Making a 1950's Pintucked Dress : Vlog : Sewing through the Decades

As you're shopping you should look for some cotton gloves. In the 50's and 60's if we were wearing hats we were usually wearing gloves. No one I knew had money to get gloves that color matched all their outfits but everyone had white cotton ones .

The collar might be too small after adjusting the front placket width, and the cuffs - I don't think they should be sewn like that... I think the edge of the cuff needs to line up with the edge of the gathers (and not have an overhang of cuff). I think the placket shouldn't show much skin when the cuff button is done up. I could be wrong though (not sure what the instructions are like). I would leave the collar open; it looks great open.

I think it looks amazing with the collar open!

I love this vlog style of creating the garments. As for fitting? Have you ever indulged in the LCD method? While wearing the mock-up: 1st adjust your length of each area (top, bottom), then adjust the circumference (all side seams of top area and bottom area), then adjust the depth of upper and lower areas (darts are the solution for this). Personally, I would do all necessary adjustments for the top mockup, prior to attaching the bottom, and vica versa for the bottom mockup. As for the neck line? The mockup would need to be "re-drawn" at that "perfect" spot where the neck and chest meet. I think you would find that far more comfortable. Afterwards, you would then mate it up at the waist seam...hopefully with a better fit? (Peggy Sagers of Silhouette Patterns is one of the BEST at fitting tips and help-YouTube) Nevertheless, I LOVE the fabric and dress!! Thank you for the vlog format, too!!

Thanks Angela, I definitely liked this video, the vlog style is my favorite and this dress had so manny new and different details. Perhaps all the different details made the fitting difficult to predict, despite your detailed mock-up. On YouTube I tried to contribute to the pattern weight question😃.

This is a lovely dress with such a beautiful fabric choice. It's a shame it turned out to not fit so well. It's obvious from the photos it's definitely not a favourite of yours! I'm glad you take these things as a learning curve though. :D

About perforated markings: I remember the first of these videos where you showed the pattern with all the holes, my first thought was that it would be so much quicker to get everything marked instead of lifting the pattern to place a dot on the fabric underneath! Surely with today's technology we could combine the best of both worlds - perforations with printed marks as to what is what (because a lot of these perforations seem to be easily missed or mistaken for tears...).

I love the voice-overs, but I think I actually like the vlog style even better! The vlog style feels like we're all your friends and you're chatting with us and giving us updates on your project :)

Whoa, some of us really had a lot to say! I just think that not all pattern instructions are well thought out regardless of the decade it was made. I’ve run into a few myself where I had to compromise and do what I thought was best. And you’ve done that, great job! I really love the fabric pattern, it does go well with the style.😁

My thoughts: - Remove the hook and eye from the collar, leave it open (I think you said "double-breasted look" earlier in the vlog). Doesn't matter if the collar won't look like the drawing on the pattern envelope! This tiny little detail change would not detract from the dress being an obvious antique. The whole pattern shows it's an oldie but a goodie! - I remember the blouse you made out of the Tula Pink fabric with Venus Flytraps on it...it was shades of purple and that chartreuse green you gravitate to (in fact, the buttons you wanted to use on this dress are that same hue of green). The pleats were inverted on the back of the shirt, which you thought was unusual in a pattern, but the end result meant the blouse molded towards your waist much better than a standard blouse pattern. I apologize for this being so long, but I have a point! What if you changed the pleats in this dress bodice for inverted pleats? Just for the back, but maybe that's a switch for the front as well? I know NOTHING about sewing, so if this idea is dumb, please ignore! - You may want to reconsider your position regarding mockups. In the Mockup Mayhem video for this 1950s dress, you explain how you don't do all of the detail work in a mockup, because you never plan to wear mockups. The issue with the cuff/sleeve fitting properly in the mockup because the button closure was never made would be solved if you created it during the mockup phase. - This one I am not asking to get a yes/no response, I am asking because it was not mentioned: are you wearing period-appropriate foundation garments? Women in the 1950s practically wore battle armor under their clothes! Girdles, bras, garter belt, stockings, etc. Season 2 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has a joke where Midge talks about club owners and comics trying to touch her, and how she doesn't know why they bother, since she can't feel anything with all of her "underthings" on. Period-appropriate lingerie can drastically change how clothes fit the body.

Could you double leapell it?

The top of the dress not having a button may leave space for a broach. Perhaps you can pin it on to give yourself a bit more space in the neck and remove some of your discomfort. I do like the finished dress and am surprised the tucks are so visible despite the pattern on the fabric.

How frustrating to have fit issues despite having made a toile. Women have been getting larger, though, exactly in the places you had problems: arm length and neck and wrist circumference. Your pattern was published over 65 years ago. That’s three generations in terms of morphology, plenty of time to add an inch or so all over. As always, I enjoyed watching your vlog and I love the dress. It would look gorgeous in a solid silk twill, but $$$! FYI, sleeves were drafted with a bound slit in them through the ‘seventies. It was only in the ‘eighties that patterns began to use the sleeve seam itself to make the cuff opening. I first saw it in a 3-hour shirt pattern by Palmer/Pletch published by McCall’s at that time. It was quite an innovation. The sleeve pattern was sliced vertically just before the underarm curve and the cut piece moved to the other side of the sleeve pattern and seam allowances added. Hard to explain but easy to understand when you’ve seen it.

I almost think this would’ve looked better with a more drapey fabric, and thus the clinginess, but then the diagonal pintucks wouldn’t be as obvious. :/ Or you could try cannibalizing the yoke (plus an extra quarter inch for less choking discomfort) and hip pintucks on a bodice you’ve drafted that fits your bust and waist better.