White Christmas is one of my favourite movies. I just love the iconic red velvet dresses with white fur trim--so I decided to make my own 1940 McCall version!
Enter McCall pattern 3863 (you can purchase a reproduction pattern from
Lady Marlowe on Etsy graded to various sizes):
Rachael from Carnival Vintage shop in Edinburgh and I have been running a sewalong for this pattern for the past several months! You can catch up with the sewalong posts
here.
I was really happy to find velvet silk fabric in red at my local fabric store,
Edinburgh Fabrics. I also found some white fur trim. In fact, I had already had the red silk velvet in my stash as I was planning it for another evening gown but when I saw the white fur trim on their shelves, I knew I had to make a 'White Christmas' movie inspired dress!
I'm very happy with how the dress turned out though sewing with silk velvet is quite a test. I had to very carefully cut out the pieces and when sewing, it's very easy to mark the fabric--so care is required. Velvet is also a pain to iron--I just used steam (so my iron stand up and then passing the fabric carefully over the plate).
I literally wore this dress non-stop in December. I loved wearing it and listening to Christmas music while decorating the tree. And we even got some good photos of my lovely little kitty, Echo:
I ended up attaching the faux white fur just on the sleeves and on the bodice bow area (but left the bow itself in the red velvet).
This pattern has quite a lot of give or ease in the back bodice. When I read my 1940 McCall source booklets, they talk about the pattern having a 'bloused' effect. This is even more pronounced since the bodice front has six sets of gathers (two at the shoulder line leading into the bow front, two under the bow front and two on each side at the waistline).
Awwww...this is my favourite picture ever...it's so hard to get good photos of my kitty--so this is our little Christmas photo! YAY!
What about you? Did you make any holiday clothes this year?
Photography: Emerald Photography
Fabric: Edinburgh Fabrics
Shoes: Bait Footwear
Sewing, including the pinning, basting, steaming, etc., is a real pain, I agree. But you had fun wearing your beautiful White Christmas dress, and that made it all worthwhile. I remember a New Years Eve party that I attended with my then boyfriend and no one else showed up. We sat for the required time eating potato chips with onion soup dip until we could escape. So much for my black velvet dress adventure! Happy New Year to Echo from Europa and Luna!
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