Last June, I went to a big festival in Nuremberg, and one of the acts I saw there were The Killers. I love their music, and being there in the crowd with all my friends while these amazing songs were played would have been a memorable experience in itself, but for some reason, something else also lodged itself into my memory that night: the singers outfit. More specifically, his shirt, which was dark blue with lots of individually shaped and sized white stars on it (one of my friends later told me that her sister had that exact same shirt from the women's section of H&M. Make of that information what you will... :D).
Also, I have no idea why I associate the song "spaceman" with the idea of the dress, maybe he took off his vest for the song and I saw the shirt for the first time, or maybe I just heard the song for the first time that night and space and stars is an easy association to make. In any case, when I saw that shirt (an maybe heard that song) I wanted to make myself a dark blue dress with white stars on it. I was immediately determined to make a 50s, 60s style summer dress with a fitted bodice and a wide, pleated skirt. At first, I thought I'd make the dress entirely out of blue fabric and then appliqué some white stars on it to get all those different shapes and sizes, but quickly abandoned that idea in favour of printed cotton. As for the pattern, I had wanted to try the basic patterns in a pattern making book of my mother's for ages, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity for it. So, as I said, I had this idea back in June, but thinking it through took some time and then there were other projects, and exams and a hundred different things until it was February before I even started on the pattern.
So I scaled up the pattern, made a mock up (which i didn't take any pictures of) and gave a squee of delight when it pretty much fit right away. Only problem, it didn't go all the way to my waist, but I figured I'd just lengthen it before cutting out.
Construction was pretty basic - fold, iron and sew the darts, sew the side seams, pin yourself into the bodice every once in a while to figure out if it still fits (which was kinda tricky once I sewed the side seams, I had to ask my brother to help me, he seemed kind of surprised when my request for help wasn't immediately followed up by a description of computer problems).
When I was done with the bodice, I had about 150cm*140cm square of fabric left, plus some scraps, so I decided to go all the way and make the skirt 3m long. In hindsight, thath might have been a bit long... so next time, maybe only 2m, so that there's less swearing in the pleating process ;)
And my dress has pockets! YES! One thing that always annoys me about full skirts is that they rarely have pockets, which is just thoughtless nowadays where nobody takes five steps without their cellphones. Also, I don't like carrying around tiny purses all the time, so I figured out how to make pockets and hide them in the side pleats:
I cut four pocket-sized rectangles from the leftover scraps and sewed them onto the edges that would be the side seams of my skirt. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the seam only goes about halfway down the pocket so that the bottom would be lower than the edge of the opening, if that description makes any sense. I also late clipped the part below the seam to reduce the bulk where the panels would be sewn together.
Then I pinned the skirt to the bodice, making sure that the sideseams of bodice and skirt met, and that's when I got the suspicion that I might have overdone it with the skirtwidth. I mean, three metres is what I usually use for historic skirts...
But double box pleats did the trick :)
After that I only had to finish the neck and arm opening, which I did with bias tape made from scraps left over from the quilt. It was quite a small scrap. But I made it work :)
I fixed the tape to the wrong side with a little hand sewing because I didn't want any topstitching to show. I'm absolutely happy with the dress and don't really want to take it off now... Well, summer's bound to come sooner or later :D
So I scaled up the pattern, made a mock up (which i didn't take any pictures of) and gave a squee of delight when it pretty much fit right away. Only problem, it didn't go all the way to my waist, but I figured I'd just lengthen it before cutting out.
When I was done with the bodice, I had about 150cm*140cm square of fabric left, plus some scraps, so I decided to go all the way and make the skirt 3m long. In hindsight, thath might have been a bit long... so next time, maybe only 2m, so that there's less swearing in the pleating process ;)
And my dress has pockets! YES! One thing that always annoys me about full skirts is that they rarely have pockets, which is just thoughtless nowadays where nobody takes five steps without their cellphones. Also, I don't like carrying around tiny purses all the time, so I figured out how to make pockets and hide them in the side pleats:
I cut four pocket-sized rectangles from the leftover scraps and sewed them onto the edges that would be the side seams of my skirt. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the seam only goes about halfway down the pocket so that the bottom would be lower than the edge of the opening, if that description makes any sense. I also late clipped the part below the seam to reduce the bulk where the panels would be sewn together.
Then I pinned the skirt to the bodice, making sure that the sideseams of bodice and skirt met, and that's when I got the suspicion that I might have overdone it with the skirtwidth. I mean, three metres is what I usually use for historic skirts...
But double box pleats did the trick :)
I fixed the tape to the wrong side with a little hand sewing because I didn't want any topstitching to show. I'm absolutely happy with the dress and don't really want to take it off now... Well, summer's bound to come sooner or later :D
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