Dearest Sewing-Mastery Friends!
Here's my latest garment - as near as completed' if not, finished perfectly-imperfectly! It came from the vintage (possibly rather historical!) heavy-natural-cotton night-dress. It was the kind of thing, monographed with the previous owner's initials, that one can imagine lasting a lifetime - then acting also as a burial shroud (!) If you read my post from a few months ago, this is the first of a pile of dresses that I was gifted indirectly, by someone gifting my neighbours who work in theatre in Naples; I happened to be passing at the time, and was oohing and aahing at the amazing-though-musty fabrics which were being pulled out of a damp cardboard box in the middle of the Via. Antonello chucked me all the nighties, as I think they have an excess of them in the theatre wardrobe already... I was so excited - the totality of my nightie-stash is in a big open box in the corner of my sewing studio now, and I'm getting into the swing of it, thinking of the next project... I ADORE this kind of heavy material, which gives this beautiful feeling of lasting much longer than the average item of clothing might these days.
Especially with the finishing-off of this dress, I became aware of how important finishing well is for me. The beauty of the solidity of each stitch which I know will hold as the new owner sits, walks, or even does cartwheels... Heheh! I thought back to when I was bought newer, more cheaply-constructed clothing, and how I'd regularly have to reinforce buttons and buttonholes, hems or zip edgings; it was rare to buy something which was truly ready-to-wear, as was the claim!
So, the beauty of working towards perfect-imperfection: I began this project - as usual, without a map - cutting off the rather-narrow sleeves, and thinking about making the whole thing more body-flattering. I love the original panelling sort of external seams, which feature regularly in old-fashioned nightwear in this part of the world. I wanted to enhance the seams already there, and to add some of my own, as the original nightie was pretty potato-sack shapeless. I wanted a really feminine spring-summer dress, which could feel and look cool and comfortable.
I also had this stripey blouse which had a terrible fit, but which I adore the sleeves on (I have a collection of similar blouses, because the sleeves have such potential, but they always seem to fit awfully!) - I immediately thought to take these lovely sleeves off and attach them directly to the new dress.
a previous iteration of the sleeves - testing the idea of different lengths
It took a fair bit of re-fitting and neatening up, but I did it! Once the new sleeves were in place, I started to think of how I could add other pieces of the stripey fabric, to bring the character of the new dress to the fore - leaving behind the clumpy old night-dress in the past!
I then began with the addition of a belt: I WAS IN LOVE WITH THE WIDER BELT but made a big booboo first and had to re-cut it, then felt that - as lovely as the belt sat when it was stationary - it wouldn't age well. It was obvious that the width would have to be reinforced, but then that would create too heavy a midriff...
making bias-binding from an old sheet
In the end, I had the idea of folding it in a particular way, and resewing it into itself ... but this phase took about a month to complete!! It just sat there, not looking very right. And I lost my confidence about striding forward passionately in my sewing - doh!!
One month later...
I came back to the dress eventually, accepting the smaller belt and starting to take in the seams and add more seams. I just worked on whatever I could do, piece by piece, adding things like the buttons (I often take a long time choosing the right buttons, and loved this mixed combination of all my wee blue flower buttons)...
...and then progressively bringing in the waist and forming the bust more beautifully...
you can see from various images above, my elongating of the external decorative seams, that helped bring the curve into the form
...then adding a lower hem border with the old belt that I had had to abandon... I thought also of adding pockets, but this seemed like it might take it (too far) into costume territory.
So this is it! Here are some snaps from the street, where I popped out this morning, aided by all the cats, to model it in the sunshine and with the beautiful plants in behind:
I hope you enjoyed the work I put in here! Looking so much forward to seeing all of your work today and this week - HUGE LOVE to you all!!
