It is catch-up time around here! I have several things I have knit or sewn that have been waiting for their turn on the blog, and this is my oldest sewing project in that category. I made Simplicity 9449, View D, a full skirt, for my daughter to wear to church on Christmas Eve 2021. Yikes. My tardiness aside, I would like to say that I just love it when the Big 4 reissue some of their vintage patterns. These are our heritage brands, and they have an amazing catalogue of patterns. I love so many of the vintage ones, but finding one in your size, especially if you don’t fall into typically vintage sizing, can be tricky. The reissues are great because they come in modern size ranges with multiple sizes in one envelope–excellent if you fall into more than one size. One funny thing I noticed, however, was that although this pattern says it’s from the 1960’s on the pattern envelope, there are fashion facts from the 1950’s on the instructions inside. After looking up the original, Simplicity 1235, on the Vintage Pattern Wiki, I found that it was originally published in 1955, so I guess the outside date is a typo.
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Simplicity 9449 comes with four views: a dress, a jumper, a slim skirt, and a full skirt. My daughter wanted the full skirt, View D, so I went off to Joann’s and found a suitably Christmas-y fabric–a burgundy (AKA “Tawny Port”) polyester crepe. I think it was from their Casa collection, which has fancier fabrics.
Helpfully, Joann’s had coordinating zippers for this fabric line, so I grabbed a matching invisible zipper as well. What a beautiful thing to have perfectly matched fabric and zipper!
We made a few changes to the pattern. I moved the side zipper to the back and we added some in-seam pockets in a fun Rifle Paper Co. quilting cotton that I had left over in my stash.
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We omitted the patch pockets that came with the pattern. The pocket pattern piece and directions we did use came from Simplicity 8689. I also added an extra bar to the waistband so that you could adjust the tightness of the waistband just a little bit depending on how you are feeling on a given day.
Overall, it wasn’t too hard to sew, which is great because I do not love sewing to a deadline, and this was definitely one of those deadline situations. I used a microtex 70/10 needle in my sewing machine, sewed everything with a straight stitch and finished seams with my serger. I used silk pins, and did a rolled hem using my sewing machine. That seemed faster than following the hemming directions and I wanted to practice rolled hems.
Also, following the hemming directions would have involved a fair amount of pressing, and this fabric did not press well, which is unsurprising since it is made of polyester and is a bouncy crepe. While the pattern envelope calls for an invisible zipper, the directions inside for View D show a standard zipper, so I used the instructions on the zipper package to shorten and install it.
After I finished, the side seams were weirdly puckered, which you can kind of see in the picture below.
I resewed them once in case I had caused it by tugging on them to match them up lengthwise, but it didn’t help. Was it because they were on the bias? Because I serged the seam allowances incorrectly somehow? I’m not sure. The front and back seams were just fine, but they’re also on the straight grain, so they’re more stable.
All told, I’m pretty happy with this project, and I think my daughter was, too. This is maybe a half circle skirt, and she loved the fullness, especially when worn with a petticoat. Unfortunately, the polyester fabric is a major static magnet, which is kind of a bummer. So, there were pros and cons. Typos aside, I would make this pattern again. I would rather not use that polyester crepe fabric a second time, however.
This is a good basic pattern that easily gives you a vintage or modern look, depending on how you tweak and style it. Even better, it was something I could make in a short amount of time in the midst of everything else I was working on.
Pattern and Branch 