The 'Tarantella' dress

The tarantella dress is finished. Actually, it was finished a few weeks ago, I just haven't had a chance to post about it before now.

After my careful cutting out, I thought that it would be quite easy to sew the dress pieces together, but unfortunately I was wrong. Because the cotton was so fine, and all the pieces were flared, the raw edges stretched very easily. Each seam had to be extensively pinned, matching the stripes as I pinned it.

When I drafted the pattern I changed the dress from front to back opening. I used an invisible zip, as I wanted the back pieces to have a smooth join.

Dress back

I edged the sleeves and the neckline with a band of the wide stripe part of the fabric, ending just before the first narrow green stripe. Initially this caused a few problems, because even with interfacing applied to the bands, the vertical stripes of the main part of the garment showed through. Adding a second layer of interfacing made the bands too rigid, but adding a lining of fine muslin instead made the bands sufficiently opaque while still flexible.

Stripe edging on the sleeves and neckline

Like most dresses, the neckline at the back was curved, but obviously this wouldn't work with the straight bands I wanted to add. I altered the neckline so that there was a horizontal band front and back. The almost vertical bands on the front were then shaped by the slope of the shoulders to form a wider angle at the back. All the joins in the neckline band were carefully mitred to ensure that the black edges to the stripes matched up. Finally, a lining was added, and several evenings were spent hand sewing the extensive hem.

Neckline band going over the shoulder

The dress got its first wearing when Mr Tulip and I were invited to a friend's 60th birthday party at 'New Hall' in Cambridge. The dress code was 'summery', and the dress fitted the bill perfectly.

Outside New Hall

In the gardens, showing off the matched stripes on the skirt!

Pattern matching

Looking back over the garments I have made for myself recently, it struck me that they have all been made from either plain fabric (the purple dress, the Golden Era costume, the Roman cape - well, almost plain), or a bold pattern which needed careful matching.

I regard pattern matching as one of those things which you don't notice at all if it’s done well, but it's very obvious if it's been done badly, or not done at all. (Although perhaps it's only obvious to dress nerds like me.)

Many of the dresses in the Horrockses exhibition had been carefully pattern matched; to be expected from such an up-market label.

Horrockses dress with pattern matched at front opening

The three patterned dresses I have made recently have all been matched using different techniques.

The blue crepe dress was made a while before I started this blog.

blue crepe dress, back and front

I wanted the pattern of the fabric to match at the front opening, with a row of circles down the centre front and centre back, and the skirt to match the bodice as far as possible. To achieve this I cut out all of the pattern pieces from the fabric folded double, as per the cutting layout, but first pinned the two layers of fabric together in a great many places, to ensure that the cut out pieces matched. Having cut everything out, it struck me that it would almost certainly have been quicker and easier to have cut the pieces out one by one, from a single layer of fabric.

blue dress front close-up

As I've posted previously, the pattern matching on the 'If it can go wrong' dress came about from necessity. Because I made the dress in such a hurry, I didn't take photographs at the time, but have recreated the technique I used on some spare fabric.

For the dress front I drafted a single, full width pattern piece, and marked where I wanted the yoke and the main dress front to join. I then laid this out on a single layer of fabric, and traced the outline of some parts of the fabric design onto the pattern piece, concentrating on the area around the seam line. Fortunately the fabric had a bold design with clear outlines, which made this easy to do. I also marked the cutting line for the main dress piece, 1.5 cm up from the seam line.

tracing the fabric design onto the pattern piece

the dress front pattern piece

I then removed the fabric, laid a fresh layer of tissue over the pattern piece, and traced the outline of the yoke piece, including the cutting line 1.5 cm down from the seam line. Then I traced the fabric design.

tracing the design and pattern piece for the yoke

Once this was done, I cut away the excess tissue at the top of the dress pattern piece This gave me two pattern pieces which could be aligned to the fabric, and when cut out would match at the seam line.

the completed pattern pieces

I then repeated the process for the dress back.

the completed dress

For the tarantella dress, the important thing was to match the stripes up the seams of the flared skirt. Again I cut each piece from a single layer of cloth, and drafted a single, full width pattern piece for the dress centre front. Because I wanted a stripe to run down the centre of the dress, I marked the centre front line on the pattern piece, and drew a line half the width of the stripe either side of the centre front. I then pinned the pattern to the fabric down these lines, before pinning round the edges of the pattern piece as normal.

centre front piece pinned to the stripe, and left front piece

Up each side of the skirt I marked where the stripe met the edge of the pattern piece. Then I laid the edge of the next pattern piece against the first one, and starting from the bottom transferred the stripe markings. I then used these to align the second pattern piece to the fabric stripes.

stripe matching marks

Once one piece was cut out, I flipped the pattern over and cut out the other side.I repeated this process for the remaining pieces until I had all seven dress panels cut out. To my immense relief and joy, not only did the stripes match at the centre back, they matched on the shoulder seams as well.

matching shoulder stripes

All three of these techniques took longer than just cutting out a dress as normal, but I think that the results are worth it. After all, if it was good enough for Horrockses, it's good enough for me!

Fit for purpose

One of the benefits of making your own clothes (other than an excuse to buy fabric and do some sewing, of course) is that you can have clothes which fit you properly.

I am not a standard dress size. I have long arms and legs, but a short torso. As a result, ordinary dresses have several centimetres of excess bodice bunching on the top of my hips.

Bodice too long

Petite ranges help a bit, but there a still problems. Some are still too long. The range tends to be very limited, and the garment you loved in the shop window is never available in petite. Worst of all, because the entire garment is resized to petite, the sleeves are always far too short on me, giving a shrunk-in-the-wash look.

Sleeves too short

Making your own clothes means that you only need to alter the pattern pieces which need altering. However even then, a little caution is needed. Dress pattern pieces often have a horizontal line marked on them, to show where the piece can be shortened or lengthened. On bodice pieces this tends to be just above the waistline, as this is the simplest place to make the alteration. However I need to shorten pieces between the bustline and the shoulder. This is trickier as it frequently involves altering the armscye, and of course the sleeve if there is one.

Unfortunately I had a few dressmaking mishaps before I figured this out. Armholes on sleeveless tops were far too big, and some necklines ended up alarmingly low cut. In one case I had to add a pleated ribbon trim to the neckline of a dress, when I realised that it really wasn't suitable for wearing to the office!

My version did not look like the demure illustration!

If you are working with commercially available patterns, once you have worked out the alterations needed on one pattern you can usually just apply the same changes to other patterns of the same brand. This is because all the patterns, however different the finished garment, will have started from the same basic pattern, called a sloper. However different brands will use different slopers, and so may require different alterations to get the same fit.

For example, both the "if it can go wrong" dress and the purple dress are made from the same New Look pattern. They use completely different pieces for the bodice front, but the adjustment was the same for both of them. I could make the adjustment between the bust dart and the armhole, so I didn't need to alter the sleeves.

The 'tarantella' dress is being made from a Style pattern. To work out what alterations were needed, I first made a toile, or test version, of the upper part of the dress with a single sleeve. I then marked the waistline and bustline on the toile. The waistline was marked on the pattern pieces, but the bustline was not, so I had to guess where it was. Then it was a case of trying on the toile,looking to see where the waist and bust lines fell on me, and shortening the toile where necessary. Although the pattern was a little too long between the bustline and the waist, again most of the shortening was required between the bustline and the shoulder. This time however I made the adjustment higher up, partly to keep the neckline in the right place and partly because the toile just hung better that way. It also needed taking in a little at the waist and on the shoulders.

The toile, with alterations made

I redrew the pattern pieces with these adjustments in place, and redrafted the sleeve head in line with the reduced armhole. Now I'm ready to cut the dress out.

A 'Tarantella' dress

As part of our preparation for This is Deva 2012, Meroe choreographed a new dance which included some ideas inspired by the tarantella. This needed a new costume, and initially we were thinking of having new dresses. Time and budget shortages meant that this didn't quite work out but it did remind me that I have always liked princess line dresses with a full skirt. I need some new summer dresses anyway, and have just the pattern .

Yes, in line with my plan for stash reduction, I am using a pattern which I already have, one which I've never used. In fact, I dread to imagine just how long I've had it; the shop whose name is stamped on the front closed in 2002!

My decade-old (at least) pattern

I want to make a few changes; namely remove the tie at the back, change to a back, zip opening, and alter the back neckline. The length will probably end up somewhere between the two options shown.

As I'm not buying a pattern, the rules allow me to buy some fabric. When I saw this in my local fabric shop I felt that it was just the light, fresh look I was after. 

Striped cotton with a fresh, summery feel

However having looked a the pattern pieces in more detail, I now realize that getting the stripe placement right is going to be tricky, and will take careful planning of the cutting layout. The stripes need to match on each seam, otherwise the whole thing will just look messy. While I have done this before, on the ghawazee coat costume for Ya Raqs, that was with a simpler stripe pattern, and a stiffer fabric.

Ghawazee coats at the British Museum

Before I take scissors to fabric however, I need a pattern which actually fits. And that is a whole other post.