Can you help me find a sewing pattern just like this dress?

August 2, 2015 12:30 PM

I need to make all the dresses.

So...I love this dress. I already have this dress in the grey. It's wonderful. ***

1. I am not about to cut it up
2. No way I could figure out how to make a pattern by studying it or tracing it.
3. No way I am going to pay someone else to make the dress for me.

I can't tell you how super cute this is with sneakers, it's my go-to dress every day. I want to make this dress in ALL the fabrics. I want to make a ton of them, and I have a giant collection of vintage fabrics I would love to use. I look and feel sooo great in this dress.

I actually would prefer to make it in regular woven cotton as opposed to jersey, so double extra points awarded if you could find it for regular fabric! Things that are non-negotiable: I love the sleeve length, the v neck, the empire waist. I don't care if it's faux or real wrap. Please help me make my dress!

*** Note that I do NOT want a regular wrap dress with the tie belt thing, that is way too proper, foofoo (and robe-like) for my very minimal streamlined style. Please don't show me any of those. I can find a zillion patterns for those all by myself.

posted by the webmistress to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (17 answers total)

I don't think you can make that dress in wovens and have the results feel as you want. It won't feel as easy or casual and it will need a closure. But it doesn't look too hard to make in knits. I'll look around a bit.
posted by vunder at 12:36 PM on August 2, 2015 [8 favorites]

This might go against #2 in your list, but have you seen this tutorial, where you basically make a new pattern on the old one out of painter's tape? I haven't tried it yet, but I bookmarked it because I also have a knit dress that I want to replicate in every fabric possible. :)
posted by okayokayigive at 12:37 PM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

No way you're going to be able to easily duplicate this dress in wovens. Fabric just doesn't work like that.

This one is pretty good except for the sleeves.
posted by mollymayhem at 1:05 PM on August 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

This is close.
posted by mollymayhem at 1:09 PM on August 2, 2015

I agree with vunder. The knit fabric gives the dress it's flow and shape. That said, if your woven vintage fabric is soft and drapes well, as opposed to a tight stiff weave, it could work.

Here's where you might need to rethink your limits. It's a fairly simple dress-basic pieces and basic gathering to give it shape. If it were me, I would pick my least favorite of your fabric stash, to use for the working pattern . It's a bit fiddly, but you can lay the dress out on paper, and carefully trace each pattern piece. You may need to do some creative folding and pinning of excess materiel, and trace a bit bigger for seam allowance. The gathered pieces you will have to estimate how much material is taken up on the gather, and the part that is gathered is sometimes a gentle curve. My Grandma taught my how to make patterns from favorite outfits using this method. It's even easier if you would be willing to pick the dress apart (or find one like it on eBay to sacrifice to the scissors). Once you get the pieces worked out, and a dress sewn to your satisfaction, you can create a nice pattern out of more durable craft paper, and add sewing notes directly on the WELL LABELLED PATTERN PIECES. If you have a serger, you can easily end up with a dress that rivals the original.

Hopefully you can find a similar enough pattern, but in my experience, that's going to be difficult.
Good luck!
posted by LaBellaStella at 1:11 PM on August 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

You'd have to re-shape the neckline a bit and lengthen the sleeves, but here's a similar pattern designed for wovens.
posted by mollymayhem at 1:18 PM on August 2, 2015

Response by poster: The dresses linked here all have waists. I just want the underboob seam thing without a focus on the waist. Thanks for all of the suggestions so far, I really appreciate it!
posted by the webmistress at 1:51 PM on August 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

So use the bodice and move the skirt up, discarding the waist pattern piece. Or, to be truer to your original dress, significantly shorten the waist pattern piece, as the original dress does have a separate pattern piece there.
posted by mollymayhem at 1:57 PM on August 2, 2015

The last one molly mayhem mentioned, all you would have to do is make that waist 1/4 the height. Your one does have a little band for the waist too.
posted by Elysum at 2:06 PM on August 2, 2015

Someone selling an old Butterick pattern -- you'll want to figure out how to lengthen the sleeves, which is much easier than figuring out how to add them, but one of these has an empire waist + v neckline with no froo froo on it, though it's not a wrap

Knit empire waist with v-neck, but you'd need to figure out how to add sleeves.

An empire waisted dress in wovens -- you'd want to ditch the tie and figure out how to add sleeves
posted by foxfirefey at 2:25 PM on August 2, 2015

Your waist band shows up better in the patterned sister dress shown on the Athleta website. Here. It's empire, but it is a waistband. I agree with others that you can make that as narrow as you like. It's a good idea to keep it though because it gives you flexibility as you are working out the gathers. You can even add a little elastic to it if needed.
A bigger problem is going to be the sleeves as a lot of patterns don't have them or have raglan sleeves or whatever. You need a set-in sleeve. Take a look at this (Etsy) and see if you could make it work--narrow the waistband, narrow the sleeves, lengthen the hem.
posted by SLC Mom at 2:31 PM on August 2, 2015

Best answer: Also this one: Simplicity 1916. Use pattern F, add the sleeves from the other variations and add length to the skirt.
posted by SLC Mom at 2:55 PM on August 2, 2015

There's this burdastyle pattern. It has an alternate shorter length. It's for woven fabrics, so it doesn't look exactly like the dress you linked to, but it has sleeves. It's faux wrap, so you could make it without the bow, though I'm not sure what the waist would look like. There's also this one from burda without sleeves, but maybe could be combined with another one.
posted by bluefly at 3:02 PM on August 2, 2015

Best answer: I would actually use a pattern for an empire waist surplice knit top and just lengthen it to get the skirt you like.

Some examples here:
Bootstrap Fashions empire surplice top (PDF pattern that you print; looks like it may be free?)

Simplicity 1516 (view D, although you will need to take out some of the volume in the bottom part)

Jalie 2804 (doesn't have underbust gathers and is no longer in print, but was very well reviewed and you can probably find it on ebay or etsy)

Burda 05-2009-123 came in top or dress form but is no longer in print, but you might be able to find it somewhere on the internet (or on PatternReview).

And yeah, that dress really needs to be made in a knit to have the right hang and drape.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 3:07 PM on August 2, 2015

Response by poster: Thank you all so much! I am going to buy several of these. SLC Mom, I just bought the one you linked to and will try making a dress from view D. I can't thank you all enough for your help and your suggestions. I actually have never sewn knits before and I don't own a serger, but I have just been googling how to sew knits on a regular machine and will give it a try. I just watched two videos on sewing knits on a regular machine and am game to give it a go.

The Elusive Architeuthis, that Bootstrap top pattern does seem to be free once you join the site, and I LOVE it!
posted by the webmistress at 3:28 PM on August 2, 2015

If you want some instruction with your pattern Craftsy offers a "Learn to Sew Knits" class that has includes a pattern very similar to that dress. You may need to rejigger the bodice pieces. I've taken the class, it's very thorough, sometimes a bit slow, but she does sew everything without a serger.
posted by sarajane at 3:03 PM on August 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for that link, sarajane.

In case anyone else likes the dress and wants to try a woven cotton version, this pattern I found is a decent match, I bought that one too.
posted by the webmistress at 7:34 PM on August 3, 2015