3 Ways to a Girl's Party Dress

Three dresses, similar looks! Any popular fashion look can be achieved by any number of sewing techniques. The following three patterns (dating from the late 1940s to early 1950s) each feature a similarly-looking dress, but yet each uses a different method to achieve the look, in this case a scalloped yoke and scalloped lantern sleeves.

Hollywood 1616 (view 2, specifically) simply applies trim along the bodice and along the middle of the puff sleeves to produce a faux scalloped yoke and faux scalloped lantern sleeves effect. Cute and easy-peasy to sew!

Mail Order 3856 from The American Weekly magazine actually has a scallop-edged yoke and two-piece lantern sleeves that are joined with a scalloped seam! Seams are joined with a French, or lapped, seam, in case you were wondering! Lace trims the seams of the yoke and sleeves. Very cute! While not difficult to sew, the scalloped seams take a bit more effort.

McCall's 1654 is heirloom-quality and features a button-on guimpe (chemisette) to achieve the effect. The upper bodice and upper sleeves button to the scallop-edged bodice and scallop-edged lower sleeves. Dainty hand-embroidered roses accent the lower bodice and lower sleeves. Exquisite and takes careful sewing!

Now, which dress would you sew?

In Search of Style: Finding Inspiration for a 1940s Girl's Dress

The Pattern: This is a classic girl's dress from 1948, with a sweet yoke and short sleeves. It's perfect for every day and for party occasions too!

McCall 7366

The Clippings: Tucked into this pattern, though, were some interesting clippings and hand-made pattern pieces! Both clippings show a great use of contrast fabrics to add a bit of spark.

This second clipping is from an ad for a mail order pattern. Rather than simply order the mail order pattern, though, the sewist chose to use it for inspiration instead, Note the yoke's zig-zag detail.

And also tucked inside the pattern were the hand-made pattern pieces that would create the bodice front! So we know what she sewed. :)

Note the references to the holidays in the newspaper. I wonder if the dress was sewn for Christmas specifically. The ads for cars are interesting - all are for 1940s models, with 1949 the latest model listed!

Home Sewing Tips from the 1920s: Ribbon Accents for a Girl's Frock

So far the tips that I have posted from Ruth Wyeth Spears and the 1920s have been for women, but Ruth also wrote sewing tips for infants', children's, and men's clothing too! In this tip, a sunny summer frock for a girl is dressed up with some flower accents created with slim "baby" ribbon. Ruth describes the frock fabric as organdie, and the ribbon as two-toned or double-sided. I found several shops on Etsy that carry just this type of ribbon (for example, SewVictorianCrazy). I am sure that you could find more. It just depends on how true to Ruth's tip you want to be. :) Sweet tip!