Hi I'm Meg, I'm the editor at Seamwork and today I want to show you two dresses that I made from one
pattern and how I got the best fit using the new free downloadable fitting journal from Seamwork.
Okay so first I want to talk a little bit about the fabric and the pattern that I used for this
project. I used the Mina dress and top, it's actually a pattern that includes both a dress
version and a top version and I decided to make two dresses, but with two different sleeve lengths
and in two totally different fabrics. So for the fabric I used a rayon, it's a Cloud9 rayon,
it's very drapey, I found the rayon to be stable enough to really easily sew and because this dress
is a babydoll dress with a bunch of gathers, I think there's about a two to one gather ratio,
the rayon really creates some lovely gathering. It's flowy, it really makes a breezy silhouette,
and it's extremely comfortable to wear. So I think rayon is a really good choice for this project.
For another version of the dress, I used a black linen from my stash, this is actually a
very lightweight linen, it ended up being kind of transparent, which I didn't realize until I put it
on, but it's a very lightweight linen, it is kind of crispy though, I would describe this fabric as
a little scratchy to wear but I think it'll soften over time. The biggest difference between the
rayon and the linen for this project is that the gathers sit a little bit differently on my body,
the drape of the rayon is heavier and so it kind of pulls the gathers down whereas on the linen
the gathers are a little bit more floaty, kind of really emphasizes that shaped babydoll silhouette
of the pattern. So those are the two fabrics I used and first I'm going to show you how I fit
this dress and then I'm going to show you how my dresses turned out. So if you're anything like me,
fitting can be a pretty big challenge when you're sewing a new project. I want to take a minute to
gush about someone I work with, Haley, she is our pattern designer and I'm lucky enough to work with
her day after day, so I've been able to kind of absorb some of her knowledge just by being with
her here in the studio, but we've worked really hard to put together this new fitting class,
it's called "How to Fit With Confidence" and along with the class you can download a free pdf
fitting journal that you can print and you can use this for every single project that you make.
So I wanted to show you how I used Haley's class along with the fitting journal on this project.
So the first thing I want to say about this class is that Haley takes an approach that empowers you
to really look at your muslin and think about how it's fitting on your body, she likens it to an x
and y axis and I find that really helpful because instead of having to know what adjustment to make,
do I need a broad shoulder adjustment, do I need a swayback adjustment, instead I can spend time
with my muslin and look at how it's fitting me up and down and across my body. I can pay
attention to the wrinkles that I see and I'll spend my time pinching or maybe adding more room
rather than trying to flip through a book and find whatever specific adjustment that I need
and Haley does a really good job of empowering you to just spend time with your muslin and really
think about how it fits on your body. One of my favorite features of the fitting journal is this
wrinkle cheat sheet, it has a bunch of pictures of dresses on a muslin along with some wrinkles
so all you have to do is look at the wrinkle cheat sheet and compare it to your muslin. What kind of
wrinkles are you seeing? Are they loose? Are they tight? Is it pulling? Is there too much fabric?
And then from there, you'll know what kind of fitting adjustments you'll need to make.
So on my muslin I saw that I had excess fabric here at the chest
and if I look here at the wrinkle cheat sheet with loose horizontal wrinkles, you're going to want to
reduce length in the area. With loose vertical wrinkles you're going to want to reduce width in
the area so I knew that no matter what I would be reducing not adding. The other thing that I
noticed on my muslin is that the shoulder slope of the pattern didn't seem to match my shoulder
slope. The edges of the shoulder were pointing up at my ears and I could actually see that I needed
to pinch out a little bit of fabric right here. So what I did is I just sort of pinched. I just
found the area where it looked like the fabric was sticking above my shoulder and then I pinned
it to see if it would lay a little better and it did. Right away, when I pinned it, I could
see that the excess fabric at my chest had kind of smoothed out, the shoulder slope had lowered and
fit me the way that the garment was intended to fit. I measured the amount that I needed to pinch
out and it was about three quarters of an inch, so all I did was take out three quarters of an inch
on each of my pattern pieces, the front and the back, and then I blended that shoulder slope down
to zero at the stitch line so it wouldn't actually affect the armscye at all, and that was it,
that was the only adjustment I needed and just being able to interpret my muslin and see where
I had excess fabric and pinch it out I was able to make an adjustment that actually improved the
fit overall. So I didn't need to know the name of this adjustment, I didn't need to know what to do,
all I had to know was that I had a little bit too much fabric here and I needed to pinch it out
and that's what I love about the fitting class is Haley shows you how to interpret these wrinkles
and how to make these adjustments without needing to know the proper name for all of them.
It's pretty liberating and it makes it a lot more approachable for beginners like me.
Alright so once I had my muslin fitted, I sewed up my final dresses. I made the rayon one in the
three-quarter length sleeves and I made the black one in the short sleeves and I want to show you
how the fabric hangs a little differently on my body. So you can see with the rayon dress there's
just more drape, it's more billowy, it just moves a lot more and that's because the rayon
has that body, it has that drape that will kind of weigh down the gathered skirt.
I love the way that this dress turned out, it's super comfortable, very breezy
and I think it works very well for a babydoll dress. For the linen dress, you'll notice that the
gathers stand away from my body more the fabric is a little crisper, it's a little stiffer, it
doesn't have as much drape and body and so it just sort of floats out and really exaggerates that
babydoll silhouette. Overall, I like both dresses, I like that I get two different silhouettes from
the same pattern and it just goes to show that fabric choice can make a really big difference
in how your garments fit. So when you're picking out fabric for a project my best advice is to just
let the fabric drape, hold it up see how it's going to hang that's how it's going to hang on
your body. See how it moves when you hold it up, that's going to how it's going to move on
your body. And that's it, that's my project. I managed to make two totally different dresses
using one pattern and I did it all with the help of the How to Fit With Confidence class and this
free downloadable fitting journal. If you have any questions about the class or you want to know more
about what's in the journal, just leave a comment below and I'm happy to answer them for you.
I hope you have a happy sewing adventure and a happy fitting adventure. See you next time.