Date Night: Would Cathy Lane Approve??

Or What to Do with Fabric that has Pedigree...

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I received a very wonderful gift of fabric from the incomparable Peter of Male Pattern Boldness. And this fabric came with definite pedigree, if a bit uncertain provenance. 

Cathy Lane in her MPB sewn LBD

Apparently, a few years ago Peter found four rolls of black fabric on the street in NY and kept three of them. Some became his very first project for his jet setting twin cousin, Cathy Lane - a little black dress which cemented her place as MPB muse and international woman of fashion. So, when Peter gave me two lengths of silk knit in two different weights from this very same fabric find, I knew I had to make them into something chic. After all, Cathy set the bar high with her LBD.

Cathy shines in retro styles, while my sensibility is more modern. But I knew that this dress had to live up to Cathy's high standards of taste. So, I picked Vogue 1342, a Donna Karan dress with crazy looking pattern pieces. I used the tissue weight silk for the drapey outer layer and the light weight for the lining.

There are no alteration lines on the pattern. So, I had to make an educated guess at where to alter so that I had a little extra room at the hips. There were a few moments that I feared the worst. Would the dress fit? Would it flatter? Or would it be a flop, like my Donna Karan thighs of doom skirt?

 

Not a flop, I think.

When I modeled the finished dress for Phin, he made the absolute perfect comment: Let's go on a date this week. Just so you understand the magnitude of that compliment, we've been married for 8 years.

Hello, date night!

Unfortunately, the only pictures that Phin snapped while on said date were of me shopping for gourmet treats in Eataly.

A certain amount of chocolate helps fill out this dress...

Anyway, I love how the dress came out and feel tres chic in it. There is just something about silk that feels so very nice on. 

There are some real plusses to this pattern and it's design. One of the problems I had with my thighs of doom DK skirt was that with only one seam and no lining, the drapes collapsed and got droopy if you moved. Also, it was clingy.  But, very cleverly, this pattern has you sew all of the seams invisibly to the lining, so that all the gathers and draping stay where they are supposed to and you've got the smoothing powers of a lining to deal with any clingy problems.

Front gathers

Back gathers/only vertical seam

The fabric was great to work with and I would suggest that anyone making this dress stick to a light weight knit for the outer pieces with something more substantial as lining. There's a lot of gathering involved in this pattern and really bulky seams are a risk if you use a heavier fabric. Because I didn't want to add any bulk whatsoever, I simply serged all the seams.

As I mentioned when I posted about this crazy Donna Karan dress, there is a certain satisfaction in turning a bonkers looking pattern into a dress. I really enjoyed sewing this up, even if there were moments when I wasn't sure that it was going to work or fit. But it did. 

Chic? I think so. I hope Cathy approves! 

Speaking of jet-setting, I'm currently in London for work. I'm meeting up with Rachel of House of Pinheiro on Saturday. Holler if you want in! 

I love date night!

Edited to add: Pattern Review here!