This is the tutorial for how to draft the pattern to make a Chevron Dress. [The rest of the Tutorial can be found here.]({% post_url 2013-04-17-chevron-dress-tutorial %})
As I mentioned in my preamble, I screwed up when I originally drafted this pattern a little.
I made the top way too boxy at first. Once I tried it on I realized I needed to bring the sides in at more of an angle to make the dress hang right. Therefore a few of the pictures below will not quite look how they’re supposed to, but I’ve compensated for that with some edits, as you’ll see below.
I strongly recommend drafting this pattern BEFORE you buy your fabric for this project, because you will need to know how big your skirt pattern is to know how wide of fabric you will need to buy. Once you have the whole thing drafted out, you can experiment with laying it out and decide how much fabric you’ll need to buy. Also note that this pattern is drafted with negative ease, so you’ll want to buy knit fabric or something with some stretch to it.
Here’s how to draft it, it’s really quite simple.
-a flexible tape measure -a yard stick -a ruler -some large sheets of paper (I used old newsprint to recycle, you can use anything you want.) -a marking pen of some kind -a large cutting mat or any kind of ruled base will be extremely helpful, but not absolutely necessary.
Using your flexible tape measure, take the following measurements on whoever the dress is intended for:
That’s it.
Before you start drafting, it’s important to draw a long line across the bottom of your sheet to which you can square all your other measurements to. This is why it’s handy to have a ruled cutting mat, you can draw this line edge to edge and line it up on the mat before doing your other lines and they’ll be square.
Decide how deep you want the neckline to be, as well as the shape. For my dress, I wanted a deep V-Neck, so I drew a line 10” from the top and connected a line from N that was fairly steep. You could do a shallower V by drawing a line only 5” from the top, or create a rounded neckline by curving the connecting line.
Next you will create two dotted lines to help finish up the pattern. First draw a horizontal dotted line 2” down from the top. Then, draw a vertical dotted line 1” to the right of the rectangle. Note the intersection of these points. (Also, ignore the top line that I scribbled out. That was also a mistake.)
Draw a slightly curving line from N to the intersection of the two dotted lines.
Mark a line 10” from the top of the rectangle (8” from the horizontal dotted line). Draw a curve from the intersection of the dotted lines to this point to create the arm hole.
This is the step I neglected to do originally. Draw a line Z in from the right side of the rectangle. Draw a straight line from the bottom of the armhole to Z.
You now have your basic bodice-front pattern. Add a 1/4” seam allowance (or larger, if you prefer) around the whole thing and cut it out. Mark on “Fold” on the side of the pattern opposite the sleeve, to remind yourself to cut it out on a fold.
You will create the back of the bodice the exact same way, except you will change Step Five as follows: Draw a line that is 1” from the top and create a sharply curved (almost right angle) line from N to this point.
All other steps will be the same.
The skirt for this dress is a simple half circle skirt. I have seen some tutorials online for this, but in my opinion they all over complicate the issue. People who are afraid of math need not fear, there is a very simple formula you can use. Here are simple steps for drafting the half circle skirt:
In the fourth measurement I had you take before, I told you to write down the measurument you took from around the chest (below the bust).
All you need to do is take that measurement and divide it by 3.14 (aka, Pi.)
This will give you a number with a lot of decimals, just round of all those decimals to the nearest .25 (ie 9, 9.25, 9.5, or 9.75) and label this number L
For example, my chest measurement was 31”. 31 divided by 3.14 is about 9.87. I rounded this to 9.75 to have 9.75” = L
You will need a much larger piece of paper for this, I just pieced some newspaper together with tape. I wanted a fairly short skirt, so my overall paper length was a little over 30” long.
From one corner of your paper, mark a line that is L from the top and L from the left.
Decide how long you want your skirt to be, then mark a line that far from L on both the top and side of your paper.
Tie a long, inelastic piece of string (such as dental floss) to a marker. Holding your marker at one of the L points, hold the other end of the string taught at the top left corner of the paper. Keeping the marker straight, draw an arc from L to L.
Repeat this process from your hemline points.
Using the same string and marker process, draw an arc 1/4” (or your chosen seam allowance) closer to the corner of the paper from the waist line mark fro the seam allowance.
Then, draw an arc that is 1/2” (or however large you’d like your hem to be) further from the corner on the outside of the whole skirt deal. Cut out these outer lines for your pattern. One one edge of the skirt, mark “Fold” to remind yourself to put that side on a fold when cutting it out.
When all is said and done, you should have three pattern pieces. Easy easy easy.