The Coffee Date Dress
| January 5, 2011 | Posted by Karen under Free patterns |
Well I told you how I was working on the Coffee Date dress. I’ve made progress with adding sleeves. It was tricky making a sleeve pattern that would fit and that I like the look of. I finally got one sleeve on this morning! I am so excited that it turned out pretty cute. I only get to sew an hour or so each day, so it takes about a week or so to finish a project at that rate. But that’s okay. I have found over the years, the slower I go, the less I mess up.
For those of you interested in how you go about printing a downloadable pattern:
First make sure that after you select print you uncheck the scale or shrink to fit. Check none in the box. Also make sure it is scaled to 100% in size. After you print the pattern, you will notice towards the last sheet of the pattern there will be a test square that says 4″ x 4″. You should measure that to see if it is true to size.
Once printed out, you will also notice that each sheet has a letter and a number, for example 1A, goes with 2A, etc. For ease of piecing together, I put them all in a stack and cut off the bottom and left of the stack. This allows for you to tape the pieces together and provides stability at the seams of the pattern.
While you are cutting out your pattern, you must, yes must, wash, dry and iron your fabric. Now don’t roll your eyes, trust me, after years of wondering why my clothes weren’t right once washed, I realized the books were right.
***Now before you start cutting, make sure you know what your measurements are!! Don’t guess. I made this mistake for years and just recently found out that I have a longer torso than average! No wonder nothing ever fit right. Using a tape measure, measure your bust line at the fullest point. Measure your waist right under your rib cage. Measure your hips at the fullest point. Measure the length of your torso from shoulder down to waist. This will help you in selecting which size to cut. That’s the great thing about sewing, you can cut a size 14 waist, 18 hip, etc and make it fit for you! I love that.
Now the one bad thing about this pattern is that it does not include seam allowances! Just mark the seam allowance you like all the way around. Also, when cutting out the bodice, I highly recommend not cutting out the dart. If you do cut that out, you leave yourself no allowance for moving the darts. I did not cut mine and I’m so glad, because I was able to rearrange the darts several times to get them just right for me. Yep, the ol’ trusty seam ripper to my rescue again. I simply traced onto my fabric the dart line and then sewed along the lines. Also, I highly recommend trying on your bodice pattern before cutting your fabric. It is much easier to add or take away from the pattern than the fabric.
After you have your pattern is cut out, it is time to place them onto the fabric. Now this is super important!!! Make sure your arrows on your pattern are going parallel to the selvage of your fabric. The selvage is the non fraying, finished edge on your fabric. You will notice my selvage is to the right in this picture.
The trickiest part of this pattern, besides my decision to add sleeves, was the all in one facing. That always gives me trouble. Here is a good tutorial from Burda Style I used: All in one Facing Tutorial
My favorite part of making the dress so far is the ruffle. I simply love ruffles. That was actually pretty easy once I got my brain wrapped around it. There isn’t an actual pattern piece for the ruffle. You cut out a strip of fabric 6″ W x 36″ L and then encase the long raw edges and fold over to make it thinner. I cut a slit in my pattern ruffle guide so I could easily trace onto my fabric the ruffle line.
As you can see, you stitch the rough edges down and then the ruffle will then lay down over the edge concealing the edge. I am going to tack down my ruffle by hand sewing in a few necessary spots. I can’t wait to show you the finished picture!!
Right now I am waiting on an invisible zipper. Can you believe not a single store around me has them?? I have to drive to a town that I never go to and never have the time or order it online. I am opting for online.
Let me know if you’re going give the dress a try!
