Next project... Shirt dress

Today I was given my next pattern cutting project and this time its to manufacture a shirt dress with a few main features, sweat heart sleeve, collar, slightly fitted and button holes. However I have chosen to add a few more features, I've added two different length hem lines on the front and the back that curve under and also piping to go around the sweat heart sleeve and also the hem. My idea for this dress is to style it with a 'biker chick' look so with the leather jacket, therefore i'm going to have to go fabric shopping this weekend, looking for a black fabric and leather piping to help give it that 'biker' look. 

But this is where i'm up to so far... 

 Okay so to start with I traced around my front and back dress block and removed the back shoulder dart, by taking away 1cm from the arm hole.

I then extended the back traced dress peice by 20cm.

The next was to give the hem line a curved edge, so I lined up the front and back dress piece from the hip line  and chose a point to start the curved hem from, on both the back and front dress piece, I then created a curved edge.

Removing the ugly dart- so I moved the ugly breast dart to under the arm whole, to do this I drew a straight line from 5cm under the arm hole to the end point of the ugly dart.

So to move the new dart, I had to cut up the line that I had just created under the arm hole, and then close up the old dart by folding it over and sticking it down, this created the new dart to open and the old dart to close up and disappear.

I also dropped the front and back neckline by 1cm.

The next part was to create the button panel, so what I wanted to do is to create a 3cm button panel so the buttons would go exactly in the middle of that 3cm panel on the 1.5cm mark. So I added 1.5cm onto the CF line, as the CF line would be the 1.5cm mark. I then added 3cm onto that line this would be the facing of the button panel.

I then traced around that 2 adaption piece including the button panel and facing for the panel, I also added a 1cm seam allowance around the whole of the front dress pattern and cut it out.

 I also added a 1cm allowance around the back dress pattern, except the cut on the fold side.

The next step was the sleeves, so I first of all traced around a sleeve block.

I then measure up the front and back dress patterns with the sleeve to see if the arm hole would first the sleeve into it. The sleeve was to big for the arm hole and there was to much for gathering so I made the sleeve smaller by loosing 1cm off each side of the centre line and folding the paper over into the middle to create a new centre line. I then had to create the sweat heart sleeves, to do the I choose to start the new curved line from the 1 and 2 notches on the front and the back sleeve pattern, I then curved the sweat heart lines to 5cm under the arm hole.

I then traced them both out separately to create two sweet heart sleeves, then I added a 1cm seam allowance around both sleeves and added a grain line.


All I have left to do for the patterning of the shirt dress is the collar and the collar stand, which I will hopefully finish tomorrow then I can start to get my fabric!