Evaluating Published Patterns, Or…

… How To Tell If Your Resources Pretty Much Suck Eggs.

So, this post comes from a kind of crabby place. Normally, I am not a crabby person. I do, however, get frustrated when people, in good faith, get hold of resources that are not only less-than-helpful, but put them in a really cruddy spot with wasted fabric and effort and time.

Can you spot all the Red Flags in this image?

Here’s a short list of things that set of my Red Flags with regards to a woman’s mid-19th century dress pattern:

Scanty Yardage: With 45″ fabric, and bishop sleeves, a fabric yardage note of 4.5 yards for an adult dress is Not Much. That’s a skimpy skirt (not gauge-able), and while some very petite ladies may be able to get a lower working class “skimpy” dress from it, the average-build woman cannot, if she wants to look like someone from the mid-19th century, and not like an extra from The Beverly Hillbillies.

Over-Yardage: The pattern includes bishop sleeves, which don’t require a lining. But three yards of lining is quite a lot for lining a basic bodice. More Red Flags that this dress pattern may have some oddness.

Yardage Why? The note calling for a half-yard of 45″ wide white cloth and interfacing leaves a lot of questions: no notes on whether that’s a half-yard of white cloth that will be used as interfacing, or if you need a half-yard of each, and if so, what kind of interfacing, and if interfacing, why? Mid-century dresses didn’t use modern interfacing. I’m about to the point that I can start a fancy drill team with all these Red Flags.

No Yardage At All? Apparently, if you use 60″ wide cloth, you magically need zero fabric for lining?

Sizing It Up: Another Red Flag shows up bright and clear on this sizing chart, in the neckline circumference. Women do not get larger on a photocopy scale. As sizing goes up, necks do not get progressively larger by another inch and a half each size. This tells me the drafter/grader doesn’t really get human anatomy or growth or fatness, and that signals the potential for vast sizing re-do work.

Bad Notions: Things like buttons need to be customized to suit the purposes of the dress. While a high-fashion gown might use larger buttons (often silk-covered or the really sexy complicated ones woven over a mold), a “work dress” for an average-height woman tends to need more than 8 huge buttons down the front. Eight buttons can work for my 10yo, who is 4.5 feet tall, if I’m using period spacing and sizing, so right off the bat, I know that the pattern recommendations are not going to look well on me: I’m over a foot taller! The pattern doesn’t upgrade the button total for the taller/longer bodices. That means, the larger the size, the more I’m going to look like a Borrower, not a denizen of the 19th century.

And no period dress needs huge hooks and eyes to fasten the skirt and bodice together. That’s not how the Original Cast did it, and recommending it in a pattern belies a basic lack of research into actual garments of the era. There are going to be Problems with the way the bodice and skirt are finished at the waist, and how the fullness is handled, guaranteed; lack of research in one area transmits to many areas.

And piping: Your dress pattern should recommend it, but if they have “two packages piping” on the list, run away post-haste and buy a different pattern, because again: basic lack of research into actual garments of the era. Mid-century piping is self-fabric, and about 1/4 the size of purchased poly-cotton bias piping. If the list tells you to plan an extra yard to make self-piping, run away post-haste; this displays a lack of understanding regarding layout, fabric usage, and scrap piecing so very basic to mid-century dressmaking.

And fat thread: No, you don’t need heavy quilting or button or upholstery thread to sew a 19th century dress. The originals used regular sewing cotton. We can, too. No need for overkill. And designers that recommend overkill either haven’t looked at enough originals, or have had their designs monkeyed with by modern publishers (as is the case of the work of two designers I know… they turned in good stuff, and then it got messed with. Growl. Not the designers’ fault in that case.)

This bit of crabbiness is all based on just the back of a pattern envelope. I’m expecting further travesty on the inside–on-line reviews note that the pattern doesn’t include any illustrations. The person trying to use this pattern is reasonably frustrated, and rightly so.

In a few weeks, we’ll be sharing some independent resource reviews of items for mid-century, and I’ll have more to say on the matter, I’m sure. For the meantime, keep this in mind: sometimes, when you’re struggling to make a project work, it isn’t your fault.

I’m going to slap in some Sousa, and march around waving this pile of Red Flags for a bit…