Vogue 9100 Pattern Review: 1950's Style Cocktail Dress

I was so excited to make this dress. Something I love to do is make a new outfit or dress for an event. What I needed was a cocktail dress and I found a cute little pattern from Vouge to make. I loved the 50’s style in this dress, and most importantly I loved the pockets! I plan to put pockets into as many dresses as I can manage from here on out. It is not too hard to do actually, but you just need to make sure they are deep enough or everything will fall out.

There were several problems with this pattern that made it very hard for me to like it in any way. I was ready different reviews for this dress and the biggest issue many people had were in regards to the straps. The straps would gap in back and fall off the shoulder. I made a muslin of the pattern first to see if this was also the case on me. I am glad I did since I did have that same problem. I tried several different adjustments to keep the strap on my shoulders. There was really nothing I could do in order to keep these straps on. Short of redrafting the whole placement of the straps, there was nothing I could really do.

The other issue I had with the dress was the waistline. I honestly did not see this until I completed the whole dress. The drawing of the dress on the front of the pattern envelope was a bit misleading. It looks like it has a longer drop waist bodice. On myself, I need to have a lower waist with a defined bodice. I feel this looks better on me since I have a high waistline and fabulous hips. After I completed the dress, I discovered the bodice stopped at what Vogue considers a natural waistline which is a bit too high for me. What this meant for me was to redo the whole bodice and create a drop waist. I almost gave up because I didn’t know if I had enough material for another bodice. Lucky for me, I always buy just a scooch extra fabric in case I make an error.

I admit I have been doing a bit of complaining about this pattern, so I would like to add a few things about what I did like about it. The pattern was very easy to make. You can use a wide variety of fabrics and finishes to create a lovely dress. For instance, you can use a plain dark fabric with a light thread for a topstitch. Here is a great article on Colette about how to get the correct topstitch technique: https://blog.colettehq.com/tutorials/8-tricks-for-perfect-topstitching. I tend to use a longer stitch since I am using it to create a detail as well as using it for a function.

Another great thing about this pattern is that you can use different bodices for your cup size. Since we know that we are not all one size fits all, it was nice to use a pattern that already had that as a way to customize your dress. I usually have to take out some of the pattern myself and shape it properly. I suggest getting a reference book for yourself so you can try to customize the patterns to fit your body type. I did try to use some techniques I found in my book to modify the shoulder strap, but we all know that did not work. For the most part, this smaller cup size did do well for me.

As you can see from the picture of the vogue pattern and my finished garment, the drop waist looks much better on me. If I kept it as the pattern wanted me to do, I would have looked like I was wearing a sack. That really was not the look I was going for in a cocktail dress. I also had to use safety pins to keep the straps from falling down. The likelihood for me to make this dress again is very low. There were too many fit issues with this pattern and ultimately I had to make too many changes to really like the original fit. I will, however, wear what I created again. I hope to bring it out for a nice date night or end of the week happy hour.