The New Year’s Eve dress

Before I took a Christmas break, I wanted to sew myself a dress for the New Year eve. I had a plan to make a long dress, not too Christmassy or New Year bling, but a simple yet decorative enough dress. My idea was to take a modern dress pattern to create a vintage look. My inspiration was early 1900s gowns.

I have always wanted to try to make modern vintage dresses. It might sound weird but it is because the vintage patterns do not fit my body so well (and also I find the sizes to be hard to fit right), so I have wanted to redesign or find patterns were I could try to make vintage dresses of it.

I decided to use Ellie & Mac’s pattern, Dreamy dress. I fell in love with the dress pattern, because it was similar to what I have been trying to make for a long time. I was thinking that the sleeve and the skirt did change the idea of making a vintage inspired dress. However, the choice of materials rather helped to keep the vintage vibe in it. As I wrote earlier, I want to make modern vintage inspired dresses, which can fit anybody of course.

I have used viscose jersey on the whole dress, except the sleeves and use stretch lace on the bodice and sleeves. Viscose jersey has much more stretch than cotton jersey, and much more elegant look. My main reason to use viscose jersey instead of cotton jersey was that I wanted a not so stiff look on the dress, but also needed the light elegance in the skirt. Also I wanted the main fabric to be similar to the lace, that is also very delicate fabric, so I had to be careful.

I have washed the dress after use, and the annoying part of having jersey dresses are the wrinkles they get. Now I have to carefully steam or iron it so it do not look so shabby. The lace did survive the washing but I am not sure how many times it will, since I did let the lace on the sleeve just have a rough look without sewing or overlocking it, I have to be careful when I am using it and washing it.

To add to a typical New Year eve dress, in a vintage inspired look, I made a jacket/bolero in fake fur. It is very cold in Norway, so wearing a jacket, scarfs and hats are important to us. I did use a wool coat over the bolero and the dress when I went to the dinner I was invited to, because the bolero did not have any form of function in -10 degrees Celsius.

The bolero is made from the cardigan pattern from Ida Victoria.

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