Next Up in VoNBBS: The Evening Dress

I’m gearing up to a big Vogue’s New Book for Better Sewing project: the Evening Gown. This is Vogue Pattern 7631. I plan on doing a series of posts this week about the pattern and the supporting text in VoNBBS, but let’s start with fabric, glorious fabric.

First let me confess: I’ve come to a decision that may be unpopular. I want to make the pattern tea length, rather than floor length. Shocking, I know. The thing is, with the fabric I found, I could only envision myself wearing it in a shorter length.

Are you ready? The fabric is this amazing embroidered illusion. It’s white with black floral motifs on top.

The underlaying fabric will be white silk taffeta, and the collar will be a crisp Swiss cotton organdy.

As you can imagine, the financial investment in these fine fabrics was not insignificant. Hence, I cannot stand the idea of making a floor length dress that won’t get worn.

But! To stay true to the VoNBBS vision, however, I also purchased some very festive Halloween fabrics from JoAnn to make this dress again in the fall. You see, Rosie and I are going to be witches this year and a full-length gown in purple organza flocked with black velvet spiderwebs (yes, that’s right) seems just the ticket. More to come on that later.

But for now, I’m just putting my intentions out there into the vast depths of the internet. I’ve already traced off the bodice pattern pieces and I’ll be making a muslin, hopefully later today. I plan to wear my underbust corset with this dress, so the fitting will be a little different than usual.

More to come tomorrow! Yay, VoNBBS!