do you have a pattern for that black edwardian-esque shirtdress you made?
Hey all. So one of my sewing posts has gotten a lot of unexpected traffic in the past day. Whenever this happens, it's usually because the tumblr algorithm is pushing the post onto the dash of anyone who follows the sewing tag. So for everyone who is sick of the dress in question assaulting your dash for absolutely no reason, I am so sorry.
@curiouscalembour
Short answer: yes, scroll down to the photos below
Longer answer: kind of, not really, I mean I have a pattern but it comes with no instructions and you're going to enjoy it about as much as most people enjoy scaling up Patterns of Fashion patterns, maybe even less. Also, this is not a tutorial, just an approximate recounting of what I did. So, uh, good luck.
So here's the thing. I don't use commercial patterns because they often have me finishing seams with a serger which I don't own, or constructing garments with the modern bag-lining method which just breaks my brain. I'm also not a professional pattern maker and have no idea how to digitize patterns, so I do all my drafting with good old-fashioned pen and Christmas wrapping paper. I'm also entirely self-taught and learned everything I know about pattern alterations through osmosis from TheClosetHistorian's videos, so I don't know if anything I'm doing here is industry-standard.
I got the original base pattern by tracing a modern button-down shirt that already fits me, and then converting it to be back-closing, then slashing and spreading the pattern pieces to get the desired style lines and amount of pintuck/floof I wanted, and then adjusting the fit over a series of wearable mockups. (5, to be exact. I now have 5 of these things in my wardrobe, and only 1.5 of them are successful.)
So here's^ the yoke piece. Wait, why are there 3 of them? Why do 2 of the pieces have a weird diagonal line running through them with the grid lines all messed up? Because I suck at this, that's why. I frankensteined this pattern from a previous mockup pattern that had a narrower V-shaped yoke and needed to widen it. If you want to digitize this for yourself and clean it up, you'll have to take one of the faint blue squares (they're 1"x1") and make a grid and then overlay that on top of the photo of the pattern shape. The back yoke piece has 2 different grainlines marked because the fashion fabric has a bias pintucked yoke, so its grainline is going to be different from the lining. The fashion fabric is meant to be pintucked beforehand, and then the pattern pieces traced on top of the pintucked panel and then cut out. Oh, and all of these pieces are drawn net, so you'll need to add seam allowance all around. Except at the center back, apparently, where past-Me already added allowance for a bound edge.
The bodice front and back pieces^ are a little more straightforward. No pintucks needed here. The upper edges ease into the bottom edge of the yoke, and the bottom edges gather/tuck down into the waistband. The center front tucks you'll have to drape on a dress form (or on yourself - I pinned a strip of twill tape which was my skirt waistband around my waist and then pinned the excess front bodice fabric onto the twill tape, then covered the raw edges with a dip-waist belt). The center back is a lot shorter than the rest of the bodice because I have a swayback. I learned from a previous mockup that if I leave the back of the bodice longer, I have to constantly tug my shirttails back down into my skirt because it gradually gets untucked throughout the day. These pieces also need seam allowances added. I assembled my bodice by sandwiching the bodice front and back pieces between the fashion and lining layers of my yoke pieces, but it was a bit bulky dealing with the folded back pintucked parts of the yoke seam allowances, so you can finish your seams however you want.
I'm fairly short-waisted, so if you have a longer torso than mine, then you'll want to lengthen the pieces vertically. You want these pieces to be longer than your torso, so that they poof out a little like a subtle muffin top, to get that Edwardian silhouette where the waist looks tiny under the poof:
Here's^ part of the sleeve pattern. Again, sorry it's a chaotic mess. I had to use bits of scrap paper and cobble the pattern together. The pattern above is just the upper arm part of the sleeve and ends at the elbow. You'll have to extend about 10" all along the bottom edge to make the smocked part that covers the forearms. I only sewed the sleeve seams closed down to the elbow, then left the seam open from the elbow down to the wrist, so that it closed with rows and rows of buttons and loops. The smocking will give the lower sleeves a bit of stretch, so you might still be able to get your hand through even without the button closure.
This is also a net pattern so you should add seam allowances, but the sleeve is ridiculously puffy already, so forgetting the seam allowances here isn't a big deal.
(I call it my Elphaba shirtdress but it's not an actual replica of anything she wears in the movie. If you want your sleeve to look more like Elphaba's, which is puffy at the shoulders and elbows and fitted around her biceps and forearms, you can change where you add your rows of gathering/shirring.)
And finally, the collar piece. I'm not completely satisfied with how mine gapes at the center front (I think I need to contour/curve it a bit so that the top edge is narrower than the bottom edge), and I think the whole thing could be another inch taller all around, but this is the pattern piece I used to get my finished product. Notice that the back half of the collar slowly curves downward so that the center back is about 1/2" longer than the center front. That's on purpose. If you leave this little detail out, your collar will tilt backwards and make you feel like the front is trying to strangle you.
And because I'm nothing if not inconsistent, this piece features hem allowance already added to the top edge, but no seam allowance pre-added to the bottom edge where it attaches to my bodice yoke, and no allowance for overlap for the center back closure. So be very careful when making and marking your own copy and maybe be a little more consistent than I am?
Speaking of inconsistencies, remember how I drafted my yoke pieces to be cut from an already pre-pintucked panel of fashion fabric? Well, I didn't do that here for the collar. Instead, this collar piece is meant to be cut (on the fold) directly from flat fabric, and THEN pintucked (with lines of vertical pintucking perpendicular to the collar) after cutting. The pintucks are 1/4" deep, spaced 1/4" apart. So the pattern piece you cut out will pleat down to half its original length.
So this:
Becomes this:
Also, note on the pattern piece that I drew a horizontal line across the entire length, running parallel to and about 1.25" below the top edge? That's the point at which your pintucks stop. This gives the collar that ruffle you see at the top.
