Today it was time to make the patterns for my Goth tweed mermaid dress. If you haven't seen the design of the dress yet, you can still check by clicking on the link.
So I was curious if I still kept my basic patterns of a dress in my folder. Yes, I kept them! I made these basic patterns of a dress last year in summer. This is really my lucky day! Drawing these basic patterns takes 2-3 hours!
So here you see the custom-made basic patterns of a simple straight dress. I am going to make a mermaid dress with unique sleeves, so the basic patterns need to be redesigned. I need to make the circle around the knees much smaller but not too small that I can not walk. A mermaid dress has an upside Y shape, so not straight at the bottom. Then I need to translocate the middle lines you see here on the patterns.
I also need to redesign the sleeve a lot because the sleeves are going to be pointy at the shoulders and I have no idea how I have to do that!
The first thing I did was translocating the middle lines you see here. I had to translocate the lines with 1.8 cm.
A woman's coat or blazer for example has a seam in the middle of the front part and a seam in the middle of the back part. These lines need to match well, so the lines from the front and the back part need to be equal.
The front and back part patterns are ready but I still had to draw a 1 cm seam around the patterns.
I am happy I ordered 3 rolls of tracing paper. I remember there was a day that I run out of tracing paper while I was drawing patterns. Now I have meters of tracing paper in stock. I put them in my tracing paper storage tube. When I walk outside with this tube people often think I have a didgeridoo with me :-D.
After I made the changes on the front and back parts of the patterns, I continued with the sleeve. I traced the sleeve first that existed of two patterns and connected them.
I really struggled with the sleeve and kept changing things. What you see here is the final pattern of the sleeve. I made the sleeve cap extra wide and flat at the centre to get that pointy look. I am not sure if it will indeed look like I visualise it, but I will try doing it this way. If it looks awkward I need to change the sleeve again :-(. Wish me luck!
After I traced the basic patterns, making the changes and drawing the seams around all the patterns, it was time to cut the patterns. This was the easiest part of today. I still need to make patterns of the turtle neck, the two circles for below and patterns for the ruffle peplum belt. I see you in part 3!
