In praise of gussets

Sometimes the old ways are better.  Actually, the old ways are often better because they've been tested and tried over a long period of time and hold true. 

Take the lowly gusset.  A small triangle of fabric, applied to the underside of a sleeve.  It doesn't seem like much--such a small scrap!  But oh, what a difference it makes to comfort and fit in a woven sleeve!  I've always wondered why I struggled to get dolman sleeves to feel comfortable in a woven fabric.  

I like the look, but not the restricted arm movement.  Ditto for most inset sleeves.  These guns need room to move!  But I am finding myself drawn to wovens more often these days, and so it was worth finding a fix.

Enter the shift.  In 2016, I completed a full 18th century working woman's outfit--the equivalent of jeans and a t-shirt.  It includes a shift, stays, pockets, modesty petticoat skirt, 2 regular petticoat skirts, a short gown, fichu, stockings/garters, cap and Berege hat.  When I made the shift, it was after much trial and error with the geometric period drawings; in the end, I modified the American Duchess 8161 shift pattern to fit onto a half width of linen so I could cut two out of the yardage I had.

One of them didn't fit well at the time, so I gave it to a friend who wears it for a night gown and loves it.  Mine was in the box with all my other 18th century trappings, but I got it out in September to try as a nightgown for myself.  I was experimenting again with 18th century silhouettes, and wondering how to get more linen into my life. 

I loved wearing the shift so much that I bought another length of bleached linen from the doggie bag section of Fabrics-store.com and set to work.  Unfortunately, enough time had passed that I forgot a few things I did to maximize fabric usage, so I only got one full-length shift out, plus a top.  But oh, that new shift is even better, if that is possible.  Making two in a row reminded me about the brilliance that is the sleeve gusset. 

So when a Frankenpattern experiment with dolman sleeves turned out badly, I tried a gusset, and it fixed the sleeve fit (but not the rest of the problems with the make, so I'm trying to recut it into something else today). 

 

I immediately applied the same to my dawn linen and arctic linen dropped shoulder tops, which fit well but pulled slightly under the arm, restricting movement.  The gussets totally fixed the problem, and they are possibly the most comfortable tops I own right now.  The top is a mosh of several patterns: the Sorrel Dress bodice, the Potrait blouse, Coco dress, and Carson dress.  The bodice is mostly Sorrel, with some shaping at the bottom from the Portrait blouse; the neckline is Coco, and the sleeve is Carson.  A true Frankenpattern!

Wildwood Sorrel

Long time readers will know that I used to wear a lot of prints.  Like, a lot.  Enough to think of myself as a "printy-utilitarian" in my style preference.  These days I gravitate more toward texture than prints, and am very careful to be sure a print it is something I want to wear and not just look at.  So I've gone tactile-utilitarian, I suppose?

In August, I was looking for fabric for something else and saw the new Wildwood collection from Rifle and Co., and got completely obsessed with the pink/burgundy Garden Party fabric.  Incidentally, if you are looking for the same, the keywords Wildwood and Garden Party will not get you there, as I discovered to my consternation when I went back to find it later.  The fabric also comes in a petite version that has a smaller scale, but I preferred the larger scale.  

My mom sent me this pic around this time, and I had to laugh.  Add yarn and knitting, well yep, pretty much!

The fabric in question was quilting cotton, however, which gave me pause, as I also rarely wear it any longer.  My first thought was an Obi-belt to go with the beet linen I had yet to make up.  But I still wasn't convinced I wanted to make another Terrace dress (although I may still do it with the remnant left).  I thought about making a duvet cover for my bed, but the amount of fabric needed and resultant cost gave me pause.  I decided it was worth the plunge to get the dress length that would hopefully get me another church dress.  

The Sorrel dress pattern has been languishing in my stash since 2018 since I supported the kickstarter campaign for paper patterns.  Button-down front skirts and me don't always get along well, and the sheer number of buttonholes put me off, as I was still doing them by hand at that point.  But one of the tester samples stayed with me (Ellie in the needlecord), so I hung on to the pattern for future experimentation.  Fast forward to 2021, and I sew buttonholes and buttons by machine now, and felt that the fabric and pattern would be a good match.  I did a bit of futzing around* with My Body Model to check first, and pleased to report that the sketch is pretty close to the finished dress!  

Based on the size chart, I cut a B-cup/14 and added 1" of length to the skirt with a 1/2" hem to get it to a length I was comfortable with.  The bodice fit is spot on, but I'd maybe add a total of 1.5" to get it to the bottom of my knee.

The make was not without issues.  I picked some 1/2" pine green buttons from an old make that were an okay match, marked everything using the buttonhole placement guide included in the pattern, sewed the button holes, cut them open, applied the buttons, and ....whomp, whomp, whomp.  I thought the overlap seemed kind of big, but it has been a while since I sewed anything with a button closure for myself, and well.  I don't know what the deal is with the pattern piece, but the markings are for 1.5" from the edge, which is...ridiculous.  It made all the buttons sit slightly off center, which was just off enough to look unintentional.  

I puzzled a bit over how to fix it.  I already had the buttons placed as close to the inside edge as I dared.  I thought about trying to get bigger buttons that would require bigger button holes that I could then cut closer to the edge, but I wasn't sure that would look good either, given that there are 12 buttons on the dress.  I tried switching the overlap, thinking that I could recut the buttonholes on the opposite side and figure out how to close up the holes on the underside neatly.  

It turned out that the deciding factor was that the look of the dress greatly improved with the overlap switched--something about the edging of the fabric on that side, so I decided to unpick all the buttonholes, and use fusible applique to cover them.  I spent quite a long time one afternoon pattern matching so that the edges would be as invisible as possible, and then applying the pieces.  I ordered new buttons and remarked the buttonholes on the other side.  

By this point, I was feeling paranoid about the whole thing and cut into the holes with fear and trembling, because there were no more options if this didn't work.  Thankfully, it was fine!  My only complaint is that the space between two of the buttons is off by 1/4" or so, but it isn't noticeable to anyone but me, I think.

  

I used proper fusible interfacing for the button band and neckline facings, which I'm pretty pleased about.  I've always used a different type of fusible interfacing that Did Not Behave, so I often skipped it or subbed Petersham or Ban-rol when a pattern called for it.  The stuff I tried this time is Pellon brand and seems to work as it should.  The guts of the dress are completely clean, as I was able to use French seams throughout.  I also lined the skirt with a bit of white rayon bemberg from the stash.  I wanted it to be something I could wear without a slip in hot weather.  I'm noticing that my hot flashy self cannot tolerate a nylon slip in heat, so I'm working toward having hot weather garments that are lined with bemberg or can be worn without a slip like linen.  

After one full day of wearing, I can say it is a nice and comfortable dress, particularly for church, although I think I should catch the stitching on the waist bar slides all the way through to the front of the fabric so that it doesn't pull at the edge there.  An easy fix.

I'm very pleased with the dress, and particularly with the sweep and fit of it--slim skirt and comfortable!  With pockets!  Wahoo!  I'll probably use the skirt pattern again as a stand alone.  Maybe the bodice too.  Yay for a new pattern--Jennifer Lauren Handmade's patterns are going high on my list after this (and the general success of my Trixie unders).  

*By futzing, I mean using Canva and Lunapic to digitally "draw" all the pieces.  I usually do this by hand, but with specific fabrics like this, I wanted to see it with the actual fabric at scale, and couldn't draw that well enough in a short time.  I've done it with several other things since and enjoy the process a lot, despite some basic limitations in the tech available to me.  I still enjoy drawing/coloring by hand but use each process for different things.