I made a Cambie, but I had a good reason

I loved La La Land. Yes it was silly and frivolous and presented a LA that doesn’t really exist particularly racially and hired actors who are neither professional singers nor dancers for roles that required a lot of singing and dancing and basically was another Hollywood-loves-to-make-movies-glorifying-Hollywood movie. You know what? I don’t care. Or I care, a little bit, but not enough not to love La La Land.

Partly it was just so much fun. I loved the dancing. No surprise. I also loved the dresses. La La Land had my platonic ideal of dancing dresses. Just look at the colours!

Now. Emma Stone is lovely but in build we are nothing alike. I could probably fit two of her in me and have room to spare, for one thing; for another, there is a conspicuous absence of space for bra straps in these lovely dresses, and that is a distinct dancing dress no-no for me. So while I loved the dresses I knew that most of them would be best loved from a “they look fantastic! … on you” vantage point.

But the yellow dress.

The yellow La La Land dress I have to try to make.

(For the rest, I will be content with stealing the colour scheme.)

I could not find any pattern with all the features:

1. Square neckline front and back
2. Sleeves join to neckline front and back; slight cut-on cap/flutter shape
3. Gathers into waistband
4. Waistband (as opposed to skirt and bodice directly joining)
5. 3/4 or full circle skirt

There were a ton of posts a few months back about how to make the La La Land dresses, but none of the patterns were really a good match. The skirt’s not a challenge–I can draft that; a pattern’s not needed–but the bodice is, and the Cambie looked like it would provide the best starting point, with the front sleeve construction and the waistband. Once I got the bodice to fit, altering the sleeves and changing the sweetheart to a square neckline would be no big deal.

But getting a bodice meant for pear shapes to fit me is itself not a no-big-deal. So I am, slightly, eating my words on giving up on Sewaholic patterns. It was the Cambie or start from scratch, really.

So step one–look at that Dear Readers, an excessive prologue to a post about a dress that is itself a prologue–was to just make a straight-up Cambie with known alterations to the bodice, and tweak the fit.

This is a cotton voile floral from Fabricland, bought on sale, lined with a white cotton voile from Fabricland, also bought on sale. Altogether the dress probably weighs about 3 oz, the fabric is so light; it’s going to be perfect on those summer days when it’s scorching and muggy and anything feels like it’s too heavy to wear.

Alterations and tweaks:

1. 3″ FBA to the size 8, traced to a new sheet so I wouldn’t butcher the original
2. 1/4″ removed from the shoulder seam, front and back
3. Front neckline raised about 1/4″ at the join with the sleeve
4. Sleeve shortened about 1/2″ inch at the join with the bodice
5. Added about 1″ to and changed the shape of the top of the pocket pattern piece so I could sew it to the waistband and provide better support on the inside. It helped, but it’s not super relevant to the eventual La La Land dress.
6. Originally nervous about the waist measurement of the size 8 so cut a size 10 in the back to give me fudge space. Took out the fudge space, and an additional 1″ on either side of the zipper near the neckline.

And then once the dress was assembled, moved the front waist dart on the bodice pattern piece about 1″ closer to the centre.

I love it. I think the main alteration for the La La Land dress is really just going to be the back. I’ll use the sleeve lining piece for the sleeves, extend it a bit, double it up for the back, and then lower the back neckline and square it off. Straighten off the sweetheart neckline in the front and–voila. La Land Dress bodice ready to go.