I came home from Costume Con and indulged in a quickie sewing project. Well, quick was a bit of a relative term, but when compared to months-long historical recreations, a few days is nothing. Now, I'm just a teensy bit of an Avengers fan. I had been keeping an eye on some of the themed cotton prints at JoAnn's for a while now, but it wasn't until I spotted this gem that inspiration struck. they finally came up with a print that included Black Widow and Hawkeye along side the other more commonly represented crew. Cue the flailing.
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| Marvel Avengers Assemble Grid Cotton Fabric |
In order to take advantage of the large characters on this, I needed a dress that had a lot of acreage that wasn't frequently interrupted by seams. This McCall's 50s retro wrap dress seemed to fit the need:
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| Only three pattern pieces, darted in front and back, with back waist and shoulder seams. Back wraps around to the front for a sheath-and-overskirt look. A: has contrast back and skirt. Bias tape finishes edges. Large pieces of fabric with darts for fitting that would be largely covered in the front by the wrap-around "belt" portion. |
A bit of googling shows that it was once Butterick's most popular pattern, but among the modern sewers, the dress is getting a lot of hate. I read everything that I could, especially the details on just what people were hating about it. Poor fit throughout the bodice, insecure fastenings, gaping under the arm, heavy skirts draging the dress off kilter with wear, and so on and so forth. Wow. For once being so popular, people sure did hate this dress. But then I lucked upon a tutorial for re-fitting the dress. It turns out that the pattern was re-drafted when being made up for a modern release, loosing a lot of the fit that made the dress so awesome. Katrina over at Edelweiss Patterns Blog wrote up a comprehensive set of instructions that made huge improvements in the way the dress fits.
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This was another one of those patterns that, once drawn out, I kinda of started to ignore the cutting construction details. For starters, I had to get creative with the piecing since I was working with a narrow (45") width fabric. Blue lines show where I extended pieces out for better coverage/security/up-sizing. Red lines are where I either added additional darts or broke pattern pieces down to be able to cut them from a narrow fabric. Since the bulk of the front panel gets hidden under the skirts, I wasn't worried about the extra seams.
A nice thing about this print is that no matter which orientation you have the fabric in, somebody is upright. The dominant image to my eye was the Hulk and I wanted to keep him upright on the bodice and skirt fronts. This left Black Widow and Hawkeye the upright characters on the skirt back. Of course, Hawkeye falling to the earth while shooting an arrow straight up might actually be upright, so it's hard to tell.
I flat-lined the front and bodice back with the Sew Classics Bottomweight Wrinklease in white. This gave a nice foundation for the bodice pieces, while also ensuring opacity. I added a few inches to the center front pieces so the finished dress doesn't have quite the open space in the front, which I think that I like. I wasn't a fan of where the skirt fronts flip back, so the three inches or so of the center front is faced, which serves two purposes. One, the reverse of the fabric is quite obvious and a bit unsightly. Two, I used the same cotton bottom weight as the flat-lining, which added a bit of weight to keep the skirt fronts from flying open. I also swapped out the button-and-loop closure recommended in the pattern for a set of shoestring ties that wrap back around to the front. Being able to tighten the under layer means that stress is not put on the closer of the outer layer, so that it lays nicely and doesn't bunch.
Another issue with the dress is that you can't really wear the standard petticoat under this, since the dress is open in the front, and the front bodice piece does not flare out from the waist. And this dress NEEDS a petticoat. You can't achieve that classic 50's silhouette without one. Katrina's sew-a-long tutorial had instructions for making a petticoat that separates in the front so that it could be tucked under the overskirt, but I worried that it'd work it's way forward and show. So instead, I chose to build the petticoat into the dress. I cut a second overskirt piece out of my white cotton bottomweight that was a couple inches shorter in length, and did not have the added inches to the center front. The hem was finished with some vintage bias tape and sewn down with several rows of straight stitching in a trapunto style to add a bit of stiffness. I sandwiched the bottom edge of the upper back piece in between the two layers of skirt, then surged the seam allowance which would then be hidden when the skirt layers hang down. The built-in petticoat is nice because I don't have to worry about tracking down extra pieces, but the cotton did add a bit of weight. I don't notice it when I'm wearing the dress, but my hanger wasn't happy and I'll have to keep that in mind when packing for travel.
Another issue with the dress is that you can't really wear the standard petticoat under this, since the dress is open in the front, and the front bodice piece does not flare out from the waist. And this dress NEEDS a petticoat. You can't achieve that classic 50's silhouette without one. Katrina's sew-a-long tutorial had instructions for making a petticoat that separates in the front so that it could be tucked under the overskirt, but I worried that it'd work it's way forward and show. So instead, I chose to build the petticoat into the dress. I cut a second overskirt piece out of my white cotton bottomweight that was a couple inches shorter in length, and did not have the added inches to the center front. The hem was finished with some vintage bias tape and sewn down with several rows of straight stitching in a trapunto style to add a bit of stiffness. I sandwiched the bottom edge of the upper back piece in between the two layers of skirt, then surged the seam allowance which would then be hidden when the skirt layers hang down. The built-in petticoat is nice because I don't have to worry about tracking down extra pieces, but the cotton did add a bit of weight. I don't notice it when I'm wearing the dress, but my hanger wasn't happy and I'll have to keep that in mind when packing for travel.
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| The dress opened up to show the facings on the overskirt, as well as the added petticoat layer. |
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| The front has 3 hook-n-eye closures, but I stitched down a couple of Avengers logo pins in place of buttons. |
The back of the skirts ride up just a bit. I think that the next time I make up this pattern, I need to add more length to the skirt back, taking a bit of it out of the bodice back. I like the built-in petticoat, but I think I'll look for a light-weight tulle and keep the dress hand-wash only. And even though I added more coverage to the armhole, it still falls a bit short in the front. Easy enough to fix with a neutral colored tank top for now, but I'll have to tweak that for next time. Because OF COURSE there's going to be a next time. The dress is comfy and fun to wear, while still dressing it up quite a bit compared to my usual slovenly fashions of knit tees and cargo pants. I'm actually already plotting another. This time, a fancy party frock. I've got three yards of this synthetic plum taffeta with black flocked floral designs on it that's been languishing in the stash for eons. It's not enough to make a full dress out of, but if I pair that up with a plain black taffeta and do something along the lines of View A, only cutting the upper back piece out of solid black and leave it so that only the over skirt is the decorative bit, it ought to look pretty sharp. Holiday party dress?
