Purple Flowered Maternity Dress

My second design for a maternity dress was more challenging to alter than the first. I started with Butterick 5605 and made a LOT of adjustments. I liked the way the shoulders in the original pattern fit on a previous project, and the unique design of the half kimono, half armscye sleeves provides significant mobility, so I wanted to keep those aspects to create a comfy daily-wear kind of maternity dress.

The next lengthy paragraph is going to be all about drafting gobbledy-gook, so if you want to skip all the geeky sewers details, you've been forewarned. 😉 

First I slit and split open the front and side-front pieces from the bust to the waist to add fullness only at the front waist in the princess seams, leaving the side and side-back seams fitted. This made the curves look really odd, but double checking with a flexible ruler, the lengths were the same as the original at the seam allowance. Next, since this pattern was more fitted through the bust than the one I used to draft off for my Ladybug Maternity Dress, I did a full-bust adjustment, since I knew I'd need the extra space, especially once I was nursing. After doing a mock-up, I found I still wanted a little more room in the bust, but only in the center front pieces, not in the side-front. I marked how much to add after splitting the mock-up and pinning out the seam allowances to make sure I knew how much was needed. After marking the pattern, changing the curve, and double checking again to make sure the length of the curve matched the original, the curve looked so much more natural and like I expected! Hurray! Next, I again extrapolated all the seams to be a princess-cut dress flowing into the skirt, rather than a bodice with an attached circle skirt. 

I really need to remember to take more progress and patterning photos of my projects. I get so wrapped up in the excitement of doing the next step and finishing the project before the first novelty wears off that I rarely remember to stop and document the progress as I go! 😛 😆

My husband helped me so much in understanding and thinking through the drafting process better, and providing the flexible ruler. He's done rather a bit of sewing and tailoring himself... which is how we met over 10 years ago, working on Beyond the Mask, sewing together. 😃

 

 

I had 4 yards of this pretty purple-flowered cotton from my Mother-in-law. She gave me this along with several other materials the first year after my husband and I got married, hoping I'd find use for them since they'd sat for years in her trunk. I love purple, but I've rarely actually made anything with purple fabric! Placing the pattern carefully, I had just enough to do the very full skirt I had traced off. The extra fullness in the skirt will be super fun to wear with a puffy petticoat after baby is here. 😀

After much deliberation I opted to go for piping to trim the neck and sleeves. Since the floral print is so tiny, the more delicate look of the piping finished off the look perfectly. I've only done piping trim once before, but I've loved it both times, and I really want to incorporate the vintage trimming style into more projects in future!

I was delighted to find that the dark purple twill I had in my stash was the perfect color, and that the long-saved black buttons finished the look as well as the function! I had plenty of the purple since I had bought a yard or more for a short jacket I intended to make, but later abandoned as impractical. There was plenty for two different belts and the trim, with enough left for a couple small projects I hope to share soon. 

With two maternity dresses under my belt, I am SO excited about how well both drafting projects went, and that I met my goal of multi-functional clothes that are simultaneously comfortable, practical, and pretty. 😌

I'm not a fan of how this one looks without the belt, but if I wanted a cooler, lighter feel, it can be worn that way, and looks very much like a lot of the 50's maternity dresses did back then.

 

Photos were once again taken by my brother on our last trip to visit family. 😌

Drafting, Maternity, and Ladybugs

 

With baby #2 on the way, and being tired of ill-fitting, boring maternity clothes, I began a rather ambitious project to make myself at least a few vintage style maternity clothes to add to my wardrobe.

First, I scoured the internet for vintage maternity ideas that didn't just look like a drab tent. :P

I had two goals... maternity dresses that were decently flattering, but would also function for regular clothes and work well for nursing later! A monumental task, I found.

After much searching, I sketched my ideas, and narrowed them down to two favorites. Then came the lengthy and arduous task of drafting changes based on two patterns I had that I knew fit me well.

For this dress, I started by using Butterick 5556, which I had already altered the neckline and sleeves on for my favorite blue 1950's dress. I drafted a new front piece from the pattern base to have lots of room at the waist, while keeping the back piece as it was to avoid the full "tent" look. Next up, I extrapolated the lines from the bodice to flow into a skirt so the dress would be 1 piece top to bottom, rather than a bodice attached to a separate skirt.

It was actually fairly simple as drafting goes, and with another adjustment to the neckline for it's unique detail, drafting a new collar to fit, and shortening the sleeves a bit more the patterning process was finished.

 

I did end up having to make two adjustments to my original draft after the dress was cut and put together... Unfortunately I made some mistake when drafting the neck-gather detail, and had to cut down the neckline to eliminate them on the finished dress, which though disappointing, worked out just fine in the end. :) After completing and wearing the dress a few times, I added in a gusset under the arms, finding I'd tightened the sleeves more than I liked for comfort and range of motion.

Upon going through my fabric stash, I found this mottled blue cotton my mom had given me, leftover from making her mother-of-the bride dress for one of my sister's weddings... There were just 3 yards, and with a bit of finagling I managed to fit the pattern on the piece of fabric.

Originally the plan was to go for matchy-matchy dark blue trimmings with a hook and eye closure in front, but alas!, there was no such coordinating material in the store... What to do now? 

My husbands parents gave me the idea when they saw the dress in progress with a red sash hastily tied to show what it would look like belted in at the waist, and commented how nice the red looked contrasting with the blue. 

While searching for buttons for my second maternity dress, I stumbled across the lady-bug buttons that clinched the contrasting red choice, and the perfect red fabric to match the buttons was easy to find from there.

 

It was so fun to put together the lady-bug inspiration, and my husband obligingly spray painted my buckle black to finish off the lady-bug look.

A trip to visit my family provided the perfect opportunity to have my brother snap some photos in the beautiful woods, and of course, the cat once again got in on the action. Not to be outdone, my little gentleman added the sweetest photo-bomb to a dress shoot I've had yet. ;) :) 

 

The dress can be worn without the belt, as most likely ladies would have done back in the 30's-50's, but I rarely wear it that way myself. As you can see, even without the belt, the back stays more fitted. Hooray! Success! Though it looks definitively 50's belted in, the looser look gives a much stronger 30's vibe in my opinion.

 

 

It was definitely worth designing and drafting my own maternity dress, and I am very excited to see how it works out after baby is here and I can belt it in at the natural waist. :)

From Disastrous Mistake to Happy Golden Hour: Or A 1950's Photo-Shoot in a Cornfield

On a dull, cloudy day in November I crammed in what I thought would be the last of my fall themed photo-shoots. I pin-curled my hair the night before, set up a time to take the photos with my brother, and got up the next day ready to forge ahead with the shoot. The day turned out to be crazy! An emergency vehicle repair delayed the photo-shoot and we rushed to get the shots before an evening event, shivering in the chill weather.

What a relief! The photos were done! We DID it!

In the hustle and bustle we each thought the other had imported the photos to the computer...

A few weeks later I sat down to edit the photos, and we made the awful discovery... the photos HADN'T been transferred. The card had been formatted in preparation for an event my brother was photographing, new photos already taken, and my pictures were gone, for GOOD! All that work, gone in one fell blow...  so this is how Mr. Banks felt in Mary Poppins after the tuppence disaster...😉

A fair day was predicted in late November, so we seized the moment and rescheduled the shoot. Later that week we passed a cornfield near our house and had a sudden inspiration! Why not take the photos here?!

The day dawned bright and sunny, just warm enough to be comfortable in only a suit jacket. I'm still convinced this was a special "blessing in disguise" from God.😊

I loved all the photos so much that I couldn't decide on just a few, so brace yourselves for an unprecedented amount of photos!😉

I love, love, LOVE this slew of book photos. I selected one of my favorite books for a prop. "Jonica's Island"... copyright 1945, printed 1957. Just the right time period for this shoot, though I didn't know that at the time! :)  It's super hard to find a printed copy, so I was ecstatic when I discovered that it's available on Kindle! If I ever have the terrible misfortune of misplacing my copy I at least have hope of perusing its pages on screen. :D

I made this jacket several years ago based on a photo from the 1950's. The collar was so unique and the button and belt details really tickled my fancy. I went online, bought the material, and found the perfect buttons in my stash.

          Suzy Parker 1952 Photo by Richard Rutledge

I had the material for the skirt sitting in my fabric trunk for years. This fall I finally got around to making it. I LOVED the pocket detail from a 1950's ad, and knew I had to use it for this skirt.

              1957 tweed pencil skirt and blouse

Even though I never got to see the old photos I KNOW none of them were as amazing as these ones turned out. Though my distrusting heart was set into a tizzy at the knowledge of all our lost work, in the end I'm glad it happened! Without that crazy mix-up we would never have found the golden hour in the corn field. I think it will be a long while before we have a photo-shoot I love as much as this one