Doctor T Designs

I sewed this dress back in October, but it’s taken me a while to get around to blogging about it. Black fabric is notoriously difficult to photograph, and if I”m being honest, this didn’t end up being a favorite project of mine, so the desire to show it off was also quite subdued. But I do want to try and get everything I’ve made this year on the blog before we roll into 2026, so here we go.

I blogged briefly about this dress in my November wrap up post, but I’ll go into a bit more of a deep dive here. When it was announced that Chess the musical was having a Broadway revival, I used it as a bit of an excuse to go visit my sister on a “not really a vacation” because I was still working “vacation.” But we made the most of a week with an extra holiday and two weekends to bookend things, and made the most of a week in New York. We did make it to Mood, Metro Textiles, Pacific Trimmings, and other fun places in the Garment District, I finally saw the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (hardhat walking tour is highly recommended!), and we ate at a lot of great restaurants. We also saw a few shows, but one of the things we wanted to do was see the Masquerade – a Phantom of the Opera walk through theater experience. If you can go I recommend it, it’s fabulous. One of the fun things about it is the dress code – you must stick to a black, white, or silver color palette and wear a mask at all times. While I have a few fun gowns, none of them fit the mandatory color scheme, and my sister was in the same boat. So we both decided to sew gowns for the event. My sister went to her trusty Vogue 9343, but I decided to try a new pattern: a 1970s Jiffy vintage reprint Simplicity 3046.

There were a lot of things I liked about this pattern that made me think I could achieve it in a few short weeks: it looked simple, there weren’t a lot of pieces, it was reversible, and it has the T-silhouette I’ve been wanting to play with a bit more. I also imagined I’d be understated and elegant, and that I could have a lot of fun accessorizing such a gown. I decided to make it in a black stretch velvet from Cali Fabrics, and because the pattern measurements seemed pretty reasonable, I dove right into making the dress without doing a mock up. This, as we shall see, was a mistake.

I will say that cutting this out and putting it together was fairly straightforward. I don’t often sew vintage or vintage reprint patterns, so I was a bit surprised to see that the instructions were a literal reprint of the 1970s instructions for this pattern. There is a supplemental page with information for cutting layouts for the expanded size range, but otherwise the techniques are straight from the 1970s.

In general this is fine, though there was a lot more hand sewing than I expected from a “Jiffy” pattern. I probably over complicated things because I wanted nice finishing on the inside, so I spent way too long binding some of the seams in fold over elastic, especially since I abandoned this in areas where it was going to cause weird bulk or I just didn’t want to think too hard about how to apply it. It does look nice where I did apply it though.

My sewing on this went in fits and spurts; for the longest time I had just the waist tie hanging out on my dressform until I finally sewed the rest of the dress together. I put off a lot of sewing for too long because of some of the hand sewing that you need to do on the neckline pieces. So for a long time it was half-done, waiting to be finished in my sewing room.

Once I did get the seams closed and it was ready for a try on, I realized I didn’t love it. I had imagined an elegant and sophisticated easy dress. But I felt more like a Disney villain who’s robe kept falling off. While the bust, waist, and hip measurements were all pretty decent, the neck opening was huge. I can’t decide if this is so big because of being graded into the larger size scale, or if it’s just this wide because of the front/back reversible nature of the dress. But either way, it wasn’t good. I didn’t love it. So I pivoted into my backup plan: another McCall’s 8340. The tale of that dress is coming another day, but suffice to say that while that dress may have given off trash bag vibes, I was much more content looking like a fabulous trashbag than I was a melting Disney villain.

I considered leaving this dress to become a wadder or a pulling it apart for something else in the future, but I realized, no. I didn’t want this to be a WIP wadder following me into 2026, so after my actual dress was well in hand, I decided to push through and finish the hems and mark this as done. The hems weren’t great. If I liked the rest of the dress I’d rip them out and do them by hand. But, I couldn’t be bothered. I may return to this in the future to try and refashion it to salvage it, but I’m waiting for inspiration to strike. I In the meantime, here is the dress.

I can say that, in theory, I do like how the straight across neckline looks on me. Will I alter this pattern to narrow the neckline and try again? Maybe. I feel like this dress could work. I think I probably need to take in the straight neckline about 3 inches, which I could probably do, but I also need to raise the V neckline about 4 or 5 inches, which is a bit trickier than just taking it in as drafted. I just don’t know if I am that excited about it to make another. The moment has passed, and frankly I’m much more likely to make another McCall’s dress or even another pattern over this one. The McCall’s pattern has proven itself a winner, and I wouldn’t mind having one of those in every color. This… was much more of a specific vision for a specific event, and I don’t know if I am excited to try and make this dress again without that sort of event specific need driving me.

In the meantime, I suppose I could swan around the house in it and live up my villain era. At least as long as I run around with my arms out to keep it from falling off of my shoulders…

All in all kinda of a sad trombone whomp whomp of a sewing project. It remains to be seen what I do with this pattern, but at least it isn’t living in the sewing space as a perpetual WIP. And without further ado here is my official pattern review.

Pattern Review

Pattern Description: A simple 1970s long sleeved dress that can be worn front to back or back to front with straight or V-neckline and two hem lengths. From the Simplicity website: “Vintage Simplicity 1970’s Jiffy knit dress in two lengths and sash sewing pattern. The short or long dress with long kimono sleeves has high straight neckline and slit in front, V-shaped neckline in back and self-fabric sash or purchased belt slipped thru thread carriers. Dress may be worn with a V-shaped neckline in the front. Short dress is regular length. Long dress is ankle length. Authentic Vintage Reproduction includes additional sizes and cutting layouts.”

Pattern Sizing: This pattern comes in two size ranges 8-16, and 18-26. I used the second size range and cut a size 20 top and graded out to 22 at the hip. I went off the finished garment measurements and not the recommended sizing on the back of the envelope, which would have had me in a 24/26.

Were the instructions easy to follow?  The instructions are actually a complete reprint of the vintage instructions, with a supplemental page of cutting layouts for the expanded (larger) size range, which was not part of the original vintage sizes. There is only one page of instructions, and though it took me a minute to get used to looking at them after having made a lot of modern Simplicity patterns, they were very easy. Interestingly, the instructions recommend a lot of techniques that wouldn’t typically be used for sewing knits today, likely due to the changes in the types of knit fabrics available and the types of machines available for the home sewing market. Overall though, the instructions are quite easy, but there is a fair bit of hand sewing, so I’m not sure this pattern was as fast of a project as I had anticipated based on the simple pattern design.

Did it look like the photo/drawing when you were done with it?  Yes, though I found the neckline opening on the size 20 to be too wide and did not fit my shoulders as closely as in the image on the packaging.

What did you particularly like/dislike about the pattern?  I like the style of this pattern and thought it would be very elegant. I also like the concept of it being reversible and very versatile. However, I found that the neckline opening was very wide and will probably need to grade between sizes or narrow the neckline if I made it again in the future.

Fabric used: Black stretch velvet from Cali Fabrics. I also used fold over elastic to finish off some of the seam edges to give it a more polished look on the inside.

Pattern alterations or design changes you made:  I measured the pattern and aside from grading out one size at the hips, just went for it with it with no other alterations. I measured the flat pattern and it seemed like it would work well, but in practice the neck opening is just too wide for my shoulders. The only changes I made were to add fold over elastic to finish off the edges, which was more for aesthetics and to test the technique than for any real structural purpose. The fabric wasn’t going to fray and didn’t really need it, but I was feeling fancy.

Would you sew this again?  Would you recommend it to others?  I’m not sure if I will sew this again. I still love this dress in theory, but I think because it didn’t fit well around the neck I realized I wasn’t going to be comfortable wearing it to an event and sort of got into a state of being “over it” and didn’t do my best work to finish off the hems, which hasn’t helped. I still think it looks simple and glamorous in the drawing, but on me it just sort of feels like wearing a very boring robe. I suppose it might be a case of using accessories to make it shine, but between the fit issues and the overall feeling of “blah” I get when I put it on, I’m not sure how motivated I will be to fix it or work to make a better version.

Conclusion:  I was trying to rush through a few projects to have them ready to wear to an event with a very strict dress code. This was my primary option, but since this was a new pattern and had a possibility of failure I made a backup from a TNT pattern (I’ve made it only once before, but I love it, so it’s gets instant TNT status). I wore the backup to the event, and will ponder what to do with this project if I want to try and save it. I could see adding some fabric to help narrow the neckline, and I’ll need to rip out the hems and re-do them by hand to get a nice finish I think (the velvet was lovely and well behaved until I got to the hems…). I could also chop off the top and save the bottom to make a skirt, or just pull it apart completely to do some other things with the fabric. I need to think about it for a bit while I work on other projects. I’m a bit sad that it didn’t work out, but I feel like I gambled on it fitting because it’s such a simple pattern and that really didn’t pay off, so it’s my own fault for not doing more testing on the fit. I am glad I tried a vintage reprint pattern though, because using vintage instructions was a new experience, and I was still be able to enjoy the event with my backup dress, which turned out much better.

So, we probably have a strong contender for the worst sewing project of the year, but at least it’s finally on the blog. And hopefully next will be my other dress, which has a much happier ending!