Mad Men Again? Peggy’s Inverted Pleats Dress

Why on earth did I make another Mad Men inspired dress?

Well, my dear hubby happened to read my Mad Men poll and his favorite was Peggy’s Inverted Pleats Dress. So, to make the man who’s been paying for all my sewing fabrics, patterns and notions happy, I made a dress inspired by this dress.

But, seriously what really sealed the deal was the word ‘jersey’ on the pattern envelope. I never thought I could make this dress in jersey so it’s really adding icing to the cake! And viola, my second Mad Men inspired dress was born! The dress was finished last week but I have been getting a little lazy with the photography. The weather has been weird. It’s either extremely hot or stormy so that didn’t help either.

I was keen to do the exact navy/orange combo at first but decided to use a purple/grey/burnt orange diagonal plaid ponte knit and a burnt orange interlock for the contrast & facings since I had these in my stash. Vintage Simplicity 5581 from the 1960s was used for this dress which was not difficult to sew but trying to match that irregular diagonal plaid print really did prolong the process and gave me a headache.

The inverted pleats were meant to be cut as one piece with the main fabric so I had to do some simple adjustments (mostly adding seam allowances to previously joint pieces and sewing them together) to create the contrast. The diagonal plaids on the bodice’s princess seams matched pretty well. My version also has a cute ribbon sewed on the neckline.

The print on the skirt pieces matched not too badly but the connecting point between bodice and skirt didn’t match as well as I had wished for. But, I am very happy that all seams/ pleats/ darts matched well on the front and back and was thrilled that the centre back print matched after I pulled up the invisible zipper. Phew!