Bohemian Dress

I'm working on three things right now. I have very little to finish Butterick 5523 which I posted about two weeks ago. I'm playing around in my head images of phoenixes and dragons in attempt at designing and laying out a quilt. This post is going to be about my initial stages of copying this RTW outfit.

My friend found this site a few days ago and can't find the exact pattern, but it looks easy enough to duplicate so I sort of volunteered to make her some sewing instructions to copy it. There were quite a few patterns that are similar to it, but the RTW dress actually seems simpler than most of the patterns anyway. I'll be making it for the nerdlet, but it should be fairly simple to use any other measurements.

Here is a correction to the top front piece listed above.

a - is the measurement from your shoulders to where you want it to land in the back. Make sure for this and future measurements that you account for how much it will come off the body. Add a little more for stiffer fabrics. I think this point should be just below where your bra strap lands. On the Nerdlet, who obviously doesn't wear a bra yet, is 8 inches.

c - is the measurement from your shoulders to where you want it to land in the front, which also would probably be just below where your bra strap lands. On the Nerdlet, this is the same as a, but likely for adult women, this number is going to be a lot bigger than a.

d - is the length of the sleeve or arms. I would add a little to this number as you can sew the sleeve shorter at the end if you want, but you won't be able to lengthen them. Nerdlet's d = 10 inches

e - For this number you divide the desired neck opening by 2. So this number is 3 for Nerdlet.

f - for the length of each of the panels for the skirt, you want to know first how long the distance from the bottom of a and c is to where you want the dress to hang. For the nerdlet, because she is very active and runs a lot, I want this dress to hang off the floor quite (about 2 inches). You take this measurement (for the nerdlet this is 18 inches) and divide it by 3. So Nerdlet's f = 6 inches.

g - this measurement is the hip measurement plus the amount of ease you want. For me, I would add four inches to my hip measurement, but for the nerdlet I measured her favorite dress around where the first panel would drop on her and I'm going with 30 inches (which is 12 inches of ease for her).

h - I'm going to do 50% more on each layer so you multiply 1.5 times g. h for the nerdlet is 45 inches

i - Again multiply 1.5, so i for Nerdlet is 60 inches.

j - Take the desired neck opening divide by two and take this number from e. Nerdlet's j is 3.5.

b - This number is another calculation. For this number you first divide g by 2 (15 for Nerdlet), then you take this result and add d twice (so g/2 + 2d). Nerdlet's number here is 35.

The shapes of the top two pieces aren't exact and will be altered a little, but I'm going to go with these numbers (+ seam allowances) to cut out the pieces, and I hope I have the numbers right because I don't have the nerdlet in front of me right now (or I wouldn't have had time to type this up). Before I start cutting, though I'm off to finish Butterick 5523, as I was planning to wear it tomorrow.