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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Mad Men Peggy Dress

The Peggy dress is complete!  This is my favorite creation so far though it probably involved the most time, blood, sweat and tears. Well, not quite, but it did have a few hiccups along the way.

The top looks baggy but I think it's just the lighting. It fits perfect!
My inspiration: the original dress.
The dress started as a vintage pattern, Simplicity 5086, but as I had upsized it on my own, I wasn't really happy with the fit.  I decided to merge the concept with another pattern I had: Vogue 8667.

Vogue 8667
Simplicity 5086
Neither pattern had contrasting pleat colors, so I had to do some research on my own.  Luckily, the wonderful world of sewing blogs came to the rescue!  I used several in putting together various aspects of this dress.

Pleats
Sew, Mama, Sew's blog post on how to make a pleat was amazing! This walked me through the process step by step.  The patterns I had could explain the pleat, but they didn't provide details to add a different fabric to it.  Sew, Mama, Sew broke it down for me.  These are the steps I took:


Marked out and pressed my pleat. Took a strip of the fabric to go inside and cut to fit.  (The red strip is shown before cutting to size)

Insert the fabric into the pleat, careful to keep the pleats' original shape.

Pinned the pleat in place and stitched the back sides in place.

The red fabric is now secure in the pleat!
Accessories
After completing the dress, my hubby and a few friends agreed that it needed something, but they weren't crazy about the buttons above the pleats in the original dress.  I personally loved the buttons but agreed that I don't have the svelt curves that Peggy has at her waist.

I remembered seeing Tilly's tutorial on a bow belt and played around with a few variations.  In the end, we agreed it needed the bow belt as is.  Her tutorial was also great and very easy to follow along with.  Brilliant!

Let me know what you think! I think I'm going to have to save the first wearing of this dress for something special like my actual birthday or maybe turkey day.  I've already started on another vintage pattern that is already my size.  I think it will be much easier to work with and will hopefully give me confidence to one day revisit this Simplicity pattern to do the upsizing again.

18 comments:

  1. Oh that is so cute!!! I think it came out perfect.

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  2. i adore that dress! i saw something similar online, only with a dropped waist and those little buttons. too cute.

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  3. That is adorable - I just finished Vogue 8668 this weekend - and am trying to figure out what to do with the waistline - I am thinking after your blog, Casey's, Gertie's and Tilly's I'm going to do a sewn-on double bow at the wonky waistline.

    Great dress!!

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  4. Really cute! I like your version even better with the red belt. Nice work!

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  5. That's fantastic!!!! You should be very, very proud of yourself - WOW! I love the bow belt too - an improvement on the original. Enjoy showing it off!

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  6. It's fantastic! And the belt looks great - I'm chuffed you followed my tutorial... and relieved it turned out okay! It's a lovely feeling seeing an iteration of something I made elsewhere in the world. x

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  7. It's lovely Christine, a perfect birthday dress. Love the navy with red accents colourway - only the most stylish people wear that combo!!

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  8. Oh! Great work! Fantastic result.

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  9. Such a nice combination of navy and red. Well worth all the trouble!

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  10. I love your rendition! And the bow belt is perfect!

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  11. I also went ga ga over this dress when I watched the episode. Yours looks great!

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  12. I loved this dress when I saw "Peggy" wearing it and love your's too. It looks so good. You did a wonderful job.

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  13. Pretty cool. So when are you going to make my irish dance dress? : )

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  14. Thanks everyone!! I love love love the dress! It's so girly and sassy and perfect! It's definitely inspired me to keep up with sewing. :)

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  15. I love it! You look great. Well done!

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  16. The red belt is just a great addition, nice brainstorming with your team! Hee Hee! You look amazing!

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  17. I remember seeing you ask about this at Sew Retro (though sadly had no help to offer). The dress came out wonderfully, and you look darling in it!

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  18. Just wanted to say that I'm wearing this dress today and I looooove it!!!

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