side front and side back pieces on the 1 yard piece since they were shorter, and the center front, center back, and sleeve pieces fit on the 2 yard piece with enough scraps between pieces to cut a half-lining for the top. I met near disaster when I put on the larger view A sleeves I'd originally cut, realized they were just too puffy in the heavier-weight fabric, and had to re-cut the smaller sleeves. I was SO glad I had cut to conserve as much fabric as possible. The new sleeves just BARELY fit on the remaining larger scraps. WHEW! Crisis averted!

 
After some consideration, I elected to keep the dress very simple, letting the accessories dictate the look. Hooks and eyes close the neck slit at the center-front, making it nursing friendly, but very subtle. I had the perfect belt to do a coordinating earth-tone look, with a matching cream colored braid, and contrasting brown leather buckle. But, with the basic cream color, I can switch to any color belt, jewelry, etc. to change up the look.

After a couple wears, I've decided the poly/wool blend is not my favorite material for practicality. Every time it's washed the entire thing has to be pressed, and it already looks like fraying will be a concern. I plan to go through and serge all the seams to alleviate the fraying, and re-tack the lining in place to hopefully help with the difficulty of pressing the seams through the lining. I'm also keeping it for nice Sunday Church wear (after all, cream isn't a friend of potential muddy or ketchupy toddler hands... or clumsy mammas for that matter), washing as little as possible, and hanging as soon as I'm done wearing to ward off wrinkles.

I really love how this one turned out though, and how easy it was to make the adjustments to the base pattern for a totally different look! The material has a slight stretch in both directions as well, so range of motion and comfort are actually surprisingly high!

I've moved on to more fitted clothes for now, but I'm very satisfied with my first adventure into maternity clothes, and I couldn't be happier with the results!