Vintage pattern pledge: My grandmother’s Style 3685 shirt dress pattern

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who commented in response to my recent vintage pledge plea! After receiving lots of brilliant and very helpful advice, I agree that the best way forward with this dress is to take a bit of a break from it before trying again from a different angle.

In the meantime, I thought it would be good to work on a totally different vintage pledge project – one that I had been looking forward to for a while. This 1972 shirt dress pattern, Style 3685, is one of several beauties I found in my grandmother’s collection. She passed away while I was a child and although I can vividly remember her having a big, heavy sewing machine, I don’t remember her sewing. It was a lovely surprise when my father found a box filled with her old sewing patterns from the 50s through to 80s last summer. I put a few aside to make when I had built up better sewing skills.

I picked up this lovely floral rayon at a Jo-Ann’s branch while visiting family in America over Christmas. (I really wish there was somewhere like it in Ireland – they had just about any sewing or knitting implement you could think of!) I don’t have many florals in my wardrobe and as this was at the ridiculously low price of less than $5 a yard, I thought I’d try something new.

It’s a very light fabric for spring, but I think it will be fine with tights layered under and a thick cardigan on top. (I’m also optimistically hoping that I will get a lot of wear out of it over the summer, sans woolens…)

I’ve left off the topmost button – the one that should close the collar. The space on the collar opening for putting in a button and buttonhole is pretty tight so I could really only put in a small, shirt button. However, I’m holding off to see how I like wearing it without a collar button before risking inserting a buttonhole there – I had some problems machine-stitching the buttonholes in along the dress front and finished half of them by hand.

As you can see, the dress is a bit too big (I’d say almost a full size too big), but I wanted the option of a loose-fitting dress for hot weather AND something that I could layer vests and tights under in the colder months, so I’m pleased with the finished piece.

Skills learned: Generally making a shirt dress! I don’t know if it’s typical of shirt dresses or not, but the way the front facings were incorporated into the front panels and folded back in around the collar base makes the front section really smooth and helps it all sit tidily.

Recommend pattern?: Yes! Although some parts were a bit tricky, the instructions were very straightforward and I don’t think this is a difficult make. I’ve been shoring up shirt dress patterns for over a year now but had yet to take the plunge and found this a great introduction to them. I’d like to give it another go, in a heavier fabric, but I’d probably take in the side seams and shoulders for a tighter fit if there was less drape than with this rayon.

Are you taking part in A Stitching Odyssey’s vintage pattern pledge? Or have you worked with family-owned patterns?

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Sewing advice plea: Should I call time on this vintage pledge project?

The interesting waistband first drew me to this pattern – but there began my woes with Butterick 5747…

I’ve been working on one of my projects for A Stitching Odyssey’s Vintage Pattern Pledge recently (a 1960s pattern, Butterick 5747), but have hit a serious snag. I’ve made the bodice, skirt and waistband but the problem is joining them all together.

The first hitch was figuring out how to make the little tab things on each side. The instructions were quite confusing and called for the back parts of the waistband to be sewn to the front, then pushing the tab through the join from the wrong side to the right. This worked fine in the end (albeit a bit puckered, as you can see in the photos below), but meant that the seam allowance at the tabs for joining the waistband to bodice and skirt was used up and tucked inside the tabs.

Here, the tab is facing forward towards the dress centre, as per pattern cover – but see the puckering at the tab base? ARGH!

So joining the skirt to the waistband was really fiddly at the tab joins: it took several attempts to make sure that there wasn’t a gap in the waistband-skirt connection. Joining the bodice, though, has been really frustrating. The front sides need to be gathered and squeezed in along the bodice’s V shape to fit into the acutely pointy part of the waistband – and it’s just not happening!

Here’s a couple of shots of the bodice and skirt parts:

So, I’m loathe to abandon the bodice, but right now I mostly just want to stick a short zip into the back of the skirt section, hem it, and say it’s done. Dilemma! Do you think I should just cut my losses and finish this up as a skirt? Can I do something with the bodice? OR should I take a bit more of a break from it and re-approach the waistband and bodice with fresh eyes? Has this worked for you on troublesome sews?

Any and all advice is very welcome!!