Believe it or not, this dress was made from the same base pattern as the two plaid tunics I shared about a month ago.
Inspired by this image I found on Pinterest, I decided to hack my way to a pattern rather than trying to find one available that matched my vision.
(Side note: I would normally link out to the original source of the image, but all of the images of this dress on Pinterest point to a now defunct site - metisu.com.)
I started out with my trusty McCall's 6696 pattern and made a list of changes:
1. Use the full length sleeves from my plaid shirt hack, but increase the volume near the wrist to give them a bishop sleeve shape and replace the full cuff and placket with a narrow cuff and continuous placket.
This was by far the easiest of the alterations. There are numerous tutorials online for changing sleeve shapes, but using this one from By Hand London, I just slashed the pattern vertically in three places, swung them out to make the circumference at the wrist larger, and then taped paper underneath and re-drew the bottom of the sleeve.
Yes, that is a pile of laundry in the background. My apologies - I was multi-tasking.
2. Eliminate the front opening and button band, moving the opening to the side seam and converting it to an invisible zipper.
This eventually got changed to a back opening after the first toile was almost impossible to get on. The neckline is quite close, which makes it difficult to get over my head without some sort of opening. I could have solved this problem other ways, but the back zipper was the easiest.
3. Add a yoke to the front bodice, split the waist dart into two, and eliminate the side bust dart, rotating it up to the yoke and converting to gathers.
I experimented with spreading this gathering out and then changed it back to a dart. I was afraid my fabric was too stiff and the gathers would look odd.
4. Remove the volume from the back bodice and convert all gathers to darts.
This proved to be the trickiest of the alterations!
This is the THIRD toile. I eliminated like 2 inches from the center back and increased the waist darts by a 1/2" each and still had all this excess. I did solve it after this, but I ended up having to do a very odd set of alterations - including a huge fisheye dart I rotated out to the side seams. This was the only alteration that made me question whether I should have just bought a new pattern.
5. Remove the collar and collar stand and replace them with an asymmetric tie collar.
This was simple - the ties are just giant rectangles. I consulted this tutorial and used my measuring tape to figure out the length I needed. This was the final step to my fifth and final toile!
Toiles are so great for using up scraps leftover from other projects. I'll keep cutting these up for toiles as long as they're big enough - and then they'll be cut up to serve as filling.
Now that I had a pattern I knew would work, I cut into my fabric. The main fabric is an absolutely gorgeous and soft wool woven from Emma One Sock.
It's semi-sheer, so I put a very lightweight cotton/silk voile from Mood as an underlining. I didn't want to use something that would change the drape of the wool, so I was strategic about where I attached the two fabrics. I also used a small amount of a very stiff cotton/silk faille from Renaissance Fabrics as interfacing in the cuffs and waistband. I knew they were the two places I would want more structure.
I didn't have enough wool fabric to worry about true pattern matching, but I did fussy cut the bodice pieces to try and line up values.
I take a lot of photos early in the process, but as it gets closer to finished I forget. The last photo on the right is just before all the final hand sewing - slipstitching the inside of the collar, catch stitching down the seam allowance on either side of the zipper inside, hand hemming the skirt, and attaching hook & eyes at the neck and wrists.
After all that and a good press - my dress was done!
