I really liked the first Bianca dress I made, and I wanted to make another one, slightly different but based on the same slash & spread idea. The first dress had gathers diagonally from the shoulder to the opposite side of the torso, but I felt those torso gathers were a bit underwhelming, so I decided to leave them out completely, and do pleats (not gathers) to the shoulder instead.
The pattern was my basic self-drafted Repro knit dress pattern. I knew from the previous dress that I needed to make the neck opening narrower, so I did that. Then I marked out my slash lines, from shoulder to waist. I also learned from my earlier dress that the pleats needed to start nice and close to the collar curve.
The Slashening
Then I put the paper underneath and did the spreading. This was fiddly work, because the strips of paper were going very curly!
The Spreadening
To get the fabric shaping right for the pleats, I folded the pattern into the pleats, making sure they folded in the direction I wanted them to (towards the armhole, not towards the neck).
The Pleatening
Which left a very pleasing zigzag shape, which would end up being another fiddly job to cut out.
The Zigzagening
And that was the pattern done. All my other pattern pieces (Back and sleeves) would be the same as normal.
The Wonkening
My fabric was a polyester knit, that I got off Ebay (from Coastal Cloth Collectivehttps://www.ebay.co.uk/str/coastalclothcollective – I couldn’t see this print there, but they do lots of stunning jersey prints). It had quite a wide band of unprinted white edge, but even so, there was a safe 150cm of printed width, enough to cut the body pieces side by side, and still leave me enough fabric remaining under the sleeves cut to make a skirt, if I wanted to. It’s a nice firm jersey, so it’s got enough substance for a skirt.
I know it’s a floral, but I can’t help thinking of fried eggs!
I did the main bit of sewing at a lovely Sewcial Sewing at Redhill, run by Tania (@justletmesew on instagram). It was a really nice sociable way to spend an afternoon sewing. There was plenty of floor-space to cut this dress out. The construction started with creating the pleats – marking them, pinning them and tacking them, so that I could easily use that shoulder as is.
Pleats pinned and tacked
Which all turned out pretty well. I sewed the shoulder/collar seams, using the same self-facing turn-down method for the neck as I did in the first Bianca dress – you make the neck section twice as long as you really want it, sew the side seams up, then while the dress is still inside out, fold the top of the neck down, and stitch along the collar side seams, and as you turn the dress right way out, the neckhole unfolds and you have a magically self-facing collar. Obviously this works here because the jersey is knit and won’t fray, but I suppose you could do it with woven fabrics, if you did the edge finishing before the collar side seam.
The self facing collar
And with the collar the right way out
And from then on, it was a very standard construction. Having sewn the shoulder seams, I inserted the sleeves flat, and sewed down the side seams. That took me to the end of my Sewcial Sewing afternoon. I finished it all off, hemming the cuffs and hem with a twin needle, a couple of nights later, and was all ready to wear this out to our planned work team Christmas do, but it got postponed. So I wore it to our family Christmas get-together. It feels quite dressy!
That’s a still I’ve ganked from the video. Bianca, of course I will delete if you’re not happy with this
Bianca is a genius when it comes to pattern-modification. She works from her basic pattern blocks, not commercial patterns, so I couldn’t do much about this project until I had a basic knit bodice pattern that I could rely on, but now I that I have got one, it was time to start furkling the pattern.
Before I go any further, if you’re at all interested in how this got made, please watch Bianca’s video, because that gives you a proper step-by-step how-to for this, and it’s so much better than I can show you. Go watch it, it’s really good!
My pattern-modding plan was firstly to add the roll-neck to the neckline of the front and back pieces, secondly to make the shoulder to side asymmetric gather adjustments on the front piece, and finally to add a skirt length to make it a dress. I couldn’t decide at this stage whether to use my usual ¾ sleeves or make them full length. But that was a decision I could leave until later.
The first stage, adding the roll-neck was pretty easy. I measured my neckline and my head, and then checked that my fabric would have enough stretch to let my head through! I added a quarter of the neck measurement (plus seam allowance) to my front and back pieces, which are set up for cutting on the fold. I included extra height to the neck, so that I could self-face it.
Adding the roll-neck – Easy peasy
The second bit, the slashing and spreading, was fun. I used three slash lines, from the shoulder to the opposite side/waist.
Slash lines – So far so good
Then I added a straight, parallel 6cms of width in each slash. It kept my grainline straight. It led to a top half that is a bit like the Tower of Pisa.
Well squiffy!
The final pattern adjustment was to add my usual Skirt add-on piece that I’ve used with all the other dresses I’ve made with my Repro pattern.
When it came to cutting all my pieces out, I double-checked beforehand that I had enough fabric to fit them all. Because of the front piece being distorted out to the side, I wasn’t sure if I could do my usual trick of cutting the front and back side by side. I was using a knit fabric I’d bought on Ebay from Coastal Cloth Collective. I can’t see this exact print available right now, but they have some beautiful jersey prints.
They called it Pink & Purple Floral Confetti
It was sold as 2½ metres, but actually it was 2¾ metres, WIN! That meant that even if I had to place my pattern pieces end to end, I should still have enough. I am a frugal cutter and try to avoid waste, so I measured all the pieces, and did a bit of fabric tetris, and I was able to cut the dress and leave enough for a bonus pair of leggings out of my leftovers. MOAR WIN!
I gathered the shoulder and side gathers, before doing any actual construction. That way I was basically constructing a t-shirt dress as normal but without having to faff around with a neckband. I sewed the shoulder seams which included a nifty self facing method for the roll-neck, from Bianca’s video. Once you’ve sewn the shoulder seams up to the top of the neck, and it’s still inside out, you fold the neck over, as if to seal it up, and stitch in the ditch (where the pin is. I’d already done the right hand side before I remembered to photograph it). Once you turn the dress right side out, it’s magically folded the facing to the inside and is holding it in place.
Burrito Facing
After that the construction was all as normal. I set the sleeves in flat, and sewed the side/sleeve seams, and hemmed the sleeves and hem.
I tried it on.
Trying it on
Not gunna lie, it wasn’t 100% there. It’s annoying to work hard on something only for it to be not quite what you were expecting, but this was always essentially a first time try-out. It was perfectly wearable, and definitely fixable. Time for some tweaks, to get it closer to the picture in my head…
The first tweak was to the neck, which was wrinkly and saggy because it was a bit taller than it should be, especially as I have a very short neck to start off with, and it looks even shorter because of my double chin. Also it was wider than it should be (it needed to be more close fitting) and because of the stretch of this particular fabric, the curve between neck and shoulder had elongated quite a lot, which looked a bit off.
Shoulder good, neck bad
I can make the curve tighter in the pattern, and if need be, stabilise it with some tape when I sew that shoulder/neck seam in future. On this dress, I decided I needed to redo the neck to take about 8cm out of the circumference. There’s plenty of stretch, and I can still get it over my head without having a panic attack. And while I was at it, I could tighten up that neck-to-shoulder curve, and make it a bit shorter.
Neck Adjustment
The other thing I wasn’t wholly in love with is how the side gathers worked out. They’re a bit meh, neither clearly gathered nor clearly straight. The shoulder gathers are great, and stand out well, but the side ones don’t.
Side gather – My face says it all
I think it’s partly because of Proportion. The slash lines were quite close together at the neck but more separated at the side, and since they both had the same amount of extra volume added, it showed up a lot more in the shoulder gather which was 18cm of extra volume into a small space (i.e. a lot of gather), compared to the same 18cm of extra volume into a longer space at the side (i.e. less gather). And since the side gather was nestled into a longer seam, that made it blend in more, not stand out. Next time I play around with slashing and spreading, I’ll remember to factor in Proportion.
I also realise in retrospect that this is such a busy print (which don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE) that the gathers need to be a lot more impactful to get noticed. If I’d done this in a tasteful beige, you’d spot the gathers fine. But I can’t help myself, I love a Big Floral.
I’ve decided that I’m just going to have to live with it on this particular dress. If I don’t mention it, I’m fairly sure nobody else would. But for future makes, I can EITHER lean into the side gathers, adding extra fabric there, by doing a bit more slashing and spreading (which would create an even more weirdly shaped pattern piece!), OR I can turn the gathered side back to the original shape and just have the shoulder gather. Watch this space!
And finally the last thing I wasn’t happy about was those long sleeves. I’d cut them long, just in case it felt like that kind of dress. But no…So I cut them up to my usual ¾ length (40cms usually). Because when you make your own clothes you don’t have to put up with long sleeves that you don’t like.
Here it is, rejigged as much as it’s going to be, and I’m so much happier with it.
Much better now!
So there we go, a learning experience, in pattern-wrangling, in problem-solving, and also in not letting initial disappointment get to me. I’m looking forward to more tinkering by slash and spread!
Béa's Sewing Adventures 