S H I B U I – Vogue 8648

30 May S H I B U I – Vogue 8648

“When the student is ready, the master appears.”   Buddhist Proverb

I was ready to learn how to make a good dress, and boy did I learn. My dedicated efforts in dressmaking were often flawed by random mediocre details leaving me discouraged and insecure.

Enter the Online Couture Dress Class with Susan Khalje.

I’m wondering if I even knew what  C O U T U R E meant.

Very nice, good fitting, custom-made clothes with special hand-sewn techniques – right? My naivety proved me nearly clueless.

While Susan suggests several dress patterns to use, the Craftsy course includes this free Vogue 8648 dress pattern which she illustrates in the class.

I decided to invest my time in a dress I could wear most anywhere, as well as making a dress I have never purchased – a classic and simple linen dress.

Did I say simple?

The dress has 21 pieces, plus 21 pieces of underlining, plus 21 pieces of lining, and 21 pieces for the muslin.

Nonetheless, the dress is one I wanted in my wardrobe.

Yes it’s me. No bows, no ruffles, no bright colors or prints.

Perhaps the loving attention I have given to the 84 pattern pieces is evident simply by the way I wear my newest dress, but I doubt the intense labor involved will ever be apparent, which brings me to the most recent addition to my vocabulary:

S H I B U I .

It’s a Japanese term for something that appears simple but is actually very complex in detail, and this simple looking dress fits the bill with:

a thread traced muslin,

84 pattern pieces basted by hand, by machine, with silk thread and/or cotton poly thread

over 55 catch-stitched seams, by hand of course

hand inserted zipper

hand inserted lining

and several other couture techniques such as running thread through beeswax and then setting it with a hot iron.

Maybe this is how most everyone sews, but the course was an eye-opener to me and my approach to dressmaking has forever changed. Every dress cannot be couture but every dress endeavor can be approached with a couture frame of mind. It’s hard going back to what was now that I know a better way.

Many thanks to Susan Khalje for sharing her masterful skills with grace and eloquence!

My class review can be read here, on the Pattern Review website.