Happy new year, everyone!
I don't know about other people, but I don't always start my new year on a high. Sometimes yes, but not always. Sometimes the weather cooperates, and January is generous with her sunny days, which helps. Sometimes, like this year, we get a long stretch of dim, colorless mornings when 9 am looks like 5 pm and we crawl out of bed only to feel like we really need to get back under the covers. Our family went to Singapore this year-end to visit Mum and get away from the cold post-Christmas. The trip was wonderful, the weather was both warm and cool in all the best ways, and we returned in early January both rejuvenated and missing the tropical sunshine, the freedom to wear very little clothes, and the sounds of birds, traffic and the pulse of a city that never needs to hibernate.
Today is one of the coldest days we've had so far in Minnesota. I was sitting at my sewing table watching the blue, waning sunlight and decided I needed a break from actual making to come talk with you guys and see how everyone's doing. So I took a series of photos of what I'd been working on for a show and tell. Maybe this will entertain you slightly, maybe not. Maybe it's just to foster a sense of solidarity amongst those of us who are so done with the cold already. Hang in there, friends. Spring must turn up sometime.
So anyway, I've been working on concert gowns again. My three girls are in various musical ensembles at school and college, most of which at some point have required a dress code for concerts. Emily and Jenna have outgrown the gowns I made them when they were underclassmen, and Kate now needs one herself, so this week I began the process of updating measurements and redrafting slopers.
Concert gowns are potentially more straightforward and satisfying to make than other kinds of formalwear, for several reasons. One, they're black, which substantially streamlines the process of procuring fabric: we can gleefully bypass the million shades of gemstone and pastel and lace and textured organza, and simply zero in on the black stain and chiffon. Two, concert gowns have gloriously clean lines which are much easier to fit than corsetted bustiers and ruched bodices and the general froufrou of promwear. Three, they're floor-length. Which means lots of fabric to wrestle with but also a standardized hemline that, even if it's a tad uneven, no one is really going to notice unless they're lying on the floor. Four, they're concert gowns, meaning that they get worn every time a kid plays in a concert. Which is several times a year. Which means a lot of mileage on that one garment. Which makes the hours spent fine-tuning the fit sooo worth it.
In short: I kind of love sewing concert gowns.
I realize I never posted about Jenna's first concert dress in late 2022, possibly because I finished it barely hours before call time. So here's one of the few photos I took of it:
In addition to the fancy neckline, it had chiffon sleeves, a column-gown silhouette and the whole thing was satin with a chiffon overlay. For the 2024 update, we kept some of the elements of her first gown, like the chiffon sleeves and chiffon-over-satin layers, but changed the neckline and skirt to something more classic.
The first step after drafting the pattern was this bizarre-looking muslin below. It's made of whatever remnant fabric I have in my stash that's similar in texture and weight, but not necessarily in color. I always include one sleeve, even at the muslin stage, because it more accurately fits the shoulder and neckline than a sleeveless mock-up would. Jenna has similar enough proportions to mine that Fleur works as a placeholder between actual fittings, a fact for which I am grateful as it keeps partly-finished garment parts off the floor. I cannot count the number of times I've accidentally tossed important bits in the trash, thinking they were, well, trash.
I took this next photo of the haul after laying and cutting out. This dress has three layers: lining, satin and chiffon, so it was a lot to cut out, and thus too much work to also begin sewing on the same day. You'll see some hand stitching in that pile: all the satin and chiffon pieces are sewn as a single layer and have to be basted together so they don't separate. Also, center lines have to be basted (since black fabric doesn't take to fabric marking well), particularly with flowy fabrics like chiffon which shift if you so much as breathe on them too hard. This pile doesn't look like much, but that's 70% of the work completed right there. Anyone who sews garments will know that the actual assembly under the presser foot is trivial compared to the layout and cutting, right?
That said, the piecing for this dress was more time-consuming than most because of the double-layered fabric thing. As mentioned earlier, each component that wasn't lining had to be hand-basted to its chiffon counterpart before the disparate pieces could be assembled into the outer garment. So on the first day of sewing, this is how far I got before bedtime - just the bodice and the back skirt, which was attached first so the back zipper could be installed through the entire dress:
Day #2: the full dress, sans pockets. A lot of the seams are hand-basted at this point, just to make adjustments easier.
Jenna had a fitting today and there was very little adjustment to be done, which is always a happy place to be. There's nothing worse than to have sewn all the seams with permanent and microscopic stitches and realize they need to be unpicked and adjusted. I've been drafting for years now, but there is always a part of me that is unsure and thus tempted to second-guess the process and the numbers, but I'm quicker these days to stop myself and trust my methods. If I do, the fit is usually just fine, even at the muslin stage. With this dress for instance, I could've just saved time and laid out on the actual fabric from the start. But I include the muslin, partly out of habit, but also partly to check one thing that a paper draft cannot do: determine the waistline of the finished garment.
Let me explain. Obviously, it is possible to measure the position of the waistline with a measuring tape. On some bodies, especially those with very well-defined waists, this is easier to do than on others. With little children or expecting mothers who have protruding tummies, for instance, locating their waists (especially in the front) can sometimes be challenging. We discussed this (and its solution) in my long-ago drafting series here. For regular folks, sometimes tying a string around their natural waists is another solution - it's a visible marker of sorts. So it's not exactly an impossible undertaking. Instead, the issue is that there are very few garments we make whose waistbands actually sit at our natural waists - it's an awkward height which shortens our torsos and makes us look misproportioned. That is to say that often, garments are drafted with adjusted waist heights. Sometimes this is in keeping with the design of the garment e.g. high-waisted vs. low-waisted jeans. Other times, it is in keeping with the proportions of the wearer: those of us with shorter torsos tend to look better compensated with lower waistlines, for instance.
Enter the muslin: even as just a bodice without a skirt attached, it is quickly visible where the waistline looks best on a particular wearer. On one of my daughters, the final waistline is unchanged from the one on the draft. On another, I always end up lowering the waistline on the the draft by a 1/2" or more.
And that's where I was today when I left my sewing room to write this post. The first draft (in the actual black fabric) is finished and fitted, and I need to make two tweaks moving forward: one shoulder seam was peaking and needs to be taken in by 1/4"; also the side seams should be let out 1/8" to compensate for the bulk of the seam allowances of all those layers. Which sounds like nitpicking, but this is one of the lovely advantages of custom-drafting: we can tweak an already-personalized garment for maximum comfort as well as a great fit.
I will update again when the dress is finished - heaven knows I need the accountability so I don't slack off and start doomscrolling on my phone or whatever we do here in MN to cope with being indoors so much.
That said, I wanted to share a few more photos of the drafts themselves. When the girls were little, I didn't bother to save their basic blocks/ slopers because they grew so quickly- instead, each time they needed a new garment, I'd grab them and measure them and draft the pattern directly and without a whole lot of precision. That crazy growth is slowing down now, so that it's worth drafting a good sloper and saving it to save time with future garment projects. Here's Jenna's slopers from this most recent draft:
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At the top of the cutting mat are the front and back slopers. Directly beneath them are the patterns for this concert gown drafted from those slopers.
Here, I'll break those down: first, the front - you can see how the rectangular neckline has been cut away from the original jewel neckline in two stages (the first cut was too high). The bust and waist darts have been merged into a princess seam. A skinny sliver has been cut away from the shoulder/armhole to better compensate the set-in sleeve.
This is similar for the back: a corresponding sliver has been cut away from the back armhole. In addition, the neckline has been slashed away in a V.
I didn't save the sleeve block, because it's easy enough to draft one anew when I next need it. I did save the sleeve pattern for this dress, though. The blue line of the sleevehead is the actual set-in-sleeve that fits the sloper armhole. But Jenna wanted a little puff at the shoulder, which is the higher red peak.
While putting away the patterns, I found the first sloper I drafted for Jenna 14 years ago. She was 4 then, and so tiny.
Here they are, superimposed on their 2024 versions. Isn't it interesting how the shoulder slopes haven't changed much over the years? It's the same body, after all, just bigger proportionally.
These are all the patterns I've drafted for her in the last 14 years. In spite of all the garments I've sewn for her, I've mostly tossed what I can easily redraft, so that what's left all squish down and fit into a single flat envelope. It's almost pointless to save older patterns from years ago because they will never fit into them again, nor will any other small child, unless their body is identical to hers. And yet I saved them for sentimental reasons, because it was a kind of 3D snapshot of what my kid looked like when she was yea high and loved Disney princesses and colored markers arranged in rainbow order.
I'm heading to the kitchen to prep dinner now. Have a lovely week! See you back here when Jenna's dress is done - and when I'm working on Kate's!
