Simplicity 0017 (1985): Morning in Miami

When I found this vintage 1980s fabric in the Lula Vintage store on Etsy, I fell in LOVE.

This light cotton piece featured large hibiscus flowers and uneven stripes.  The colorway was described by the shopkeeper as “very neutral” in tones of “salmon, mocha, mint, grey and white.”  

I had purchased it in January and stowed it away until I found a pattern worthy of its glorious 80s-ness.  This fabric captured my imagination like no other. I would take it out now and again during those short winter days and thought of warm summer mornings, the days stretching endlessly ahead…

...the smell of chlorine, reading Seventeen Magazine while I sat on my towel after swimming in my best friend’s pool….

...going inside her air-conditioned house in my damp bathing suit (BBR!) and seeing the opening credits (and hearing the theme song!) for The Golden Girls on the TV in her living room…..

It was during such reveries that I realized this fabric needed to live its life as a summer robe. 

A robe that might be worn while having morning coffee on the Golden Girls’ lanai.

What’s a lanai?  

It's the porch.

(If you don’t get this meme, please refer to Season 2, Episode 25  of The Golden Girls when Sophia asks Dorothy this question. Episode confirmation is courtesy of this blog, which recaps every GG episode in hilarious detail.)

Blanche, Rose, Dorothy and Sophia lived in an 80s dream of a house in Miami wherein they often wore awesome bathrobes while having heart-to-hearts, frequently in the kitchen.  (This fabric could just as easily have been made into throw pillows for the rattan couch in the living room.) 

I recently discovered a wonderful website called Golden Girls Fashion Corner which features excellent analysis of GG episodes and outfits (with plenty of pictures!).  I believe that Claire coined the term “Devarobe”--a play on Blanche’s last name Devereaux and her endless supply of flowy, gorgeous bathrobes.

Blanche is wearing a kimono robe here

I settled on a kimono robe because this design would allow large swaths of the fabric to remain intact and flow beautifully from the shoulders. I had a limited amount of fabric so I had no choice but to make it a short robe.

I omitted the patch pocket.

Because the stripes are uneven and the colors don’t repeat regularly, cutting out the pattern was a little challenging.  First, I had to get over my fear of ruining the project by making cutting mistakes on a piece of irreplaceable fabric. I couldn’t match every single stripe at the shoulders, because I didn’t have enough.   But that wasn’t critical because there’s so much going on and the stripes are irregular. I was able to match one stripe at the shoulders to establish harmony between back and front.

I wanted the front band to be on a white stripe, but I had run out of white stripes that were long enough and the same width.  I came up with a solution that required I cut the band in three pieces instead of two. I attempted to match the cuts with the shoulder seams but I failed to do so.  Luckily, I don’t think it’s noticeable and it doesn’t bother me.

This fabric is light-weight, slightly slubbed and semi-opaque.  The cut edges did fray quite a bit. So I used french seams and mock french seams (doing a traditional french seam on curved areas such as the shoulder seams can be tough) to enclose the seam allowances.   Here’s a shot from my Singer The New Sewing Essentials book (2008) showing how to do a Mock French Seam:

Instructions for a regular french seam are above.

Regular french seam:

Mock french seam:

This project took a lot longer than I thought it would.  To up the quality, I hand-stitched all hems. I used something called Snug Hug which I had purchased a few years ago after reading about it on the blog Lilacs and Lace.  This seamstress highly recommends this rayon tape to finish seam allowances and hems (she has a tutorial), so I had picked some up just in case I wanted to try it one day. If you want to see real couture sewing and vintage-inspired pieces from BEFORE the 1980s, visit this blog!

The oatmeal color of my Snug Hug tape was perfect for this project.  I sewed it to the edges of the sleeves and the bottom, pressed up the hems and hand-stitched, picking up single threads as I went so as the stitches aren’t detectable on the outside.

Now I’m ready for my morning coffee on the lanai! 

close-up of belt and carrier loop

This would have been a good bathing suit cover-up after swimming at Jean’s house back in the day.  To her and all the Girls back in high school: Thank you for being a friend!

McCall's 8498 (1983): Cream Charmeuse Jumpsuit with Black Dots and Belt Variations

When I decided to sew McCall’s 8498 in charmeuse, I wondered:  Would the resulting jumpsuit look like pajamas?

Charmeuse: Satiny, Slinky and perfect for negligees and luxe loungewear

As described in my last post, Diahann Carroll and other Dynasty Divas had their names on some McCall’s patterns in the 80s.  As Dominique Deveraux, she strode into La Mirage dressed head to toe in luxurious creams and whites (complete with fur stole) for her first scene on Dynasty.  She immediately got frosty at the check-in desk because they wanted to put her in a junior suite.

You see, that wouldn’t do.  Dominique needed a suite with two bedrooms. One for her and one for her clothes, as she “does not sleep in her clothes, nor do I sleep with them!”

If my jumpsuit looked like something she’d sleep in, could I wear it out of the house in good conscience?  You know she doesn’t sleep in her clothes. So logic dictates her clothes wouldn’t look like sleepwear.

Your Logic is sound.

And this wasn’t the only conundrum I confronted once I settled on the charmeuse.  The very FACT of charmeuse was stress-inducing.

Why?  Because charmeuse, and other fabrics like it, are notoriously challenging to sew.  If you treat it like a nice simple cotton, you will be sorry. Charmeuse is complicated.  It shifts when you cut it. It puckers when you sew it. It tends to fray, thus all seam allowances must be finished.  Heat makes it shrivel and die. If charmeuse was a person, you’d consider her very high maintenance and dodge her phone calls.

Yet like many high maintenance individuals, charmeuse is also beautiful, charismatic and charming.  So, we make accommodations.

In the charmeuse’s case, that involved pre-treating it with a relaxing hot gelatin bath.  

The gelatin (original Knox brand, unflavored) stiffens the fabric (once dry).  I followed this method in Threads magazine for treating my charmeuse. Stiffening the fabric makes it easier to cut out the pattern accurately.

Other things I did to make sure I didn’t screw up my charmeuse include the following:

*sandwiching the fabric between large sheets of tracing paper to further prevent shifting when cutting out the pattern.

*buying the sharpest sewing needles I could find (to avoid the fabric getting mangled in the sewing machine) and pins designed for delicate fabrics (to avoid holes).

*Using a smaller stitch length (2mm).  This was advised all over the internet.

*Pulling the fabric taut from the back and front (but still allowing the machine to pull it over the feed dogs) while sewing (to avoid puckers). 

*Using french seams throughout (to hide fraying edges).

French seams are lovely.  They are often used for things made out of chiffon, charmeuse and other delicate fabrics.  But sewing a french seam involves sewing it TWICE. Once wrong sides together, then again, right sides together.  Thus, the seam allowances (with their fraying edges) are totally contained.  

I even used french seams on the in-seam side pockets, which I had never done before, using this tutorial.

French seamed pockets

This jumpsuit has two rows of ¼’ elastic at the waist.  The two casings for the elastic are created from the seam allowances where the top and bottom of the jumpsuit are joined.

The edges of these seam allowances also had to be finished.  French seams were not possible, I used a satiny bias tape to finish them.

I made the jumpsuit with long pants.  Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t make it with long sleeves because I didn’t have enough fabric.    I didn’t have enough to make the top’s front and back facings either, so I used a piece of black charmeuse I had leftover from my failure with McCall's 3167 (see previous post).   But I’m glad I didn’t have enough, because I think the black looks great.

I can’t be sure, but I don’t think this jumpsuit looks like pajamas.

Nope, I'm wearing them outside so they can't be PJs

I paired the jumpsuit with a few different vintage 80s belts:

Aqua looked snazzy plus I have matching VINTAGE 80s SHOES!!

How about a green belt and aqua shoes?

Pink belt with the top closed

Vintage Red 80s Belt!

This would be good to wear to a spring or summer wedding if you didn’t want to wear a dress.  

As to whether it’s Diva-worthy, I couldn’t say.  All I know is that the feeling of charmeuse against my skin makes me crave a glass of champagne!

I think we know who the real Diva is around here.

McCall's 8498 (1983): The Jumpsuit Formerly Known as Diahann Carroll's Clamdiggers

When I first encountered McCall’s 8498, I was immediately drawn to the stare-down leveled at me by Diahann Carroll:

Beloved by Dynasty fans everywhere, Diahann Carroll played diva Dominique Deveraux from 1984-1987.  

On her first day on the Dynasty set she sat down for an interview between takes:

She tells the interviewer that Dominique is one of the most “unlikeable” characters she’s ever played, and that’s what she wanted.  Minority actors, she states, often feel required to play “nice” people and Diahann wanted to break out of that. With a smile, she says, “I wanted to be the first black bitch on television.”  Elsewhere, I read that she suggested the writers imagine her as a powerful white man when writing her lines. This combo of attitude and writing ensured that her inner bitch was operating on all cylinders for her first encounter as Dominique with Joan Collins’ Alexis Carrington Colby in Alexis’ penthouse:

Dominique socially knee-caps Alexis by stating that Alexis’ champagne “was obviously frozen in the bottle at some point” and therefore undrinkable.  The shame! Alexis tries to recover by offering caviar which Dominique turns down because she can tell (on sight) that it’s Ostetrova and she prefers Petrossian beluga.   Well, who doesn’t?

The moment before you find out your champagne is unacceptable

I first wanted to make View B of McCall’s 8498, which has the capri pants option.  I was going to make it with a white broadcloth on the top and this cotton fabric with a yellow/white/grey clamshell pattern for the bottom:

All three Dynasty Divas (Diahann Carroll, Joan Collins and Linda Evans who played Krystle Carrington) had their names on McCall’s patterns in the 1980s.   The pattern makers were capitalizing on the popularity of Dynasty and channelling the characters’ glamour.  

Never leave home without your fur.

I had planned to call the blog post "Diahann Carroll's Clamdiggers" because of the nifty alliteration, not to mention the clever allusion to the shell fabric. But soon, I realized that making this pattern in this fabric (from Wal-Mart no less!) and calling it clamdiggers would be a total abomination, like expecting the Queen of England to wear tie-dye. Once I realized how wrong it would be to even connect the name Diahann Carroll with the word Clamdiggers, I scrapped the Wal-Mart cotton and entertained more luxurious notions.

I had some silky satiny and scary Charmeuse fabric that I had planned to use for this pattern:

I can so see Blanche from the Golden Girls in this jacket, can't you?

Charmeuse has a glossy satin finish on one side, with a duller finish on the other.  Like a Diva, it is beautiful, swishy, often seen at balls or galas, and can be notoriously DIFFICULT to work with.  You could say that, sometimes, sewing charmeuse is a real bitch. 

In fact, I scrapped the plans I had for McCall’s 3167 because right off the bat, the fabric for the jacket back inset puckered and frayed when I tried to insert it, and there was no saving it.  

So I had some jacket fabric left over, in addition to another piece of charmeuse I had planned to use for the dress.   So I bravely switched gears and decided to use the charmeuse for McCall’s 8498.

But first, I had to test run this pattern in order to work out any bugs before starting to sew it in the charmeuse.   Don’t tell Dominique, but I used an old bedsheet as my muslin fabric!

This bedsheet is a green khaki color, and it actually looks pretty good.  There were no fitting issues to work out either. When the test piece comes out well, some call it a “wearable muslin” and into the closet it goes.

Tune in later this week to see McCall’s 8498 in a version that I can only hope will be Diva-worthy!

Hoping? You'll need to do better than that.