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!

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. :)