Adventures in Drafting: Tie front dress

The fabric featured in this post was kindly gifted to me by Minerva as part of their Brand Ambassadors program. All other supplies and materials were purchased by me. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

More adventures in drafting! A couple months ago I shared with you the purple set I made, which included a self drafted top. I was really happy with the overall fit, the armholes felt comfortable, the darts felt like they were doing their job, and I liked where it was fitting on my waistline. The beauty of pattern drafting is once you feel like you have your preferred fit accomplished, the options are endless. I thought the top would be great turned into a dress, which basically means just attaching a skirt to it. Although it would make a cute dress on its own, I decided that it could also serve as a great jumping off point for more design and trying new things.

For designing the top, I retraced my pattern I used for the purple top, then made a few adjustments, like changing the dart placement. After that I played with the style lines to achieve the look I was going for. From there I made a toile to test how it was all working out. Using the toile I made final edits on my pattern pieces and then was ready to sew with my fashion fabric. 

For fabric I used the Minerva Exclusive Viscose Challis Fabric. This fabric is 100% viscose and OEKO-TEX certified and I used the color way/print Meadow Melody. I’ve used this fabric before in other prints and colors and I like it. It’s a really nice lightweight fabric that has a  beautiful drape and is great for flowy projects. It’s a really comfortable fabric to wear and is great for the summers, especially since it’s so hot where I live. I find it easy to sew and it comes in a ton of fun prints. I also love that these fabrics are 59 inches wide. I just find that a wide fabric gives you more options and less piecing things together than bolts that are narrow. 

After I sewed my top and was happy with the fit it was time to add the skirt. Originally I wanted to do a half circle skirt, but I realized that I hadn’t planned ahead enough for that and I didn’t have enough fabric. My next idea was to just do a gathered skirt, but when I thought about it design wise, I felt like it was going to make the dress a more prairie aesthetic and that’s just not what I was going for this time. I then realized I had the skirt I designed earlier this year and that it might work for this dress. The skirt I previously designed was a 7 gore flared mini skirt, but I got out the pieces, laid it all out on my fabric and used a yard stick to help map out the length I wanted. Luckily I had JUST enough fabric to make it work and at the length I wanted. Since the skirt had seven gores, I was even able to add a fun slit to the front at one of the seams and give the dress even more swish.

I love how the dress turned out. It’s really comfortable to wear, feels dressy, but also can be styled casual as well, the perfect garment in my books!