Last week's post was about a historical sewing project, but this week I want to talk about some everyday clothes. Fresh off my success using the McCall's 6696 pattern for the second time this summer, I decided to see if I could use that pattern as a base to make some flannel tunics for fall and winter. I've eyed this Deer and Doe pattern for quite some time (especially after Mrs. Hughes made her beautiful version), but never quite got the courage to buy the pattern and alter it to fit.
I thought, instead, that it would be easier to start from a pattern I knew fit and then alter that to have the features I wanted. So I set about lengthening the sleeves (M6696 comes with a three-quarter length sleeve which I used on my first version), drafting a sleeve placket and cuff, and altering the skirt.
Lengthening the sleeve was easy - I just cut the pattern on the 'lengthen or shorten here' line and added in 5 inches. This ended up not being quite enough, so you'll see I extended it another inch at the bottom. Also, the sleeve ended up being much too big at the cuff. This isn't surprising, since the original end of the sleeve was designed to fit around the part of the arm just below the elbow. On my body, and I suspect many others, this is larger than the wrist. To fix this, I simply measured loosely around my wrist to get the correct cuff circumference and then measured out half my desired cuff circumference to each side of the center and marked it. Then I drew in new side seams which narrowed to those marks and cut off the excess.
Drafting the sleeve placket was a much bigger challenge. Thank goodness for people who know what they're doing and put tutorials on the web for the rest of us. I got the basic shape from this post on Shapes of Fabric and then more of the math details from this tutorial by Itch to Stitch.
This pattern piece looks clean, but trust me when I say it took me several versions to get my head around how it would all fold up and work out in the end. Once I figured it out, though, they came out wonderful (if I do say so myself).
Once I had the placket, the cuff was easy. It's essentially a giant rectangle.
With the sleeve complete, I moved on to the skirt. Although I hadn't used it, M6696 does come with a narrow skirt that I thought would work if I shortened it. So, I traced it out and drew in a new hem shape at a shorter length.
Then I realized I didn't know how to hem this high-low hem I'd drafted. Again, thank goodness for people who share their expertise! Using the Closet Core pattern sew-along for the Kalle shirt (which has a super cute split hem), I drafted a facing to hem my "skirt".
And with that, all the changes to the pattern had been made and it was just time to put it all together. Because I knew I wanted to use a different fabric to face some of the pieces and I wanted some of the plaid pieces to be cut on the bias, I made a long list of what to cut before I started.
Honestly, I think I spend more time planning, trying on, altering, and cutting than I actually do sewing on most projects. Once you've set up the plan and all the pieces are in place, all that's left is to execute.
I've worn it a bunch - it fit perfectly into my WFH wardrobe of stretchy pants and nice shirts. My only issue is that the skirt is a little tight over my hips. If I made it again, I would give myself another inch to make it sit smoother over pants.
When I bought this green and purple plaid, I also bought a beautiful blue one. And originally, I thought I would just make two identical tunics. But I'm not good at doing the same thing twice. It's the figuring it out that is interesting, not the implementation. So I decided to change up the skirt, inspired by this RTW blouse.
I made some other minor tweaks to which pieces were cut on the bias - and I had to do some creative piecing because I honestly didn't have enough fabric, but the skirt was the real difference. M6696 doesn't come with a circle skirt, so I grabbed one from M7351. The only trouble with this kind of franken-patterning is making sure your seams match up, so I did a lot of careful measuring of seam lengths to make sure the skirt would line up with my waistband.
The final result is more dress than tunic, but I absolutely love it.
After the success of these two projects, I definitely have more pattern hacking in my future. It is so very satisfying to make something new from a familiar pattern.
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