Anne Adams R4613 Dress

Vintage Swing Dress

I've been chubby since last fall, honestly, I've eaten way too much pie and ice cream and pizza and cake. My husband is my worst enabler, and with the stress of house hunting we often have no choice but to order take out as we sit, anxiously waiting to hear back as to whether we've lost out on yet another bidding war (and yeah, we always lose). Not surprisingly I have a hardcore shortage of summer friendly clothing, hence the Zulily shopping spree. I only ended up with two wearable dresses from Zulily, they cancelled my other dress order on me - bastards! Fed up, I decided I'd make my own dresses instead. So I scoured my pattern collection and found a cute summer friendly looking dress from the 1950's. It's an Anne Adams dress, and I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard the name before, it's one of the many mail order pattern companies from the olden days. Sometimes you can find these patterns for cheaper online than a Simplicity or McCall's because the brand isn't as identifiable. They also tend to be unmarked patterns which is kind of a pain in the ass and might put off some buyers. This is the second mail order pattern I've tackled, this being the far more successful attempt of the two.

The design is what attracted me to this pattern. It's simple and can be jazzed up with several different collar/bolero options. I decided I wanted the dress sans collar, although I think it could look sweet, I just didn't feel it meshed with the look of my printed fabric. The dress is princess seamed, six panels, like a gored skirt, if you've ever made one. These kind of garments are usually easier to fit, which is a huge draw for me because excess fitting is a personal pet peeve of mine. 

Sewing the Dress

This pattern didn't present many problems other than the usual vintage gripes - the fact that it's unmarked is nothing short of annoying. I decided to go ahead and draw in the grain line which is marked by a few punched holes. In unmarked patterns everything is designated by notches or punched holes. It can get confusing, especially since this pattern for whatever reason used the same number of notches to attach the front bodice to the side bodice pieces as the side back bodice pieces to the center back bodice. Since these pieces all look identical it's easy to get lost! And I did, I ended up cutting two side back pieces in the same direction. Ugh. The benefit of this style of dress is that the right and left side back pieces are almost the same, with the exception of the neckline, so I ended up having to cut the neckline slightly lower in order to salvage this dress (I ran out of fabric so cutting a second piece was out of the question). I don't mind the slightly lower neckline, vintage dresses are more modest, so it shows only a touch of cleavage. 

The pattern sews easily. You assemble the front, back and side seams, marking out a side zipper. I hate vintage dresses with side zippers... I've made one dress like this in the past, I don't know how the hell women got into them?! Normally a dress with a side zip is usually accompanied by a neck zipper, but for a princess cut neckline like this, I'm not sure how it was intended to work. A side zipper on dresses these days starts slightly above the hip and goes right up into the armpit, it opens into the armpit, but vintage dresses used a closed side zipper, where the seam is sewn shut about 2-3" above the top of the zipper. So if you have big boobs and a smaller waist (or broad shoulders like me) putting this dress on is probably going to be awkward AF. I was once told it had to do with the style of bras women were wearing, I guess the dress is supposed to have a lot of ease built into the neckline? Maybe their boobs were popping out of the bra and that filled it out? Or maybe it was the steep cony angle of cone bras?! Regardless, it did not work on me, the ease just hung off my chest by almost 4". I took the neckline in at the back seams and front bodice seams just above the bust, this nixed the problem but made it a little tight to put the dress on, and that's with an invisible side zip that opens into the armpit (no I will not do a closed side zip on a dress like this ever again, it's pointless!).

The straps are single pieces folded into themselves, stitched, turned outright and then attached. I didn't end up using the provided neck facing, instead I used a piece of 2" self fabric bias strip, worked like a charm! I finished the hemline by using a rolled hem foot which worked alright, but it struggled going over the seams. 

Final Product

The dress looks cute but I hesitate to say it looks like the drawing on the pattern, it doesn't have nearly as much flare, but that could be because I cut off 4" from the hemline as it was almost to my ankles and I wanted to do a narrow hem (apparently the original hem is 3" deep). I was expecting it to flare out more from the hips, but it's more like a narrow a-line skirt. It's mostly figure flattering, in this case it's the fabric that takes away from it, in my opinion. That might be because it gave me so much trouble.

The fabric was a nightmare.

It's the kind of fabric that shows every stitch, wrinkles just by being worn, and doesn't iron well. What's more, it was printed completely off grain. Seriously. Fuck this fabric. It's hard enough to pattern match on a dress like this to begin with, but with the off grain print it was pointless. I also could not get the correct tension for the life of me, if I loosened it even by a hair the top thread wouldn't catch the bobbin enough, otherwise it was so tight it created ripples. Ugh! It also looked way better next to my skin in the shop but at home it sort of washes me out. On its own, it kind of reminds me of a bed sheet, which is why I'll only ever wear it with the belt. It's not a bad dress, it's cute, I might sew it again and open up the flare, but I hope to never use a cotton fabric like this again.

Can you believe I still have five more meters of this crap in two different prints? I'm gonna have to think critically about how it's going to be used.

UPDATE

In early spring I found this picture online, which is an actual catalog photo of the pattern on a real person! I own a handful of vintage magazines and I always enjoy seeing snippets of mail order pattern catalogs but it is super rare for me to see a copy of a dress pattern that I actually own. I found it online when I was looking for some vintage inspiration. I can see that it definitely is not as flared as the pattern illustration implied it to be, so I'm glad that's not just me, but also the collar variations are kind of hideous in person! I was considering making the rectangular one, it'll have to be something I commit a lot of thought to lol. This is a tea length gown which is not unusual for the 50's but vintage fans might have noticed the fit is more like a 60's dress, in fact, this was published in 1952 so it's probably borrowing much of its silhouette from the 1940's when garments fit closer to the body. I think it definitely looks better in a patterned fabric, the solid makes it look kind of blah, like a bridesmaid's dress. It's neat to see it, though, especially with a self fabric belt!