A SEQUINNED NIGHTGOWN - VINTAGE BUTTERICK 5744
Today is the first day of restaurant and school closings due to Covid-19 here in NYC. It’s Monday…. the last time I went to Manhattan was last Monday, to teach a Textile Design 101 class to a group of high school students. People were talking about Carona, but it seemed far away, like something that wasn’t going to happen. I still felt a stormcloud over my head, so after the class, I went to Midtown, bought $17 worth of buttons (my version of stockpiling), and took the ferry home so I could be outside for the commute.
Things feel different a week later. Jason is working from home indefinitely, I don’t know when I will have any freelance projects to work on, and we are self isolating aka practicing social distancing. Honestly, I have a lot of anxiety about the situation. I’m worried about my 94 year old grandma and my friends who are more vulnerable to the virus. I am thankful for my health, my comfortable apartment, enough food in the fridge for a while, etc. but anxiety creeps in and begins to overwhelm me. For me personally, the best anecdote to anxiety is productivity. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” - it doesn’t matter what I am making, but I need to make something to feel positive.
The first thing I did was look at my sewing plans - I keep one here, and another, bullet point list on my phone. I’ve been putting off making pajamas, but they really fit the bill right now: easy, fast, no major fitting issues (with the added bonus that I can wear them a lot while self isolating). I decided to make my beloved vintage Butterick 5744. I have sewn the robe, which I wear as a dress, three times! You can see it here: orange linen, white linen (now dyed lilac), black silk noil.
I selected this crisp cotton lawn from Tomato in Tokyo, which has a grid of rainbow iridescent lurex woven through it. It was from the ¥100 section of the store, and I had 2 meters - so the fabric cost less than $2. I bought this specifically with the intent to make pajamas, and sewed a set that I can’t find….I think they got lost last time we moved apartments. The embroidered lace is from deep stash, at least 10 years old, and all the beads and sequins are from stash, too. I’m feeling very resourceful in my own home.
The inside of the dress, nice and clean!
Lately, I do not want to use my serger. It just pisses me off. It’s not even misbehaving, I just don’t feel like using it. This nightgown is great because the only exposed interior seams are the side seams, which are straight lines. I dislike making French seams (I guess I don’t like finishing seams?), but I can totally handle two straight lines in a simple cotton fabric. Here you can see the side seams, the fully faced (lined, really) yoke, and the armscye, which is finished with a 3/8” baby hem. Aside from the French seams, these are the finishes as called for in the pattern.
While I was gathering the shoulder ruffles, my mind started to wander. I was enjoying the texture of the embroidered ruffle, versus the metallic stripes…..sequins! This needed sequins! I knew just the ones!! I have a little drawer full of sequins that I have been collecting since college. Not a huge amount, but when I see some I like, I buy them to squirrel away. It is a collection that brings me pure delight. So, my quick and easy project got a bit more complicated, but I had (have!) plenty of time on my hands, and I am a fast beader.
The lilac dress is the robe pattern from this same envelope - it was previously the white version, but I dyed it to be in my preferred color palette, and now I wear it much more!
The metallic stripes on the purple fabric make a perfect 1” plaid/grid, so I followed that for my beading layout. I used a heavier beading thread (I have all the essentials in purple!), and knotted at the end of every row. Ideally, you would knot after every bead/cluster, but I don’t think this garment will be under a ton of stress.
This pattern went together super easily, all notches and markings matched up easily. It was a real sew-on-auto-pilot type of project (except for the beading interlude). Sometimes with vintage patterns, and sometimes with nightgown patterns, and therefore especially with vintage nightgown patterns, weird corners are cut to keep patterns easy and fast to sew. Well, in this case, I guess they didn’t technically cut a corner, because look at that 90º angle in the armpit!! Luckily, this quirk was not a surprise:
I have mentioned before that I prefer used vintage patterns because someone has already tackled the arduous task of cutting the pattern tissue. I can’t think of anything more boring. But yet another reason I love used patterns is because very often, the previous owner jotted down notes to her future self. In this case, she warned me, “Note: use self bias strips for underarms. Make side seams lower.”
With that warning, I took a look at the pattern pieces, which showed an unusual 90º angle in the underarm. I decided to follow the pattern exactly anyway, with this thinking: I can easily lower the underarm and bind it with bias strips if I don’t like how it looks as drafted. And: sewing this as per pattern means that if, in the future, I decide I don’t like this nightgown anymore, I can take it apart and use the beaded & ruffled yoke with a different skirt, and the skirt pieces are basically just big rectangles. Leaving them with the underarm as drafted will preserve the most of this precious Japanese fabric for my future self as possible!
It was actually really hard to get the fabric to stand up like that for a photo.
Once sewn up, I do not mind the weird fabric in the underarm. Yes, it would likely be a bit more comfortable if it followed a traditional armscye “U” shape, but the fabric collapses down, so it isn’t in the way at all. Also, this is a nightgown. Even with that beading, I’ll be wearing it for sleep, and general lounging around my apartment, not out and about.
The reason I wanted an easy-to-sew project was because I wanted to enjoy the process, without any pressure on the outcome. I didn’t really care if I liked the resulting nightgown, that wasn’t the point. The point was to soothe myself through sewing and pressing, and it worked. It worked, and I love the nightgown - much more than I expected, actually.
I said on Instagram that I wouldn’t sew this again, but I spoke too soon. Next time I would take in the center front and center back yoke pieces by 1” each (an easy way to make a narrow shoulder adjustment), and I would correct the underarm/armscye. It’s a fun sew, and if I hadn’t beaded it, it would have taken an afternoon (even with beading, I knocked it out in a day).
I’m probably going to continue making things while self isolating, and documenting both the process and how I’m feeling about the world around me. How about you? Are you sewing? Or do you have another craft going? Are you stressed? Does it make you feel better? I hope it does. XO Martha