They don’t make it anymore the way they used to

Some time ago (oh my, 2 years to be precise) one lady from my family had heard about the fact I’m sewing and she approached me with a request.

In general I don’t grant “would sew me this or that” favors, but there were 3 things that made the situation different that time:
1) the lady had a fabric that we both loved
2) she has waited patiently for me to sew the dress for 2 years without as much as a word of hurrying me up
3) she wanted to have a dress like the ones worn in her youth, that is the late 60s. She sighed, looked at the clothes in her closet and said “They just don’t make it anymore the way they used to in the 1960s, you know”.

The trick was that she only had a 140cm (about 1,5 yards) of the fabric. I chose Simplicity 1609, a 60s repro, because if the iconic and clearly defined A-line of the dress and clever shaping with only 4 main pieces, but the pattern called for at least 170cm of fabric.
That is why, my dear Readers, the print is awfully mismatched at the seams.
Have mercy.

I changed the fastening- instead of a long back zipper I made a small opening at the neck with a tiny button and a loop made of a strip os bias-cut self-fabric with the stretch steamed out of it. As you can see in one of the photos above, I also made a small string-like belt to help with accentuating the waist.

Because I had so little fabric, I hemmed it with a help of white satin bias ribbon, hand stitched (as always) to avoid marking the fabric from the outside.

I invite you to visit my blog, rvdzik.blogspot.com, to read more about the pattern alterations and see the photos of the insides of the dress 🙂