I was inspired to again  to self draft a garment recently. My sister in law had arrived for our family Christmas gathering in a lovely dress that she declared I could easily make.I had a really good look at her dress , and I agreed with her assessment and sketched the details of the dress. Firstly I looked at the patterns I own and picked the one I felt I could modify successfully.

The lucky winner was New look 6119 that I had previously made in the short style early in 2014. The fabric I used before is in the picture. It is a really beautiful suede silk. My plan in this instance was to make a muslin.

New look pattern 6119

The first step was to draft up a pattern.

Then to find fabric for the muslin. I had bought a bolt of lining fabric from Tessutis fabrics in Surry Hills, Sydney a while ago . It is a gorgeuos chocolate color with a slightly different colour on the wrong side.

I found some great synthetic fabric that looks like  leather type armadillo print at spotlight so I brought enough to make a skirt and it also seemed the ideal neckband fabric for the dress.
The neckband made up well and complimented the dress so well that I decided this would be a wearable muslin.
I used press studs for the collar fastening.

The dress turned out well and I am very happy with it. It is another really comfortable addition to my wardrobe. I don’t know if you can tell but I used the wrong side of the fabric for the back and over panel at the front and used the right side for the under front . In reality the difference is not stark but it is interesting , I like to add quirky interest when I can.

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Front view

Movement of front panel.

Back view

After wearing this I realised that I need to modify the pattern . The original dress has a straighter skirt and a split at the inner side seam between the under front and back pieces for movement. My muslin has a wider skirt like the pattern I drafted it from . I will take away some of the flare in the skirt make the elastic a little more snug in the back and make it next time with an actual leather collar piece and the split. This  is a great dress to wear it moves well and feels delicious .

Happy Sewing,

Sue 🙂