The Sewing Goatherd: The Thanksgiving Paisley dress

Happy belated Thanksgiving and wishing you a joyful Advent! Long time no talk, things have been rather busy around here the past little bit!

We bought a house! And moved! It only took nearly a year of searching for just the right place - close enough to the city for jobs, far enough out for peace and quiet, and a little bit of land so I can keep my goats. Finally, we found it, and we couldn’t be more thrilled!

We’ve spent all our weekends the past couple months working on house stuff. And last week we got to host a few family members for a day after Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner. (There was a nice extended family Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving day itself as well, but not everyone was able to make it to that, thus Thanksgiving Part II)

Our first holiday in our own home! This gave me a chance to wear the Thanksgiving dress I made myself last year (and never got around to posting because I am frightfully behind on blogging my makes.)

This dress began, uhhh, 4+ years ago? (Blogging is not the only thing I’m “behind” on, as my fabric stash will show.) A length of vintage cotton paisley showed up in a fabric de-stash group on Facebook and I snatched it up! I have a soft spot for paisley prints.

Upon receiving the fabric, I decided it would be perfect for a 1950’s style fall dress, and picked out a pattern from my vintage pattern collection - Butterick 7152. An original 50’s pattern I picked up at an antique mall. It was a juniors pattern - a touch too small for me, but not too hard to size up.

I ear-marked this pattern and fabric to make myself a Thanksgiving dress. Which, I didn’t get done in time for that Thanksgiving. Or the following one. Or the following one.

I’m not entirely sure how long that trend continued, I lost track eventually, but last fall I decided I was going, absolutely going, to make this dress before Thanksgiving. And it actually happened!

As much as I love the paisley print, it’s definitely on the busy side, so I decided to break it up with a contrasting collar, cuffs, piping, and belt. For these details, I picked the scraps of orange/green shot linen, left over from this dress, which I refashioned into this skirt.

The belt is actually made from the material I trimmed off the bottom of the skirt when I leveled the hem. It’s not at all an even width - and I’m calling that a design choice.

I picked large green buttons to go down the bodice front. The pattern called for the buttonholes to be on the diagonal- a fun detail I’ve added to other projects since.

As the front buttons only go down to the waist, the pattern called for a side seam zipper as well. However, I really don’t like center front zippers, so instead I put an invisible zipper in the center front skirt seam. It starts where the buttons end - and the zipper pull is hidden by the belt. I used one of my prized vintage metal invisible zippers for this - as I have rather negative opinions on modern plastic invisible zippers.

As a finishing touch, I hand-sewed the 3” wide hem. I don’t generally take the time to hand sew hems on cotton dresses since machine sewn hems look decent enough - but this dress had waited so long to be made, it deserved a special hem.