Making 1940s Inspired Dungarees - Sew & Tell and Pattern Review

Hi everyone, I'm Whitney and I create videos to help sellers of all levels learn new projects and techniques. This week I'm sharing a show and

tell

project and a

pattern

review

for simplifying eight four four seven, it's this old reprint, right? here originally came out in the

1940s

and has been reprinted for simplicity. The

pattern

includes the pants, shirt and

dungarees

all in one. Last year I made a pair of pants from the pattern, as a kind of portable mockup to make sure the fit was going to work before

making

the

dungarees

and here we are a year later.

I couldn't make the bibs last year. I got too busy between

making

YouTube videos and my cosplay projects and all that so a few weeks ago I decided and now is the time to make these, it's now or never because I want to wear them this fall in winter so I sat down and I made a pair of dungarees using this pattern. lightweight black denim in my stash that I had picked up at some sort of swap and sale for two bucks a few years ago. I only had two yards and four inches after I prewashed it and everything and this pattern for my size. requires two and 5/8 yards of fabric, this meant I had eighteen and a half inches less fabric than the pattern called for, but I was so determined to make it work that I pulled out the pattern instruction sheet and looked at the recommendations. design that is here and for this size I am working with and the width of the fabric I was using this reference photo and it has a lot of space taken up by the front, it has an unusual shape and it takes up a lot more space on the fabric than what I felt like I should, so I decided to try to put all the other pieces together, all the other pattern pieces on the fabric, as close as possible and then cut the face out of a separate fabric because it shouldn't be visible at all when the jumpsuit or dungarees are born. , so I didn't see any reason why it would need to be cut from the same denim as the rest, so by doing those things of cutting the fabric faces apart and squeezing the pieces as close as I could to the fabric I was able to make everything fit and I want to mention that I was cutting the smallest size this pattern comes in, it is in pattern size 16 to 24, which by the way if you don't know anything about patterns these are not the same as ready to wear sizes .

I have a separate pattern reading series or I talked about that so if you want to start working with patterns definitely check out that series which I'll link to below which is just a total side note to this video and I was able to squish everything in there and I started cutting everything out once I knew for sure everything would fit, so I cut out all the pieces. denim except for the back facing bodice and then I ended up making the waistband out of the other fabric as well. I hadn't planned this originally, but decided it might be a good idea since I didn't want the waist. the area was too thick with two layers of denim, then from there I just sewed the pattern as usual and as I mentioned I had already made some pants with this pattern so I already had a general idea of ​​how the whole process went . putting it together and everything, so even though this time I was adding the bodice part, I still knew enough about the pattern that it came out pretty well and I was able to make the dungarees in about eight or nine hours total and spread that out over the course of two days while my kids napped and then after they went to bed at night, I made a couple of changes to the pattern, one of them out of necessity.

I only had seven matching buttons and the pattern. I ordered nine so I used the matching seven on the side as closures and then for the other two they are supposed to hold the straps in place in the back and I didn't really want buttons back there so I thought so . it might be awkward because like riding in the car I wasn't sure how I was going to unbutton them with Andry every time I needed to go to the bathroom or something and like I said I didn't have enough buttons so instead of buttons on the back Later I put plastic snaps, they are very easy to fasten behind my back.

I can do it without looking, obviously, and I think it's a great improvement on the pattern, obviously not, you know, approved in 1940, but you know, sometimes you have to do it. what you have to do, so I changed it to snaps and I'm very happy with it. The other change I made to the pattern on the first pair was the cuffs at the bottom that you're supposed to turn into a wide hem all the way in and then turn it inside out so you see all the pretty side of the denim, but that's Quite difficult to make yourself and you like to get the measurement right or at least I had trouble with that so I decided to just fold it and I really liked the look anyway.

I don't mind the opposite side of the denim showing on the bottom, so let me quickly

review

the pattern itself and then I'll talk about some of the issues I have. I found myself and then what I changed on the second pair I made for the pattern itself, normally in pattern sizes, I'm a 14 bus 16 waist 18 hips and I'm often a little lazy and cut a 16 straight because if it fits the waist it doesn't fit me It does matter if it is a little big in the bust and I can usually make the hips work although mine are larger than the recommended size in the pattern pieces for this pattern it says the hips easily and everything The final measurement is 46 inches and a half for the size 16, which allows for about five and a half inches of ease relative to my hip size, but man, if my hips were bigger it wouldn't have worked, it's actually closer. love-handle area ish um you know, I have to do that little shimmy shimmy to put them on, but once they're on, they're totally fine, as far as the difficulty level of this pattern, I'd say it's like a confident beginner or a intermediate level so it's not the easiest pattern in the world because I think there are six darts that you have to sew and the pockets are sewn in an unusual way and then of course there are the facings and the buttonholes but other than that I really There's nothing that's too crazy, extreme or difficult, which is why I think a beginner or intermediate level for sure would be pretty good at making this pattern, even though I had made the pants with this pattern last year when I bought As for to the pockets, I still had to sit there and think a little bit about how it told me to do them because it's not a way I use on anything else, so I just had to think about how to do it for a little bit and then it all worked out, but It only took me a second to figure it out and then the other thing I personally struggled with a little bit was the liners because I got lazy on that part and didn't mark the notches that I know I need to follow my own advice.

I should have marked the notches but I didn't and then when I was trying to sew it I actually sewed the back inside out and they were trying to figure out why This doesn't match the bodice and I had already hemmed it and everything, so I had to cut a new back, fortunately it was not made of cotton fabric, not denim, and I had to sew all that back together. but like I said, that was totally my fault and not the pattern itself and, as is usual with most sewing patterns, they don't give you information about when you need to finish certain seams and certain edges to have a well finished garment, so that this is something you get used to the more you do it and the more garments you make, you have to plan ahead, read the instructions and find out well, in this step I need to finish these edges, you know, or this part, I can wait until later to finish because you want to finish the edges before they get blocked and where you can't access them at that time, for example the parts of the legs where you want to finish the edges like the actual legs before sewing. the crotch seam because once you see the crotch seam you can't get to the top of the inside leg to finish it, so yeah, you have to figure it out yourself, which you have to do with most of the patterns, and so my go-to is usually sort of Serge, lots of things in front as a single layer and then just sew them together like normal and that way I can still press my seams open and not have to worry that's why or anything like that so, that's just It's my go to on a lot of garment projects and you can notice in the photos that I used teal thread on my serger, this was because I already had thread until I made the costume Payton's Halloween costume, her flower princess costume, and she was going. switched back to black thread and then I thought no the box would be a nice fun contrast plus the part where you see Hemi or the surge is the cuffs are against the wrong side of the fabric and right there is the black denim. basically white on the back so the black thread would have stood out too so I figured if I was going to stand out either way I might as well go with a fun color and that's what I chose and I actually like it much how it looks.

I'm glad I made that decision and by the way, thank goodness YouTube, I didn't actually know how to use the automatic buttonhole on my sewing machine so I haven't made buttonholes on a modern machine, I think until this project I did. used. a vintage buttonhole on this machine but this time I didn't want to use vintage so I pulled out my simple singer which looks like it's still 25 years old but to me it's modern so I set it up and that was it. - so my buttonholes and I was in a hurry. I wanted to wear the dungarees that night.

I realized I didn't know how to do it, so I had to look on YouTube. I had to use a modern automatic polar button and luckily I found it. a video for a machine that was almost identical to mine and it explained it really well and that was awesome so I was able to get the buttonholes and buttons out super fast thanks to that so yeah for YouTube so after that I finished making the first one. pair of dungarees I wore them for five days straight because I love them so much and I started planning to make a second pair and there were a few reasons for this, one of the reasons was that I hadn't realized that the denim I used for the first pair It was of such low quality.

It looked great, it felt great. It was a very nice, lightweight denim, but after just a couple of days of wearing them, the denim was already starting to dart and show the white. At least this denim is made, it's like black threads going one direction and like white threads going the other direction, so as I was pulling the darts you could see the white threads there and it just doesn't look right and it makes me think. which will probably break there at some point, I don't know how soon, but it doesn't seem to be that strong in that area and the second time I used them I was charging my car, we needed to go out of town because I was speaking on a YouTube panel on a convention in our state and I leaned towards the back of the vehicle and reached for something and I heard a noise and it didn't sound right and I checked later and I had ripped one of these brooches off it came off the bodice, so where I had placed the brooch, the strap attached to it ripped off and I knew better.

I knew better than to put a brooch through just one layer of denim and it went completely against my better judgment. and I did it anyway and it started exactly as I suspected it would, luckily we were staying at my parents' house that night before my panel event so I stayed up late and used my mom's sewing machine and I patched the hole like I patched jeans. where I put a layer of denim behind it and then sewed a bunch of zigzags on top to strengthen it and the pact worked great, then I put a new piece through two layers of denim and sewed it to the back of the dungarees with the idea in It was in my head that if for some reason it broke again, those little pieces of fabric would be torn and not the breastplates themselves, but luckily that worked out very well while I repaired the place where they had been torn off. that the buttonholes were already showing a lot of stress, this was only my second time wearing the jumpsuit and the right side of the buttonholes which isn't actually the side the button rests against so it should be the least stressed area .

They already looked like they were going to tear past the seam and I showed it to my mom and she said oh, aren't there any gaps there or interlinings or anything like that and I said no? The facing ends about halfway up the buttonhole and I made the facings exactly as shown in the pattern. I placed the buttonholes exactly where the pattern was shown and they just came off the edge of the lining and she said, well, yeah, that's your problem, that the denim just isn't strong enough there and I was thinking. I wonder why a pattern would do this, but I realized I could have made larger buttonholes than the pattern had suggested.

My buttons may have been larger than required. I didn't measure them, so it could have been my fault, but I tried. Help him, I sewed around each buttonhole as if it were a rectangle around it and did some extra sewing and stuff in hopes of prolonging the life of these poor, sorry buttonholes, so as I mentioned, I wanted to make a second pair of dungarees and while wearing the first pair. Wasthinking of all these things I wanted to change and adjust for the second pair, so first I wanted to change the size. I knew I wanted to try to make a 14 bust and then reduce it to a 16 for the rest of the breastplate and I'm NOT great at altering patterns to achieve a similar fit.

I know how to use a pattern very well, I know how to read the instructions and all that. I know how to alter patterns for cosplay, like taking certain elements and adding different design features and stuff, but I'm not very skilled at adjusting the specific fit of them and that's something I'm working on. I'm challenging myself to learn more, so I wanted to make the second pair fit better in the bust area and I knew I could do it. I did it with them because I had a lot of extra denim for the second pair because I bought a whole piece of denim last year and saw that I had quite a bit left, so if I started and it just didn't work out, I could cut new pieces.

And I tried again, so that's what I did. I cut a 14 bodice in the front and ends, instead of cutting it exactly with the sides of the pattern, I tapered it a little near the waist so it can match the size 16 waistband I was wearing and then the back For the bodice and everything else, I cut the size 16 and then when I sewed it, I used the normal 5/8 inch seam allowance on the top area and then tapered it down to a 1/2 inch seam. counter um closer as I got closer to the waist and this actually worked perfectly like I wasn't sure if it was going to work and everything ended up lining up perfectly when I finished it so it was absolutely amazing I couldn't have done it.

I was even hoping it would line up better since I adjusted it and resized the bodice a bit. I used that custom bodice to cut the view out since only the view pattern piece didn't line up exactly right and I widened it as well. the view a little on the front of the bodice as well as the side of the pant portion, I widened that view as well to be sure each buttonhole would sew completely through two layers of fabric and it worked perfectly. everything looks very good inside. I used a really fun contrast lining and I love how it looks inside and out and then of course the eyelets came out much better on the second pair, but at this point I'm confident.

I didn't have seven identical buttons so for the first pair I used the only seven identical buttons I had for the second I didn't know what to do I wasn't going to go out and buy buttons because I like twelve or more pounds of but pounds of buttons to solve this problem I decided to use rainbow colors because I love when things are in color order and I thought it would be a good way to liven up the dungarees and make them a little more fun. So yeah, that's what I did for the buttons on the second pair, the only thing I didn't take into account and I'm not exactly sure if this is what happened or not, but I didn't compare the length of the bodice pattern I used it for. first time wearing the second time and I have a feeling that the size 16 bodice pattern is a little longer than the size 14 and that didn't cross my mind until I was done so the second pair are a slightly heavier denim, it's a mid-weight denim instead of a lightweight denim like the first pair, so they feel a little different because of that, but they look like they possibly have a slightly shorter waist, so they probably I should have added a little bit of length to the bodice on the second one to compensate for that, but I didn't think about that, so to try to overcompensate I had to move the snaps in the back to see where the straps attached because when I I would do like lean over or sit down or something like that, the snaps would open because there just wasn't enough ease and you know there's room to move in the jumpsuit when I sat down so I just lifted the snap up.

I made the snap the same way I did the first one when I repaired them, where I put a snap through two layers of denim and then sewed it onto the dungarees and that stays on super well, like I said the snaps popped open when I wanted bend over or something, but they opened up, they didn't rip off, which is fantastic, so to conclude this super long chatty video, these dungarees from both pairs are like my favorite things in my closet right now. I'm using them a lot and will definitely use them. many more in winter, even in spring and summer, if the lighter ones hold up they will be great for spring, the heavier the second pair they will be great for winter and I love them a lot if I have been considering making more casual clothing

inspired

by the

1940s

or maybe you want a land girl style outfit.

You should definitely try this pattern. Simplicity. 8 4 4 7. I highly recommend it. I think it is a high quality pattern. I want to make the pattern over time. pattern shirt, if you try this pattern, share a picture on my Facebook page or Instagram and tag me. I'm at Whitney underscore sews and yes, I love these clothes and yes, I'm excited to get them. I'm going back to wearing the 1940's style now that the weather is getting cooler because last winter I didn't have enough cool weather clothes to keep it up and I'm really excited if you want to check out some of my other vintage

inspired

clothing videos.

I'll have some linked here on the side and until next time happy sewing.