The Grad Dress, Part IV: the Finished Dress!

It's finally starting to sink in that I graduated! I'm still by no means finished with school, but finishing high school is still a big change. And finally, here are the finished photos of my grad dress!

If you don't want all the construction details, feel free to skip ahead to where the photos start again, where I talk about the event itself.

(If I can find where I saved the photos that I took along the way, I may do a separate post for construction. For now, I'm lumping it in with this post.)

The pattern is Vogue S-4727 from 1956, and the fabric is turquoise silk dupioni from Fabricana. I'd never sewn with silk before, and it really wasn't as challenging as I thought it would be! I did cheat and use steam on certain parts of it, but only after testing several times to make sure that it wouldn't leave water spots.

The only tricky part of sewing with this silk was finishing the seams. I sewed some samples, and every single seam finish that I tried showed through to the right side, except for pinking. So, although it really wasn't the ideal seam finish, I just pinked everything. It frayed a little bit, but not too badly.

I underlined parts of it (the upper back, the underarm gusset, the midsection) with silk organza for stability. It especially made a difference with the darts! The darts pulled apart badly in a sample that I sewed without underlining.

The pattern has underarm gussets, which I'd never sewn before. These ones are actually part of the upper back bodice, and they curve around to the underarm. I was a little terrified to sew them in silk, but with lots of hand basting, they turned out quite well. I feel pretty confident sewing gussets now, after sewing eight of them (two each in my first two muslins, two in my wearable muslin, two in the real thing)!

The hardest part about this dress was the zipper. I asked for your advice on what kind of zipper to use, and the votes where pretty much split evenly between a lapped zipper and an invisible zipper. I've never particularly liked invisible zippers, but after this dress, I learned to avoid them at all costs. On the other hand, the lapped zipper in my wearable muslin really didn't look as nice as I would have liked. In the end, I decided on an invisible one.

I can't remember exactly how I put the zipper in. Whatever I did, though it worked, except that it still didn't want to go around the curve. My solution? I cut two notches in the zipper tape, one on either side, right where the godet starts and the zipper has to curve. It probably wasn't good for the integrity of the zipper, but it worked! 

Because I was still worried about the strength of the invisible zipper, I put in a waist stay. There's no waist seam, so I just tacked it to the seam allowances and the underlining, but it worked just fine.

For the hem, I used 2" horsehair braid, and I'm really happy with how it turned out! I was expecting to have to shorten the skirt before hemming, but I tried it on and found that I liked the longer length! I then went ahead and inserted the horsehair braid using Gertie's tutorial, and catchstitched it by hand.

I love the horsehair braid! I wore this with two crinolines (a bigger, itchier one with a subtler, softer one underneath), and the horsehair braid gives it even more volume and weight at the bottom.

That's it for construction details!

As I said, I wore it with two crinolines, both of which were vintage from my aunt. She wore one of them to her high school graduation in 1960! 

My shoes are vintage that I bought at a thrift store. I love them! They're all leather, made in Italy, and have a really gorgeous cutout detail on them. 

I borrowed the purse from my mom (the same one I used for my grad boat cruise), and the pearl earrings and necklace once belonged to my grandma.

I did my own makeup, although I didn't do much. I did a bit of a cat-eye and wore some super subtle false eyelashes and my favourite lipstick.

My hairdresser did my hair and nails - hair is one thing that I can't do myself! I loved my hairdo, so it was worth it to get it done (although it was quite a challenge to get my dress over my head without wrecking it!). You can't see them in any of these photos, but my nails were dark red.

I really enjoyed the day! Everyone takes the day off school to get ready, and then there's a "red carpet event" in the school gym. Family and non-graduating friends aren't allowed to the banquet, so it's a chance for everyone to see you all dressed up before leaving. All the photos of me walking down the red carpet are super blurry, but you can kind of see it behind me in this photo.

After the red carpet, everyone leaves for the banquet in limos. I didn't particularly want a limo, but they aren't actually that expensive if a bunch of people pitch in, so my friends and I rented one. Here I am in front of it - we were super surprised when it pulled up and it was a Rolls Royce! 

We had several other people ask to take a photo with our limo! 

Once it cooled off in the evening, I spent some time goofing off in the photo booth with my friends.

After the banquet, there's dry grad, which is put on by the parents at a local recreation centre. It went until 5 in the morning, and there was lots to do - a casino, bouncy castles, another photo booth, entertainers, dancing, food, and lots of prizes. When you enter, you have to check everything (phone, camera, bags) before they let you in, so I don't have any photos from it, but I was too busy to take photos, anyways!

I won a door prize and a raffle basket, too! The door prize was a $50 gift card for a spa and a coupon for a free makeup application, and the raffle basket was full of nail polishes, a gel nail polish starter kit (worth about $100!), and a really nice pearl necklace. I won't use all of it (I don't do my nails much), so I plan on donating most of it to a charity that donates gifts at Christmas. I already gave the makeup coupon to my friend whose grad was after mine.

Overall, it was such a fun day (and night)! I got home and slept for a couple hours, and wasn't even too tired the next day. I'm so glad that I made my dress, and so happy with how it turned out. It was definitely different than anything anyone else had, which was great! 

Our valedictory ceremony was about a month later, and that was when I actually felt like I graduated. I'm glad we still had the ceremony, because the end of the year was very abrupt! In BC, the teachers are on strike, so a few days of school were cancelled in the last couple weeks, and all my exams were cancelled, except for my two government exams (not that I'm complaining about that...)

You can't see it under the gown, but I wore my floral Moneta dress to the ceremony! They collect the gowns as you leave the stage, so people usually dress nicely underneath. 

Next up, is university! In mid-August, I'll be moving to Montreal - I'm going to McGill and studying science. I'm really excited (and a little nervous) for such a big change!

Unfortunately, I'm leaving my sewing machine behind. It was a second-hand machine and owes me nothing, so it wouldn't be worth it to get it to Montreal. At some point, I think I'll look into buying a second-hand machine there, but in a dorm room, there really isn't enough space. I would love to find a sewing lounge if there is one, similar to Spool of Thread here in Vancouver. Anyone know of something along those lines in Montreal?

If not, well, I guess I'll be knitting lots next year, and going fabric shopping before heading home for Christmas. I'm just getting back into knitting now, after avoiding it for so long because of tendinitis.

Anyway, this post has dragged on way longer than I intended. My grad dress was perfect - not from a sewing perspective (nothing I sew ever is!) - but it was exactly what I wanted. I'm finally done high school, and my life is going to change a lot over the next few months. Be prepared to see some winter sewing pretty soon, as I prepare for life in Montreal!

Oh, and I almost forgot - this dress is the first (or second, if you count my wearable muslin) completed project as part of my vintage pattern pledge! My pledge is to sew at least three garments from vintage or vintage repro patterns before the end of the year. I didn't go for five because my sewing time is so limited during school, and I possibly won't have access to a sewing machine at all after August. But I'm off to a good start!

Other posts about my grad dress:

Part I: Choosing a Pattern
Part II: Muslins 1 and 2
Part III: The Wearable Muslin

Dress: Me-made (Vogue S-4727)
Shoes: Vintage/thrifted
Crinolines: Vintage
Purse: Consignment, borrowed from my mom
Necklace and earrings: Family heirlooms

The Grad Dress, Part III: The Wearable Muslin, and Advice Needed!

Even though I made a muslin for my grad dress, I wanted to try making the dress once before making it in expensive silk. I'm so glad I did! Although this is perfectly wearable, there was a lot that didn't go all that well, and I have a much better idea of how to sew it now.

It just so happened that I had my consultation for my grad hair the day after I finished this dress, so it was the perfect time to take photos!

Since my hair was done up, I decided I might as well style the dress like I will my grad dress. The necklace, the earrings, the shoes, and the bolero are all the ones that I'll be wearing for grad. This bolero is my latest thrift store find - $7 for 70% angora! It's pretty much identical in style to the 50's pattern that I was going to use for a bolero to go with this dress!

(Ignore the hanger marks that it has in these photos... those will steam out.)

I'm also wearing two crinolines in these photos! Neither are super full, and looking at these photos, it barely looks like I'm wearing one at all, let alone two! I might look into buying (or making?) a bigger one to wear with the real dress, but I'll wait until I'm done the dress itself and see how much time I have.

Anyways, about the dress. First of all, I really overestimated the amount of fabric I would need for this pattern, so I looked for the cheapest fabric that I could find without resorting to anything too synthetic.

I decided on a dark red leaf-print quilting cotton, which is definitely better suited to fall than summer, but it was the only print that wasn't completely overwhelming on me, and I wanted to use a print to hide mistakes! 

It cost around $6 or $7 per metre from the same discount fabric store where I bought the wool for my Ceylon dress.

In the end, I only used 4.5 metres of the 6 metres that I bought, and that was after the cotton shrunk to less than 40" wide. Now I wish I'd bought higher quality fabric!

Everything went pretty well - even the underarm gussets, which are horrible and finicky to sew - until I finished the upper bodice and tried it on. It was huge! I couldn't figure out why it had turned out so differently, because it should have been identical to my muslin!

My mom pointed out that the way the pattern piece is cut, the bottom edge of the front that's not pleated ends up on the bias. Not only that, but the crosswise grain of the fabric had quite a bit of give as well - it almost feels as if it has spandex in it.

So, after cursing my fabric choice, I took in the darts. They're not the perfect shape anymore, but they'll do. I did have enough fabric to re-cut the whole upper bodice, but I really didn't want to re-do my gussets.

I also stay-stitched around the bottom of the upper bodice, and along the top of all the midriff/skirt sections, to prevent more stretching. On the real thing, I'll stay-stitch all my pieces before doing anything, although I don't think I'll have too much of a problem with the silk - the crosswise grain seems as strong as the lengthwise grain, and the bias isn't as stretchy either.

After I figured out the issues with stretching, I didn't have any more problems until the zipper.

But oh my goodness... the zipper. This was by far the most difficult zipper insertion I've ever done, and not all that happy with how it turned out. As 1950's instructions will, the instructions say: "Sew zipper according to instructions on zipper package".

This wouldn't normally be a problem for me, since I've put in enough zippers to be comfortable enough with them. But... this one starts at the side seam, and curves into the seam that attaches the side back panel to the godet. I knew this beforehand, but I didn't realize quite how awkward it would be until I actually got to that step. 

I decided on a lapped zipper, which is my favourite technique to use. I probably spent about 15 minutes just trying to figure out how to start. Once I did, it wasn't too bad until I realized that I'd attached the zipper onto the wrong side, so my lap would be facing the wrong way! I debated about just leaving it as-is, since this is a wearable muslin after all, but I decided that it would really bother me, so I ripped it out and started over.

It could have been worse, but there are some puckers where the zipper curves, and the underside of the lap has some raw edges exposed. Also, since it curves to the back, the lap flips forward quite a bit. As a quick fix, I sewed on some hooks to the underside of the lap, and made some thread loops for them. It's not perfect, but it's better.

Next time, I will sew the zipper much earlier on in the construction of the dress. I think that'll make it a little easier to manage, but I still need to fix the problem of the lap flipping forwards.

This was my first time hemming a skirt this full (it ends up as full as a circle skirt, or maybe even a little fuller). To ease in the edge, I used the differential feed on my serger, which worked well on a sample piece, but on the skirt itself, it barely gathered it at all. I figured that I could just gather the serging a bit more by hand, but there was far too much hem t be able to gather it all at once. 

Instead of doing the sensible thing and just sewing some lines of gathering stitches, I cut the serging at a couple points so that I could gather it. This is far from ideal, because there's now a couple un-serged parts. I just covered them in Fray Check and tied off the threads that I pulled.

For the real thing, I will hem by hand, but for this one, I used a blind hem on a machine. 

It's not the best hem, because by this point I just wanted to be done this dress. I could have done a much better job with the blind hem, but I didn't really care all that much because I knew that it would get lost in the print anyways.

I also pinked all the seams (except for the hem), which was a first for me! I bought a pinking rotary blade just to try it out, and I love the simplicity and efficiency of it.

I won't go into detail about any of the other construction details, because I'll cover them all in more detail for the real dress. Overall, I'm happy with this. It's far from perfect but perfectly wearable.

It's also the most comfortable dress that I've sewn to date! The underarm gussets and the weird sleeves that are kimono sleeves in the front and set-in sleeves in the back are so comfortable and allow for way more movement without straining the seams or the fabric.

I'm so glad I made this as a trial run, because there's a lot of things I'll do differently on the real dress because they really didn't work so well.

For the zipper, I'm considering an invisible zipper. I haven't used one since the disastrous one in this dress, but there's no bulk at the waist on this one because there's no waist seam, just a diagonal seam attaching the godet. It also has a reasonable enough amount of ease (about 1 1/2") that I think I could probably get away with it... but I'm not sure yet.

Update: If I do a lapped zipper, I'll hand-pick it. I usually do, but I knew the stitching would barely show on this and I didn't want to bother with handstitching. That will make it a little easier to manage, but probably won't solve the problem of it flipping forwards.

For the hem, I don't really know what to do. I think I'll probably reduce the hem allowance (it was 2") so that I don't have to ease it quite as much. Other than that, I don't really know what's best. I'm considering using a hem facing, or even horsehair braid (actually, this is what I'm leaning towards... I love the volume that this gives a skirt). I'll do it by hand, so I don't want to do a narrow hem.

So... here's where I need your advice! Should I find a better way to do the lapped zipper, or should I try an invisible one? And what would be the best way to hem this?

If you missed one of my previous posts about my grad dress, here they are:

Part 1: Choosing a Pattern
Part 2: Muslins 1 and 2

Dress: Me-made, Vogue S-4727 (vintage)
Shoes: Vintage (thrifted)
Necklace and earrings: My grandmother's
Crinolines: both vintage
Bolero: Thrifted

The Grad Dress, Part I: Choosing a Pattern

As I mentioned in my 2013 round-up post, the bright side of having tendinitis and being unable to sew for a few weeks gave me some time to think about my grad dress.

Speaking of tendinitis... I now have it in my left arm, too. It does seem to be slowly but surely improving, though.

Back to my grad dress, I actually began thinking about it in the summer, and although I didn't really know what I wanted, I definitely knew what I didn't want:

1. Glitter or sparkles
2. A strapless dress, or anything that I would need a strapless bra for (spaghetti straps, one-shoulder, etc.)

...which pretty much rules out 99.9% of all grad dresses (seriously, just do a Google images search for "prom dress"). As if I wasn't being picky enough, I also knew I didn't want:

3. Anything backless
4. A princess dress
5. A mermaid dress
6. A mullet dress

Hooray. So, I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I would be making mine. 

I did, in fact, go to a small bridal store to try out some styles, but more to see what looked good on me than anything. I tried on a few dresses that were the typical fitted bodice and flowy skirt kind that are popular now, and while they weren't terrible, they were very... meh. Mediocre. Boring. While they were flattering and quite pretty, they just didn't feel like me.

This store also had some dresses that were more of a 50's style. They had box pleated skirts and fitted bodices, with either a scoopneck with pleats at the bust or a boatneck. Even though they were less formal, they just felt so much more me than the other ones. 

Needless to say, I didn't buy one. Those dresses were cute, but they were also $200 apiece for 100% polyester, made-in-China dresses. Nooo thanks. All things considered, that's not a bad price for a grad dress (I know people who spend upwards of $600), but still. I've been trying to avoid polyester and anything mass-produced in terms of clothing, so why should I make an exception for my grad dress?

Anyways, by this point I knew I would be making mine, so I started brainstorming about what I did want, and came up with this:

1. A 50's style (or late 40's)
2. A full skirt, to be worn with a crinoline - but preferably without gathers
3. A fitted bodice
4. Princess seams, to allow me to perfect the fit a little more easily
5. Something I could wear a normal bra, with straps, under

With that, I started my search for patterns. I looked on Etsy, and found some that I really liked, even though most of them didn't actually meet all the criteria that I'd laid out for myself. Here are some:

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The only problem is that these kinds of vintage patterns are EXPENSIVE... that last one is $165 Canadian, no joke. There was no way that I wanted to spend that kind of money on the pattern alone, when I was already looking at over $100 for enough silk to make any of these dresses.

So, I started looking at reproduction vintage patterns instead, and at one point I was pretty sure that I was going to use Vogue 2903. It was a 50's style with a full (non-gathered) skirt, a fitted bodice, princess seams and a v-neck that I could probably wear a bra under.

Source

Then... I found this: 

Isn't it gorgeous? 

I borrowed it from family friend who has the most amazing vintage pattern collection I've ever seen. We spent at least two hours looking through all of them! She had lots of 50's and 60's patterns, and even a few as old as the 20's! 

This one is from 1956, and it must be pretty rare because I can't seem to find it anywhere online. What's funny is that it looks really similar to one of the ones I was looking at on Etsy (the second one pictured above), but I didn't have to pay $80 for it.

Plus, it ticks all the boxes of my list above. It's a 50's style with a full skirt (and a very full one at that... the hem circumference is over 5 metres!) and a fitted bodice. Okay, it doesn't have princess seams at the bust (it does in the midsection) but those pleats completely make up for it. AND I can wear a normal bra under it - I love it.

I'll be making view A, the short-sleeved version. I haven't decided on a colour yet, but probably dark purple or teal - two of my favourite colours at the moment. I'll be making it in silk dupioni - yikes! This will be my first time sewing with silk.

I'm so excited for this project! There will be many more posts to come about it... I already have another one on the go about everything I've done since.

Thanks for reading!