We are having a beautiful weather in London lately and it could be seen that the Spring is here in full swing….but wait a minute! I am not ready!!!! Time to make some dresses so I can swoosh around the town.
Hope you are ready for some pattern hacking? I will demonstrate this alternation using Honeycomb dress pattern by Cocowawa Crafts that I did sew along to last year, but you can adapt any top/dress pattern that has a button up front placket.
Hacking the pattern
We are altering a neckline on this dress so the only pattern piece that you will need to copy is the front bodice unless you are happy to cut your original one.
Measure desired lenght of your neckline drop (mine was around 13 cm) and draw a V shape up to first fold line. Cut along this new line.
To draft a facing for the new neckline start with coping the front piece at the neckline and centre front including placket.
Measure about 5 cm parallel to those lines smoothing any corners so you end up with a nice arch line.
Measure 1 cm from the second fold line and eliminate all the excess on both the front and facing pattern pieces.
On the front pattern mark a placement of a top buttonhole, around 2 cm from the edge (remember that you have a 1cm seam allowance so the neckline will become even lower) and adjust place of any following buttonholes if they don’t match with the pattern.
To draft a back neck facing draw a parallel line 5 cm from the back neckline and trace it of on a separate piece of paper including any necessary markings.
Tip: it is best to interface neckline facing to give some structure and reinforcement.
That is all for today!
~let me know if you need tutorial on how to sew it up~
Monika xxx
