Teaparty dress: the pattern I *did* use

When I constructed my first dress of last weekend I realised it just wasn't what I was after. You see, I wanted something I could sew doilies onto and look chic rather than crafty-crazy.

Why did I want to sew doilies onto a dress? Because of this picture:


Of course I wasn't content to refashion an existing garment into doily chic. I wanted something to put on the dress rack at Olive Grove with all the other talented dressmakers I work with. So, I needed to design a dress from scratch. And I may be a patternmaker, I may be a dressmaker, but I rarely claim to be a designer.

So what does a design-challenged gal do when she's got a dress designing urge to fill? Don't know about you, but I head to ModCloth for inspiration. While I would never rip off another designer's work wholesale I do find it a good springboard for inspiring my own design pencil. This is what I found:

What a divine cut! Absolutely the kind of thing I had in mind. But look at that neckline:


How on earth could I draft a bodice with a narrow v-split (if you think that sounds rude wait til you read it a half-dozen more times) but no centre front seam? There's no seam allowance for facings and whatnot. I searched my patternmaking bible (it's 821 pages and costs a bomb, even secondhand) but for once it held no answers. I flipped through my mental index for where to find pattern drafting help. The entry that popped up was the BurdaStyle website. Their ads are always throwing around some term like "open source patterns" so surely their community would have answers to problems like this?

Bingo! Once I got a bit creative with my search terms (and liberal with my browsing) I found a tutorial for slit facings (told you it'd get ruder) for skirts. With a bit of ingenuity I transferred the concept from hemline to neckline, made it a V instead of a straight slit (V-slit V-slit, hahaha), and achieved my heart's desire.

Want to see the end result?




I've named it the Teaparty Dress, because that's what doilies make me think of. Teaparties and nannas, but I don't want to name it the Nanna Dress. Every time I look at that purple I think of a certain chocolate manufacturer. It's a lovely stretch poplin and what's best, I bought several metres of it about three years ago so it didn't even cost me anything (this year)!

Another experiment on these dresses was using bias facings instead of drafting facing pieces, cutting them out, cutting out interfacing, fusing it all together, turn around and touch your toes. I hoped bias facings (basically, sewing bias binding to the raw edges) would save time but the hours I spent steaming it into curves was more that I would have spent doing regular facings. I had my heart set on the neckline and armholes not having any topstitching, like the ModCloth dress I referenced, but bias facing really isn't ideal for a non-topstitched finish. Especially the first time you try it. I will try it again, but only on a fabric I'm happy to topstitch. You can find the technique in your Reader's Digest Complete Book Of Sewing (which you can apparently download FREE using that link if you haven't already picked up a copy from your secondhand bookshop or oppy).

These dresses are now on the rack at Olive Grove and I've already cut out the next lot in a fabric I'm quickly falling in love with. Can't wait to show them to you! In the meantime, here's two of my babies (but not the third one, which I left on the ironing board at home and had to make a second trip for):

And here's the dress on a real human being, hairbrush optional but stripey socks essential:




See what a difference an extra 3cm in the waistline can do? I fit an entire 22 week foetus in there with me!