I love my kawaii sewing projects, but every now and then a girl’s gotta’ return to her roots. Before I became anime obsessed, I started out as a lot of home sewers do. I had a deep adoration for vintage dresses. I started this dress project at home in Kentucky, and ended up finishing it here in my little NYC apartment. I guess being back home made me remember my first love of sewing retro dresses. With that idea in mind, I began sewing Simplicity pattern 8448.
Purple Floral Fabric
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Sew Along Simplicity Pattern Cheaper
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The beautiful purple floral silk fabric you see here, is one that I ordered online a long time ago. Just sitting in my fabric stash, it seemed like a great fit for dress pattern 8448. For the matching jacket design, I ended up buying a complimentary solid purple silk for the inside lining. I then used the rest of the purple flower print fabric on the outside. Not only a great vintage dress pattern, but I was also very excited to be creating a women’s vintage clothing set! Matching coordinates are a particular favorite of mine. It always seems so chic and elegant to me when I see a woman wearing a nice two piece set. Whether it’s with a top, pant, skirt, or jacket I always enjoy it. I’m an honest sucker for matching clothing sets.
Simplicity 8448 Sew Along
Want to learn to sew? Follow this Simplicity dress pattern 8448 sew along YouTube video and make your own! I’ve videoed the entire dress making project from step 1 to the very end. You can follow the DIY sewing instructions here and follow along with me.
Simplicity 8448 Review
For the most part I followed the pattern instructions pretty closely. I only made alterations to a few places on my 8448 simplicity dress. I altered the way the dress straps are sewn and my dress hem is a bit different. Though I didn’t have any problems sewing the dress itself, I would still tell you that this is an intermediate level pattern. I have been sewing for many years so most of the how to dress instructions were easy to follow. If you’re new to sewing or a brand new sewing beginner, I would advise you to save this project for a little later down the road. As you gain more experience you’ll be ready to take on more lengthy projects like Simplicity 8448.
Watch The Finished Dress In Action!
Dress Strap Alteration
The dress straps were one of the few things that I had to alter. I did get very lucky in that my straps didn’t have to be altered length wise. The pattern instructions simply have you pin down the straps and then hand stitch them in place. My straps fit perfectly from the from to the top of the back piece and needed no length alterations. Where I did alter my straps, which I cover in the above sew along video, was in the very front of the dress. I found that my dress straps were popping up in an unattractive way in the front where the design begins to crisscross. I wanted my straps to lay flat, but I also didn’t want to use the movement of the pieces. In order to accomplish both of those goals, I simply tacked my straps down in the front with about an inch of invisible hand stitching. It was very easy to fix, and I’m happy with the finished look at the dress.
Dress Side Seams
It’s not a large alteration, but I did want to make note of it. I did take my dress in at the side seams, predominantly around the curvature of the bust and at the top of the ribcage. Other than that, this dress for the most part remains untouched. Of course depending on your body type and shape, you may find that you need completely different dress alterations. There are the simple changes that I made, so I wanted to share them with you. I really consider myself lucky that this dress pattern fit me so well with so very few alterations. Since the 8448 Simplicity pattern is at least an intermediate level sewing project, I think doing many fitting alterations would ahem been difficult. I’m very thankful that I only experience a handful and that they were easily accomplished in a single day!
Dress Hem Changes
“Oh I can’t wait to sew this entire hem by hand!”, said no one ever. One of the best things I ever bought myself, is my BabyLock serger sewing machine. If someone were to take my serger from me, it would literally have to be pulled from my dead lifeless corpse. YEP. Pretty much how I feel about it. I simply folded over my beautiful hemline at the bottom of my dress fabric, pinned it down, switched the serger feet to use the blindstich hem and finished my dress hem literally in moments. If you do have to sew yours by hand, you have my authentic and most empathetic feelings. I did not do that. If you don’t have to then I recommend that you don’t either!
