1940s Tea Dress

Reviewed by Juska on 19th October, 2018

This is 1940s style tea dress pattern with elbow length sleeves.

The sizes go from UK 8 to 20. The pattern doesn’t have any ease. I usually go with size 8 with SOI pattern but this time I had to take size 10 and even make it bigger below bust.

The pattern suits best for the woven fabrics with drape. I used viscose crepe with a nice floral print.

The instructions were clear as much as I needed them. This was not really a difficult pattern to make, so I did not need to pay very much attention to the instructions.

I like the style a lot. However, I think that the style looks nicer with a bit longer skirt. What I did not like was that the upper front pattern piece was too short for me. However, I understand since I have a long torso. I’m more annoyed with myself for not measuring this before making the dress since it is impossible to fix later. The gathers at the bust line and the sleeves were spread a bit too wide for me. I had to move both the bust gathers and the sleeve gathers to make them look good.

I made the skirt longer and took out some fabric from the centre back. I also moved the gathers towards the centre front at the bust seam and also moved the gathers at the sleeves towards the front and gathered them more closely together at the shoulders.

I will probably make this dress again. For all my fitting problems the result is something that I think suits me and now that I have fixed the issues sewing another dress will be easy.

Conclusion: A great dress in vintage style. Check out my blog post here.