My LBD* Project: Considering option number one

And so, the real work begins. I decide on three contenders for my *Little Black Dress project and get to work. Here are the three contenders:

What I like about all of them is that they have a variety of style lines that provide me with the ability to fine-tune the fit – and if you’ve been reading any of my posts for the past while, you’ll know that one of my most passionate goals is to have well-fitting clothes. But this good fit does have to be tempered with comfort: in my view, life is too short to wear uncomfortable or frumpy clothes!

I begin with McCall’s 6464. My first step, as always, is tissue fitting and making a few adjustments to the pattern at this initial stage. I will use my newly acquired knowledge of couture dress-making techniques for this project. I put Susan Khalje’s “Couture Dress Course” from Craftsy in my ears and mark all the seam lines on the tissue pattern. I then cut it out roughly because I’ll be marking seam lines and using those rather than using seam allowances.

First, I have to bring out the massive sheets of waxed tracing paper and mark everything on the muslin pieces.

Of course, that’s only half of the marking I need: since this marks on only one side of the fabric, I’ll need to have those seam lines, darts etc on both sides, so I use the sewing machine to thread trace everything. Time-consuming, but it should be worth it to get the fit right.  I like that fact that this pattern gives me options regarding the sleeves. I haven’t decided yet if I want sleeves, but I am leaning toward that.

When I sew up the toile, there are quite a few tweaks needed to get that fit just right. [Just a sidebar: I always pop in a zipper so that I can fit myself, although my husband will willingly pin in back issues for me.]

I realize that I’m going to need to do two or even three toiles to get it just right. One of the things that surprises me about this pattern is that for the sleeveless version, it provides the same armhole as for the sleeve variations. This means that I would have to take a dart in the armhole and transfer that to the bust dart or princess seam if I decide to use this one and I find that I want a sleeveless LBD. An armscye for a sleeve will gape on me (as on most people, I’d wager) if used in a sleeveless version.

I make it up as designed in the original pattern and take a look at it. Do I like the style? The lines? The fit? As I look at it closely, I realize that I might not be so fond of those darts. In fact, to my eye, there is something about the style lines of the skirt that seem to scream for a princess seam in the upper bodice. I do up a few sketches and like what I’m seeing.

So, a trace off the pattern, transfer the darts into a princess seam and replace the bodice with my new one and the tweaked skirt. After a few false starts, I get the fit just right. I’m beginning to be able to see this in black silk—maybe raw silk, maybe satin-backed crepe silk (or crepe-backed satin depending on how I look at it). I can almost feel the silk charmeuse lining that I might use.

As it turned out, I didn’t manipulate the skirt darts into one line: it changed the fit too much, so I removed only the darts in the bodice, turning them into a princess line which I then had to fit better as you can see: the right side is still pinned in this last version.

So, as I said, it now fits really well, and I’m liking the 3/4 sleeves better than the sleeveless version. Anyway, I feel I like this one, but is it too matronly? Well, on to the next one.

Next up, the test of Butterick 6410.

FYI…Here are some photos of the large sheets of waxed tracing paper in action in a previous project…