On 4^th October I posted a blog headed “Back to Basics” where I discussed making a new toile shift dress. Unfortunately the fashion fabric dress was delayed but I did manage to finish it a couple of weeks ago.

I used a linen-look Chocolate Brown and Cream spot fabric bought a couple of years ago from Fabricland. I had intended to make a different pattern and hence had more than enough fabric for this incarnation. Infact, you may recognise the fabric as I used some of the surplus as the contrast when making the Maggie Bag.

Having already made a toile I was confident in cutting and stitching the dress with the minimum of fittings and alterations. I had already laundered the fabric to minimise the risk of shrinkage so if the dress does get smaller on me it will be due to personal expansion not fabric shrinkage!

The dress took approximately 4 hours to stitch. I set the lapped zip with 4 rows of machining rather than spending time making a hand-picked insertion. I was also fortunate that the pattern match is pretty fair considering that I was not paying too much attention to the location of the spots.

The sleeves are lined with calico. The neckline and sleeve hems are top-stitched with a twin needle. There is a back hem vent and the hem itself has been hand stitched.

I am especially pleased with this dress as due to the “qualities” of this fabric it has come out a little larger than the original toile and is therefore very comfortable to wear. The fabric, although it looks like Linen, does not crease and even after a day of standing and sitting is devoid of creases across the front.

Although there were two ladies booked into the Dressmaking Part 2 workshop on Saturday, only 1 turned up so Hilary was fortunate to have one-to-one tuition.

As there were a few “tweaks” required to perfect the fit of Hilary’s toile we busied ourselves with that for a couple of hours. We re-drafted the pattern and whilst Hilary ate lunch I sewed a new toile bodice so that we could double-check the fit after those tweaks had been made. Finally we had a really good-fitting toile bodice to use when making up the New Look dress pattern.

Hilary had chosen some pretty Turquoise cotton fabric which had a non-directional print and this made pattern placement easy. The dress was cut out and darts etc., marked with a Frixion ® pen.

By this time having experienced a “full-on” day of tuition Hilary decided to quit whilst ahead.

Armed with the workbook that I had produced to accompany the class, Hilary will now complete her dress in easy stages at home. I look forward to hearing how she gets on and seeing a photograph of the completed garment.

In anticipation of tutoring yet another dressmaking course I decided to re-visit my basic shift dress pattern. I used a Prima pattern that was originally released with the magazine back in April 1997! Since then I have made the pattern up many, many times. Over the years it has seen a variety of sizes from a 14 to a 22 plus lots of variations in styling.

So – back to basics. I measured myself (not a happy experience!) and noted on my chart. As I use my upper bust/chest measurement on which to base the pattern I needed to draft my “personal fit” pattern from a size 20 and then do a full bust adjustment.

First I used the Nancy Zieman method of pin, pivot and slide. I compared the finished result with the TNT bodice that I have been using of late and there was a huge discrepancy.

I then re-drafted using the Palmer Pletsch method of slashing and spreading  the pattern and after a deal of “finessing” ended up with a bodice that was not too dissimilar to my TNT bodice.

I cut out the front and back using a firm calico, marked the darts etc with carbon paper and a tracing wheel. I stitched with a long stitch using a contrasting thread. I inserted a zip into the centre back using my favourite lapped zip method.

Now to try on the toile and check the fit. Interesting! Several tweaks required. I needed to pinch out a small dart at the neckline to remove a little “gaposis”. My shoulders are slightly more sloping than the pattern – adjust them by 1/4 inch. They are also narrower, so reduce the width by 1/2 inch. The bust dart needs to be shortened and lowered by ½ inch and the body darts also reduced in height by ½ inch. The front armscye needs to be raised by ½ inch and the side seam taken in by ½ inch. The front waistline was way off. It needs to be lowered by 1 inch at the side seam and 1½ inches at centre front. The back bodice side seams need to be taken in by at least ½ inch and the back armscye cut back by ½ inch. I could put on and remove the dress without opening the back zip so not required. The width of the skirt seems OK. The length of the skirt at 26 inches finished is also fine.

I re-drafted the bodice front and back incorporating the changes. In view of the number of alterations I decided to make another toile of the bodice. Using a lighter weight calico I quickly ran up a new bodice and tried it on – success! I attached the new bodice patterns to their corresponding skirt pieces and set aside ready to make the dress in a fashion fabric.

I will keep the 1^st attempts at drafting the bodice patterns plus the original toile so that I can use them as demonstrations for my students. If at first it is not quite right – keep going and you will get there in the end……

A couple of weeks ago I made up a toile from this pattern in a Peach jersey fabric for a friend. Last week I re-visited that friend and she tried on the toile. We were pleased to find that the toile was a good fit with just a very small tweak required over the hips.

We went ahead with making the dress in Pat’s chosen fabric which was a fine jersey print. The dress is to be worn to a ball later this month and would need to be full length i.e. View D from the pattern envelope illustration. Pat tried on the toile again and we measured how much extra fabric would be required to bring the hem to floor level. We added the appropriate amount to the pattern front and back skirt pieces. Pat also decided that she would like to have the sleeves as shown in views A and C.

Taking care to match the bold design at the centre front and back of the bodice and skirt pieces, we cut out the dress. The only other change that we made was to place the back bodice on the fold rather than have a seam. Pat had purchased a jersey needle and so with each of us pressing, pinning, stitching and pressing again the dress went together very quickly. The joy of sewing with jersey fabric! At the next fitting we discovered that the weight of the jersey was stretching the length of the skirt so a further 3 inches was removed and the hem pinned into place. The hems on the sleeves and the skirt of the dress were machined in place and after 4 hours of work we had a completed dress!

Pat was smiling and obviously delighted with her new dress. As we now knew how to perfect the fit of this dress for Pat, I offered to continue with the making of her original toile. I made the alteration to the side seams, added sleeves and machined up a narrow hem with jersey twin needles. Two dresses for the price of One!

Front                                                Back

I have been so impressed with how easily the design has come together and have now purchased my own copy of the pattern.

Watch this space for the next iteration of Simplicity 2580!