Advance 5737.

Ugh. It's really hard taking pictures of yourself & worse if you're the sort who hates getting their picture taken in the first place. The sort who actively avoids the camera-toting mom, aunts, cousins, brother & boyfriend (by the way, Dennis the Menace is even worse than my mom with the picture taking) & can someone please explain to me why people insist on taking pictures of you that you don't under any circumstances want taken, & then proceed to send you the hideous pictures of yourself? WTH?

Anyway, it's much easier to photograph a garment on the dress form, but people who sew like to see garments on real live people because things hang differently on people. Plus, you can see every single fit issue or sewing mistake in all its splendor & glory. Which is just awesome.



I'm wearing the completed Advance 5737 (1940s), dress bodice turned top. It fits pretty well, although the armholes are a bit gappy. I'm not sure where I went wrong there. I had to remove some fabric because the sleeve cap was hanging off of my shoulder and it was binding underneath at the armpit.



After I removed the excess fabric, everything hit in the right place & was comfortable. That changed when I finished the armholes with bias tape. Now I have gaps. You can't really see them in this photo, but they're there.

I'm sure experience & future research will eventually reveal where I went wrong with the armholes, but I still like this top. It's super comfortable.

This green zipper is from my stash because zipper #1, a white invisible zipper, broke. The green zip matched the leaves & stems on the fabric perfectly, so I decided to sew it in so that it was semi-exposed.

I like the effect, but need to figure out some way to hide the very top & bottom of the zip tape. I can probably just fold the tape back a little & hand tack it, but I'll have to give that some thought. If I make another one of these tops, I'll move the zipper to the back. Or I might do buttons instead.

There shouldn't be a seam in the back, but remember I made a mistake in cutting the bodice back too short & ended up using the sleeves for extra fabric. It was a "make it work" moment, although if I'd really been thinking I would've put the zipper in back so the seam made more sense.

remove basting threads.

to accommodate my sloping shoulders, the shoulder seams had to be redrawn. the stitch line from shoulder to collar is a little weird for this pattern so it wasn't as easy as just redrawing the line.

that's why there are so many of them.

basting threads, i mean.

how long do you think it will take me to rip all of those out? an hour maybe?

just playing around.

I'm still working out the details of the 1950s cocktail dress project, but suffice it to say that it will involve pattern grading skills & the blending of more than one vintage pattern.



I bought this 1940s pattern on ebay because I liked the neckline & draping at shoulders. To help prepare for constructing the '50s cocktail dress, I decided to grade this '40s pattern down to my size. Then, to take things a step further, convert the dress bodice to a top.

I used the Cut and Spread Pattern Grading method from Threads magazine. I've tried pattern grading before with less than stellar success, but it was a lot easier this time.

Bodice front pattern piece, cut & overlapped to grade down:



And here's the final pattern piece:



There's no zipper (or any other type of closure) on the dress bodice which is just weird. A narrow-shouldered woman would need a cocktail &/or personal assistant to get this dress on, but there aren't enough cocktails available for a broad-shouldered woman such as myself. So for dignity's sake, I added 1/2" allowance along the bodice front to accommodate a zipper. And I was incredibly proud of myself for remembering to do this before I started cutting the fabric.



I also shortened the sleeves--



--which became a moot point because while I was congratulating myself for the zipper allowance, I forgot to lengthen the bodice front and back patterns for conversion to a top. The end result was crop-top short, which just proves I should never congratulate myself for anything until the entire garment is sewn. And probably not even then.

I didn't have enough fabric to recut the front/back pieces, so I had to use up the sleeves which is why this will be a sleeveless top now.

Here are a few pictures of the top pinned to my dress form while I figure out what to do next. I'm working without a net here, so I'm not really sure what's next. For one thing, I'm not thrilled with the drape on the left side (right side in photo) so I'll probably redo it using the fabric's natural drape instead of forcing a drape by using the small dots on the pattern pieces.

I also need to figure out how to finish the center front facing, given that I'm adding a zipper.



Pleats at the waist in the front:







Despite the fits and starts, this has been a fun exercise and that's probably because I have no specific end result in mind. I'm just practicing a few things for future reference & trying new things as they come up.