Vogue 1532: The Vogue Cocktail hour

Well this seems like a suitable dress to post on a Christmas-time blog.    This is a rather belated sew for the Vogue Cocktail hour (#sipandsew).

Vogue 1532 doesn't seem to have been a popular choice, but I do like it.    The dress itself is a fairly traditional, close-fitting dress, and then there is a dolman sleeved pullover top to add a bit of pizazz!

 

I don't know if you are like me, but sometimes I choose a pattern as much because it contains a challenge I want to try, in this case boning, rather than just a pattern I love.  I also thought if I was making a cocktail dress, I would go all out and pick a posh one.  The dress is made of stretch duchess satin and the top from a sort of dotty net fabric  (from Abakhan).

I cut a size 14, but this ended up much too big in the stretch duchess and I had to take in several inches.   It could still be a little tighter to look really good, but instead it more comfortable to wear.

The pattern has very thin straps that would not cover a bra, and so I made much wider straps.  Getting the fitting right was one of the trickier challenges.

 
I love the sleeves, and the net edged with the satin cuff.  Also if you don't like fully exposing your arms, this pattern is ideal, a bit of coverage but still glam!

The cuff is held together with little rouleux loops (very fiddly) and these gorgeous vintage buttons.

I made a pretty good job of the dress.    The only mistake I made was to use cheap bias binding for the neck, never again, it makes the neck stand up a little.  In hindsight I should have made my own (probably from the lining material).  The inside looks great .... yes the picture below is the inside. The lining is a poly-satin.  You can see where the boning is.  There are 8 channels of boning.
 
I used covered plastic boning, (also from Akahban) and sewed these to the lining, so that they didn't show on the dress.  You can see below one channel on the princess seam and one on the side seam.  To minimize any seams showing through the dress I finished them with pinking shears rather than any overlocking which showed through slightly.

 

This is an interesting pattern and a good one to make.  It is an intermediate/advanced and probably not for the beginner, though depending on your choice of fabric, not too difficult.  I've never really had a little black dress before, just need a chance to wear it!


If you read this on the 25th, I hope you are having a wonderful day.   Otherwise I will be early in wishing you all a very happy, healthy and successful 2018 and look forward to sharing lots of sewing with you.