Vogue 8772 Shirt

I've been enjoying wearing shirts recently, but only have two long-sleeved ones in my wardrobe so I decided it was time to add another to my collection. I fancied trying a new pattern, and after a bit of browsing I opted for Vogue 8772.

I've previously made the Sewaholic Granville shirt (my original version from a few years ago is here) and been pleased with it, but while the back princess seams and yoke give the shirt a nice shape I feel like they're not great if you want to make a shirt in a fabric with a large print because they break things up too much (or mean that you have to spend a lot of time on pattern matching!). If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed that I like a large print so I thought it would be worth giving another shirt pattern a go.

Vogue 8772 caught my eye because it has similar shaping to the Granville, but that shaping is provided by French darts rather than princess seams. OK, so darts break a print up too, but I don't mind that as much for some reason. The pattern is also pretty versatile as it comes with pointed collar and pussy bow options, as well as sleeve variations, a sleeveless option and two different hem lengths. It also helped that Vogue patterns were on sale when I bought it!

I made view D of the pattern - the pointed collar, long cuffed sleeves and the shorter hem length.

Having made a couple of shirts and shirt dresses now, I'm fairly familiar with the process of constructing a shirt so I didn't have any trouble with this pattern. The instructions were fairly brief but always clear as far as I was concerned.

That said, I did go a little off piste when it came to the finishing of the centre front. The pattern doesn't include a separate button placket, and instead the centre front is double-folded back on itself to create a facing. I added a strip of interfacing to one layer of the fold, as I always find my machine stitches buttonholes better on interfaced fabric. I also topstitched the facing down to make it look more like a button placket. Neither of these are particularly major changes from the instructions, but I'm glad I made them all the same.

In terms of sizing, according to the pattern I should have made a 16 at the bust, blending out to an 18 at the waist and hips. I consulted the finished garment measurements and decided that I'd actually be fine making a straight size 16. I'm pleased with the fit - it's nicely shaped without being so fitted that I'm risking gaping buttons!

One point to note is that the arms come up quite long - they're just about OK on me and I'm 5'9" with relatively long arms, so if you're shorter or have proportionately small arms then you may need to shorten them.

The fabric I used is some pretty cotton (or I assume it's cotton anyway!) that was part of a large bag of fabrics that my auntie gave me when she was clearing out her parents' house. As soon as I saw it, I thought it would make a lovely shirt and I think I've proved myself right (even if I do say so myself!).

I briefly considered pattern matching across the centre front, but then I realised that the pattern repeat on the fabric was fairly huge so matching the flowers exactly would have meant wasting a fair bit of fabric. Instead, I just made sure that the stripes continued evenly on either side of the front. I also made sure that I had a stripe running around the collar and across the middle of each cuff, just because I like how that looks.

I'd originally intended to have a stripe running down the centre front, but if I'd done that then the print placement would have meant that the stripes to either side of the centre would have disappeared because they'd have been eaten up by the front darts, which would have looked weird. As it turns out, I think having to change my original plan was a blessing in disguise because the purple buttons that I found perfectly match the stripes and look great running down the centre front through the flowers.

I'm really pleased with the shirt and have already treated myself to some more fabric to make a second version. My mum has also requested one for her Christmas present, so I'll be making that in the not-too-distant future too. All in all, I'm very glad I gave Vogue 8772 a try, and I think I'll definitely be getting my money's worth out of this pattern!

Vogue 8577 Dress

Don't you love it when you suddenly realise that a pattern and fabric that have both been sitting waiting to be used for too long are actually perfect partners for each other? That's exactly what happened to me in this project. I wanted to sew a Vogue 8577 dress last summer but didn't get around to it, and the cotton sateen fabric had been in my stash for about another year longer than that.

The Vogue 8577 pattern is for close-fitting, lined, button-front flared dresses, with a back yoke, gathering on the front bodice at the shoulders and feature side front pockets with pocket bands. There are two skirt lengths, sleeveless or short sleeved versions and the option of a fold back collar. I chose view A - sleeveless, a knee length skirt and no collar.

In terms of sizing, my measurements put me in a 16 at the bust and waist, and 18 at the hips. Obviously there's no need to worry about hip space with a skirt as full as this, so I made a straight size 16. I made a toile which fit me fairly well out of the packet. The only adjustments I needed to make were to add 1.5 cm to the bodice length (pretty standard for me), and to take a small wedge out of the side seams starting at 1.5 cm at the underarm and tapering to nothing at the waist (also fairly common for me on commercial patterns in particular).

I also made a couple of adjustments to the sewing process. Firstly, I didn't line the skirt; while a fully-lined dress is lovely, this fabric didn't need to be lined so cutting the rather big skirt pieces out of a lining fabric as well would almost have seemed wasteful. I also cut both the back and back yoke on the fold instead of having a seam down the middle, mainly to avoid breaking up this fairly large-scale print more than was necessary.

The sewing itself was no problem at all. Vogue 8577 is rated as easy, and I think that's probably fair. The instructions are clear and there aren't any massively tricky steps, although given that I've now been sewing clothes for five years (scary!), I'm not sure how I'd feel about tackling this pattern if I were a complete beginner. It's also worth noting that while this may be easy, it's not particularly quick as there are quite a few steps involved. I did enjoy sewing it though, and that's the main thing!

One of the main selling points of this pattern, namely its glorious full skirt, is also one of its disadvantages because it means that it's a bit of a fabric hog. For view A and my size, the pattern calls for 2.8 metres of 150 cm fabric and it's not one of the occasions where the pattern is being overly generous on the required yardage. My fabric was roughly 140 cm wide rather than 150, and I ended up using slightly over 3 metres.

The main fabric I used is a sea green and daisy print cotton sateen that I bought a couple of years ago (I think it was from Remnant House, but I can't be sure). I initially bought it to make a dress for my brother's wedding, then was a bit fickle and fell in love with a different fabric, so this one got put in my stash. I originally discounted it for Vogue 8577 because I thought the waist panels would break the print up too much and make it look a bit messy, but then I suddenly realised that using a coordinating plain fabric for the waist panels would solve that problem nicely. I ordered some plain navy sateen from Oh Sew Crafty, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Like many sewists, I have a tendency to always feel like the latest dress that I've made is my new favourite, but this one really is one of my favourites that I've made for quite some time. Vogue 8577 is a lovely pattern - yes, it needs a fair amount of fabric, and it's not the quickest project to sew, but the end result is a really pretty dress that feels gorgeous to wear. I'd definitely be keen to make another if the right fabric comes along!

Vogue 9239 for a wedding

Hello! How are you all? Things have been a bit quiet around here recently in terms of blogging and sewing, but life itself has been hectic because I've just moved house. As it always the way, it's been a bit chaotic and sometimes stressful (knitting has been keeping me calm while the sewing stuff has been packed away!), but I'm starting to feel just a little bit sorted at last so I thought I'd pop by and show you the last project that I sewed in my old flat.

This is a dress that I made to wear to a friend's wedding a couple of weeks ago, but the dress you see here isn't at all what I intended to make. The original plan was to make a Sew Over It Betty dress using a large-scale floral cotton sateen that has been in my stash for a while. Sadly, that wasn't meant to be!

When I toiled the Betty, I had some issues with the fit of the shoulders - they were just too big on me (proportionately, my shoulders are small-ish so that's not too surprising) and just kept slipping off. I made some adjustments to sort that out, but the bodice still just didn't feel quite right on me. For some reason the V-neck back made me feel bizarrely exposed, but I told myself that I was just being weird because the dress isn't exactly revealing at all. So I went to cut into my fabric and found that it was much narrower than I'd thought and wouldn't fit the Betty skirt pieces. I'd have had enough fabric to cut the skirt on the cross grain, but the flowers would have looked a bit distorted if I'd done that.

So it was back to the drawing board! At this point, I didn't have much time left (and probably should have been packing instead of faffing about sewing a pretty dress!), so I knew I needed to sew a pattern that I'd already got to fit me. I've really enjoyed wearing the Vogue 9239 (view D) dress that I made earlier this year, so I decided to go with that. Only I thought the large scale floral would be spoiled by interrupting the print over all the panels in the 9239, and I didn't have any other suitable fabric in my stash so I was "forced" to do some emergency online fabric shopping - life's tough sometimes! 😉

Thankfully I found some lovely stretch cotton from Sewisfaction, which had enough colours in it that I knew I'd be able to find some suitable accessories to complement it in my wardrobe. I wasn't disappointed when it arrived - it's lovely quality and happily it looked good with the shoes that I'd originally been planning to wear with the ill-fated Betty dress (they're the perfect shoes for wearing to a wedding as far as I'm concerned because the look fancy but are surprisingly comfortable!).

I set aside the whole of the Sunday before the wedding to sew the dress and thankfully it was one of those sewing days where everything just goes to plan. The fabric behaved well, was lovely to sew and pressed nicely and because I'd sewn Vogue 9239 relatively recently, there were no nasty surprises during the process. At the end of the day, I had a dress that was finished apart from hemming so I just left it to hang and then hemmed it with bias binding a couple of days later.

If you're interested in details on sizing and the adjustments I made (there were a few!) - they're all exactly the same as for my first version so check out the blog post on that one.

The dress was lovely to wear at the wedding and great for dancing (by which I mean twirling!). I actually don't think I'd have liked the dress I was originally intending to make as much, so it turns out that it was probably good  that things didn't initially go to plan. Anyway, that's about all I have to say about this one so I'll leave you in peace! I hope you're having a lovely Sunday - I'm off to unpack all my sewing paraphernalia!

Vogue 9239 dress

As many of us are aware, with commercial sewing patterns it's often a good idea to look past the photos on the pattern envelope and pay closer attention to the line drawings, and that's definitely true for Vogue 9239 as far as I'm concerned. While some people would love the oversized and frilled sleeves that are a key feature of most of the views of the dress, they're not really my thing (if nothing else, because I couldn't be trusted not to get them caught on everything or covered in food when cooking or something!). The simplicity of view D, on the other hand, really appealed to me.

Alongside the host of dramatic sleeve options, Vogue 9239 features a fitted, princess seam bodice and a choice of a slim or full panelled skirt. Views A and D omit the sleeves altogether and instead have wide yoke pieces which almost feel slightly like cap sleeves. The shape reminded me a bit of a more everyday version of Simplicity 1418, which I made last year - while I love that dress, the off-the-shoulder look isn't the kind of thing I wear on a daily basis.

I debated a bit about what size to sew given that commercial patterns are notoriously generous in their sizing. Looking at the finished garment measurements, I was pretty sure that the size based on my measurements would be a bit roomy, but the size down might be a bit tight. I decided to toile my actual size (with my standard addition of 1 inch to the bodice length), going with the theory that it's easier to make things smaller than it is to add extra material to make things bigger.

As expected, the toile did turn out to be a little on the spacious side. I took a wedge out of the side seams measuring 2cm at the underarms, tapering in to 1cm at the waist and that greatly improved things. I've decided that I like to have slightly more ease in the waist of dresses when it's warm so I haven't made it overly snug still - it's fitted enough to give shape without making it too clingy in the heat.

I also decided to raise the side seams by 1.5cm at the underarms. As you can see in the photo above, I think if I hadn't done that then the underarms would have been a bit low and there would have been a risk of exposing underwear. Similarly, I brought the neckline in by 1.5cm at the shoulders just to make sure that bra straps wouldn't be too much on show. My final adjustment was to add 5cm to the skirt, which is just a height/length preference thing.

The dress was nice and easy to sew. I admit that I didn't pay too much attention to the instructions - I lined the bodice, but left out the underlining that the pattern calls for (I'm intending this to be a summer dress so I didn't want to add unnecessary layers), and I didn't line the skirt. I also used an invisible zip instead of a lapped one, which meant that I altered the order of the construction steps slightly. On the odd occasion where I did do what the pattern told me though, the instructions were clear and easy to follow.

Having said in my last post that I wanted to have a whole summer wardrobe of tana lawn dresses, this is another one to add to the collection. This time the print is called Eleonora, and it was an ebay bargain (there's currently none available from the seller I got it from). It's a really lovely print, and happily goes perfectly with the greeny bead necklace that I'm wearing here, which I've had for ages and love but have never been sure what to wear it with until now!

I really like how this dress turned out, and I'd definitely think about making another version of Vogue 9239 in the future - although I don't think it'll be happening any time soon because there are too many other plans swirling around in my mind!