1940’s Inspired Tweed Dress & Capelet

When I bought this tweed last year from Mood, I thought I’d eventually use it to make a coat. I still haven’t made a coat, but this fabric started calling to me for a different project.

It’s no secret that I’m usually inspired by novelty prints, and springy, summery dresses are typically my comfort zone. But after I finished my holiday sewing, I wanted to challenge myself to make some more wintery garments.

I don’t enjoy cold weather, and for me, sewing is a little bit of a fantasy. It’s hard to work on a project and daydream about wearing it in dreary, wet weather when I’d much prefer daydreaming about warm, sunny days.

With that being said, I started imagining mashing up two favorite patterns— the sarong skirt from the Charm Patterns Lamour dress, and the bodice of Butterick B6412— to create a 1940’s inspired winter dress. This tweed, while heavy, felt like it would be a good fit for my vision. It’s got tones of ivory, red, and black, and has subtle sequins woven through it.

Sewing this pattern in such a heavy fabric did have challenges, though. I hadn’t considered the fact that both the sarong skirt and the bodice of B6412 have overlapping elements at the center front, and I opted to fully line both the skirt and the bodice; meaning I was sewing through four layers of fashion fabric and four layers of lining at the center portion of the dress, and even more when going over seams.

My sewing machine can handle pretty heavy duty materials, but this was too much for it. Even with the heaviest gauge needle I had on hand (100), I had to sew using the hand wheel instead of the foot pedal in order to not snap the needle as it pierced the fabric. It was slow going, but I got there!

Of course, you know I often get more excited about accessories than the garment I’m working on itself, and this project gave me the perfect excuse to pull the trigger on a set of Luxulite pieces I’d been ogling. These spiral hands felt very 1930’s surrealist avant-garde to me, and I liked the idea of pairing some more playful, dramatic pieces with the staid tweed fabric.

I also wound up making a capelet to go with the dress (this is the Scout Capelet from Gertie/ Charm Patterns’ Patreon)…

…and decorating a fascinator hat base…

…in addition to covering a padded headband with the tweed and frankensteining a second feathered headband onto that for another headpiece option.

All in all, this ensemble was a big project, but it gave me the opportunity to exercise some skills I don’t utilize all that often, and experiment with new ones. Doing new things can be scary, and I’m a very risk-averse person, but I’m trying to take more chances with my sewing this year! It’s a pretty low-risk area of my life, and I know it’s the only way that I’ll grow as a creative. I wouldn’t say this project was difficult, per se, but it did test my patience at times!