(light jazz music)
- What's sewing on friends?
Today, I'm going to be attempting to make
this taffeta evening blouse,
that is a 1949 pattern
from the magazine called Smart Sewing,
which I found on Pinterest.
And I will include a link to it in the description.
If you want to try it yourself, that is if it works,
it looks like a little bit of a puzzle to put together.
Not too difficult, it uses woven fabric,
so it shouldn't be too tricky
and it does have some plausibility.
It looks like it should come together
to form a nice garment.
What I like about it is that's it's essentially
based on a few different rectangles.
Now, the pattern I printed it out on a piece of paper,
but I will include it in its full HD glory here.
The pattern says I need a one and a half yards
of gold striped taffeta.
Now I do not have taffeta to my knowledge,
nor gold striped taffeta,
so I'm going to go have a look
through my fabric closet to go see what I can use for it.
Welcome to my tiny little fabric room.
As I am reproducing a 1949 pattern,
I want to use a fabric that is more appropriate
for that time period.
So probably won't be using something like this
French bulldog fabric or these fishes.
What should I use?
I think that I will use this pretty eyelet fabric.
I've had this in my stash for a while now
and I originally think I must have wanted to make
like a dress or something out of it,
'cause I have a lot of it.
Those plans obviously fell by the wayside,
but I definitely have at least one and a half yards.
It also says that the fabric should be
at least 41 inches wide.
So let's just check that,
okay, this is like 50 inches or something,
so, more than enough, although
I don't think it would be problem
to just add two bits of fabric together
if it wasn't wide enough.
Okay, so the pieces that I need,
first, I need a rectangle whose width is
my bust measurement plus three and a half inches.
So my bust measurement is 38 plus three and a half inches.
Math,
is 41 and a half inches by 17 inches long.
So I'm going to cut out a rectangle,
that is 41 and a half inches that way,
17 inches this way.
Well folks, she can make her own wedding dress,
but she can't cut out a rectangle properly.
This, what is this edge like?
Oh my God, this is so uneven, okay.
Let me just even this up.
And this is blunt.
Oh, I'm struggling today.
(upbeat music)
Alright, so this is rectangle number one.
Now it says to cut out the ruffles on the bias,
so diagonally across the fabric.
I don't think that that is actually needed.
I think that they only did that because
they were using a striped fabric
and they wanted the stripes to kind of like
run like that across the ruffles,
get some nice contrast to the bodice,
instead I'm just going to cut them out
grain wise across the fabric.
Okay, so there's two ruffles on the top,
I need two long strips.
I need one long strip that is 92 inches
by four and a half inches.
And another long strip that is 92 inches
by five and a half inches.
So I'm gonna cut those out for my fabric.
I will have to join some long strips together,
that is perfectly fine.
I just figured out that this fabric tears across the grain,
I assumed it wouldn't because of the
little embroidered eyelets.
So I would have cut out a much nicer rectangle,
If I'd had known, I could have just torn it.
Never assume - at least I know this
and I will have perfect rectangles.
(gentle upbeat music)
So now I have two long strips that are
five and a half inches in width
and two strips that a four and a half inches in width.
I'm going to sew both of these together
by putting them right sides together,
I'm sewing across here to make a very long strip,
which I'm then going to cut down to 92 inches
like in the pattern.
So now I have my rectangles one, two and three.
I've got my body, ruffle one, ruffle two.
So the first instruction is to get rid of those
for now and fold this in half, right sides together,
like that and straight stitch down this edge
with, doesn't say the seam allowance,
so I'm just going to do half an inch seam allowance.
Now I am going to finish off both the seam on the bodice
and where I joined together the ruffle pieces
by pressing the seam open with my iron.
And then I'm going to do something that wasn't included
in the pattern instructions,
probably because this was just taken for granted
that you'd know to do this,
but I'm going to finish off the edge
of each side of the seam by zig-zagging down its length.
Now you might be like, Annika, why don't you use
your overlocker or even your overlocking stitch
on your machine for this?
Well, I'm going to use a zigzag stitch
because I'm trying to do this
somewhat historically accurately
and zigzag stitches started being included
in home sewing machines in the thirties I believe,
so a lot of people would have had zigzag stitches
on their machines but not fancy overlocking ones.
So that's why I'm using a zigzag.
(gentle upbeat music)
The second step is to stitch a half inch hem
on the bottom edge and a five eighth hem on the top edge,
top edge is to actually form casing for the elastic.
Now, again, this raw edge here,
you gotta do something about that.
So I can either fold it up twice,
I could either fold this up a quarter of an inch
and then another quarter of an inch
and sew it across, or I could again
go around all the edges with a zigzag stitch
to prevent them fraying and then do the hems
which is what I'm going to do.
So I'm going to go around all of this
and all of this with a zigzag stitch
before I do my hems.
(gentle music)
Okay so now I can do the hem and the casing.
I'm going to fold the bottom up half an inch.
Where are my clippy clips, where are my clippy clips?
Then the top I'm folding that down
five eights of an inch, actually,
I'm going to find the elastic I'm gonna use right now,
cause I'm not sure I have an elastic that thin.
Okay, so the pattern asked for elastic,
that's one quarter inch wide,
I do not have elastic that thin
so I'm going to use elastic that is half an inch wide
and therefore I'm going to increase my casing
to one inch so that I can actually
thread it through properly.
- Increasing that to once inch...
Clippy clip, clip clip,
clippy clip, and flippy flip.
And now I'm going to, sew my hem
and my casing with my sewing machine
with a straight stitch really close to that
zig zagged off edge,
of course, for the side that has the casing,
I'm going to need a small gap to be able to
thread the elastic through.
(chuckling)
My bobbin thread, the bottom thread
ran out just as I finished my seam, oh that was close
love when that happens.
The pattern instructions actually said
not to leave a gap, but to open the side seam after,
you sew it across.
So that's another way to do it.
It also then says, to get 25 inches of elastic
and put that through the top,
but using 25 inches of elastic
assumes that everyone is the same size, which we're not.
So what I'm going to do is get some elastic
and wrap it around.
I think that it's going to sit about just above my bust.
I'm going to wrap it around myself to a point where
it's tight, but it's also comfortable,
and then I'm going to add just like half an inch,
cause I'm going to be sewing it together in a loop,
so - seem allowance - and then
I'm going to cut it off there.
Then I'm going to get a safety pin,
put it in one end of the elastic.
And I'm going to thread it in through
the hole in the casing and pull it through the entire casing
and then I usually hold the two ends of the elastic together
with the safety pin until I can sew it in place.
So I'm going to take this over to my sewing machine
and sew these two ends of elastic together
to complete the loop of the elastic.
Then I'm just going to push that elastic inside
of the hole there and sew over that gap in the casing.
So currently we have a sack, and this is not
the most attractive thing I've ever worn,
but hopefully the ruffles are going to fix that
so let's get onto that part.
All right, so up to step four,
now going to sew these long, long ruffles,
both of them into a loop,
by putting the ends, right sides together like this.
Sewing here to finish the loop.
Now we're up to step five.
I've got my two loops and what I have to do apparently
is a narrow hem on the top and the bottom of each loop.
Now we have the same problem as
with back at the bodice, at this raw edge.
If we don't do something to it,
it's going to end up fraying everywhere
on like the first wash.
So I'm going zigzag all of the edges,
all of this edge and then flip it over
and all of this edge,
the same on the second one,
this is going to take a while.
And now I am going to do a narrow hem.
I made a mistake, I just realized the instructions say
to only hem one edge
and I hemmed both on one of these pieces,
which took,
so long, oh well it shouldn't matter,
so continuing forward.
Okay so the second part of step five
is to bring the smaller,
they kind of look the same size now,
'cause I accidentally hemmed the big one twice, oops
but we bring the smaller one... hm -
are these too close to the same size now?
Oh my God. I'm going to have to..
(upbeat piano)
Historical accuracy can bite my butt.
Much easier, all right, so this was the bigger ruffle
now it's the smaller one.
I don't think it's going to matter all that much.
What I'm going to do is with these both
wrong side facing out, gonna align them up
and just gonna use that little seam there
to line them up with raw edges matching up,
I am going to pin them together around the top.
And now I'm going to sew the two together
with the straight stitch along the top edge
with ... doesn't say the seam allowance.
Okay, so now the ruffles are sewn together
I'm gonna flip the smaller ones over the top,
actually gonna press this seam out with my iron,
so that it's all nice and smooth along the edge
yeah so that it looks like that
the wrong side is facing up,
and then on the edge of that was just sewn
now has this nice seam.
I'm going to fold that over.
(dramatic music)
The pattern says five eight of an inch,
but I just need it to be wide enough to fit my elastic,
so let's go, where did my elastic go from before?
Okay, I couldn't find my elastic from before,
but I found some elastic that is a quarter inch,
which is what the pattern needs, so, okay cool.
And now I'm going to sew this casing closed
along here all the way around the big, big,
big loop that makes up the ruffle,
leaving a little gap to put the elastic through of course.
So again, the pattern says to in step seven,
cut a length of elastic, that's 32 and a half inches,
but that's just one size, that's not going to fit everyone.
So what I'm gonna do with my elastic,
the ruffle is going to go around your shoulders,
like this... urgp!
around the shoulders, it's gonna sit kind of
midway from the collarbone to
between the nipples basically.
So I'm going to make sure that's the right length
and then cut it to that size
Ooohoh, fabric is very bulky here.
I really wish that I had cut the seam allowance
a lot smaller between step five and six,
getting the elastic through some of these places
that were joined together is impossible.
And I have to actually open it up
with my seam ripper and it feels very strangely
like I'm giving this work a cesarean
and that is then giving birth.
Look, it's not nothing like actual birth obviously,
but I'm like having to cut this open and free...
Where are you?
It's free,
which is annoying because I'm going to now have
to hand sew these, which I was trying to avoid
because I hate hand sewing with a passion.
Is it ever possible for me to make a tutorial
without making any mistakes?
I don't know.
No, no, I lost the other end of elastic.
Why didn't I put a safety pin on that end too?
Okay I finally found the other piece of elastic
and this has taken the most unreasonable
amount of time, to do a simple elastic casing.
It's these times where I'm like,
actually, wow, I'm not good at sewing at all.
And it's,
it went into the wrong section,
okay, finally got both of the ends of the elastic,
I'm gonna sew them together to create, finish up that loop,
I'm going to put this whole experience behind us.
And now I'm just trying to distribute the elastic evenly
around the ruffle.
Oh, this is such a twisted mess.
I'm so worried about this.
I don't if it's gonna work
and if it doesn't, I'm gonna be very sad, it's gonna be
a big bruise to my ego.
Hello, it's a new day
and I have finished this ruffle.
Didn't take me anytime at all!
Ahaha.
I only got one more thing to do,
which is to attach it to this bit.
So following step eight,
I just have to attach the ruffles at the front and the back
and hand sew those in place.
Handsewing. My enemy. As you can see,
I have stabbed myself already with my needle.
And here she is folks,
the simple top that I spent way too long on
and definitely should've just used an overlocker for.
If this doesn't work, I swear to God,
time to try it on.
Uh...
This-
Right, okay, shoulders,
right yeah okay, okay.
Wait - eh?
these ruffles sure are ruffly,
so ruffly, I have ironed this.
I also think it needs to be styled differently.
Okay, we can make this work.
Maybe I need to like,
maybe I need to like, just sew
(laughing)
Oh hi, it's lovely to meet you.
Oh God.
I'm going to attempt to style this differently
and see if I can get it to look decent
because I have not spent all of this time on this top
for it to not work now.
Here's the thing, your girl made some crucial errors.
So it's okay,
but the ruffles do stick up a lot,
but it is probably because I got step six wrong
because apparently I can't read.
In my defense, I have been super sleep deprived
and the only way I can sew,
is by using a lot of painkillers,
but I should have just stitched a new line
at five eighths of an inch instead of creating
an entirely new fold for the elastic,
for the casing of this little ruffle,
the bane of my existence.
And that's why it was so hard
to get the elastic through at the end.
And probably why it's ended up doing this.
But as many of you have told me,
you like seeing when I make mistakes,
so I'm uploading this anyway.
Let this make you feel better
about making mistakes of your own.
So to properly assess the pattern, I've retried it
and it worked a lot better.
Well the ruffles still do like to stick up a little bit,
but it's not as bad.
I think that you can see how like
bulky and how ruffly this is,
I think that a good idea might be to reduce the length
of that ruffly piece like down from 90 inches
to like 70 can easily take off 20 inches
and make it just a little bit less ruffly.
Still a big issue with this top for me is
if I'm not careful, the ruffles tend to end up around here,
which doesn't look nearly as good,
it looks a little bit like a floral clown color.
If I raise my arms, like anywhere above 90 degrees
and hey maybe a ruffly clown collar is what you want,
but it is not what I want.
I'm just not that comfy still in this top,
maybe it's just a problem with
off the shoulder tops generally
and they don't work that well for me.
So if you like off the shoulder tops,
you can probably tolerate that,
but for me, I just feel like it's constant
readjustment time.
Who knows, maybe I'll still wear it,
it honestly does look pretty nice so.
I dunno, what do you think about it?
Do you think you'll try this?
Or do you think that I have warned you away from it?
Even if this mightn't have worked out a hundred percent,
I did really enjoy trying out
just a random vintage pattern from the internet,
it was a lot of fun, it was like a puzzle.
So I wanted to ask a favor,
if you ever come across any vintage patterns online,
like similar to this one where it's just like
a page of instructions, send them my way,
send them to me on Twitter.
That's probably the best way for me to get those links.
I'm currently really enjoying sewing things from
the thirties through to the late fifties,
so if you find things in that time period,
I would love to give them a go.
So I hope you all enjoy watching me struggle
with this pattern, we got there in the end.
Stay crafty and I'll see you all next time, bye.