Burda Style For people who sew

Description

This was a trial run at making a simple, straight mini dress for some beautiful printed cotton fabric which I have stashed away.
To do this one, I made a set of ‘slopers’ from baking paper, based largely on a McCall’s pattern I bought a few years back, and I sliced up a paisley cotton maternity dressing gown which had never quite worked (the fabric was slightly too stiff).
The original pattern was a separate bodice and skirt, so I spent some time tracing out what a full length dress would look like instead. Stepping it out in miniature with sticky tape worked quite well. There are horizontal bust darts, and two vertical darts front and back, with a long zip in the centre back seam and a button at the top.
The vertical darts turned into princess seams, as I am not quite broad enough across the shoulders or bust for the McCall’s fit. The neckline is rather too high, as well. When I make the real thing I will reduce the width of the top of the bodice pieces so the simple darts suffice, and will cut a greater ‘scoop’ for the neckline.
This fabric was slightly visually overpowering at knee length, so I sliced off the bottom six inches, cut them into two long rectangles six inches wide and stitched them on as side ruffles for a bit of added interest.
This was a fun and very easy project, building my confidence to try similar with my precious stash:)

Material Notes

This took about 1m x 1.5m of medium weight soft cotton, a 55cm zip, a button, some thread and probably about 8 hours to do, including the pattern creation stage.

Difficulty

Novice

Categories

For

Women

Garment Type

Dress