A Flirty Shift – My Self-Drafted Holiday Party Dress

What does a holiday party dress look like in 2020? Comfortable without sacrificing sexy. A simple silhouette and a luxurious fabric. A vibrant, festive color. Yes, yes yes! This red dress meets all of those demands. I’m delighted that I was able to transform my sketch to well-fitted wearable art.

The idea for this dress sparked immediately when Kashi at Metro Textiles showed me the fabric. It’s a beautiful rayon jacquard that features different weaving styles to create depth, texture and shine with only red thread. To showcase the character of the fabric, and avoid seams through the woven design, I wanted to make a unstructured shift dress. And to force myself to be resourceful, I only bought 2 yards of fabric. Those constraints of structure and size truly helped to focus my creativity and get over any decision paralysis I might have had when cutting into such a gorgeous fabric. Just as the #VirtualHolidaySewcial gave me a procrastination free deadline to finish my patternmaking and sewing.

After I’d settled on a concept for this dress I first checked ‘My Sewing Pattern Cabinet’ Pinterest board to find a pattern that I could hack for my vision. Finding none, I then started scouring luxury fashion websites to find other mini dresses in similar weights of fabric. I wanted to understand how the fabric would drape along the body. Then I took to Adobe Illustrator and penned some variations representing my favorite details from the Pinterest options. Finally, I grabbed a pencil and paper to sketch my final design – a simple shift with a deep V neck, no darts, and no seam lines.

I found the patternmaking process for this simple shift dress to be much more difficult than expected. Because it’s so hard to fit my tall, 6’2″ body, I don’t have examples of store-bought dresses that match the style I was seeking. I couldn’t trace off a well-fitting dress as a starting point and I had to balance the patternmaking between working on paper and draping it on my body. My first take at a muslin based on my measurements plus generous ease produced a potato sack. I then went back to carve the seams of the dress little by little to reveal my curves. Eventually I compromised my plan of no darts or seam lines because my curvy body demands shaping. In the end I am satisfied with how the dress gently follows my hourglass shape while remaining loose everywhere.

Sewing this dress was a highlight of my Holidays even if I could not attend the #VirtualHolidaySewcial on Zoom. I’m delighted by what I created and I can’t wait to take what I learned from this process to sew more and more. Read below for all of my steps and takeaways from making this holiday sparkle!

Pattern

• Self-drafted loose fitting shift dress with a deep V-neck and fluttered cap sleeves 
• Design process – I chose the fabric for the occasion, the #VirtualHolidaySewcial, then I sketched my vision for the dress
• Design considerations – I didn’t want to interrupt the textured pattern of the fabric with seams or design lines so I designed this dress to have as little visible shaping as possible
• Did it look like my drawing – Yes!
• Fit difficulty – 3/5
  • It took several tries to strike the balance a loose fitting dress that would still show my curves
• Sewing difficulty – 1/5
  • This dress sewed up in only a few hours.
• I’m excited to continue to fine tune this pattern and make it again!

Fabric

• Red Viscose Jacquard from Metro Textiles
• The fabric is a medium weight with great deal of texture and a little bit of drape
• I had 2 yards at 60″ wide

Process for drafting this pattern

• Watch me draft and fit this dress on my Instagram Stories – here
• I started with my self-drafted woven tee pattern to get the basic fit of this dress
• Last April I adjusted the round collared tee to create a pattern with a deep V neckline
• After tracing my V pattern, I used my body measurements plus a great amount of ease to create a basic pattern for the dress. Most important was placing the bust, waist and hips at the right lengths.
• Since I chose to err on the side of making the dress too big, after I sewed a muslin I had to take it in several times to fit me better.
• Overall I needed to take it in from the waist and hips, remove fabric through the center back, shorten the sleeve length and raise the armhole.
• While I had planned to make the dress dartless and seamless, I decided to add shaping with bust darts and a center back seam.
• The finished ease for my dress is 8 inches at the waist and 3.5″ at the hips.

Learnings from drafting this shift dress

• My aim to start with a bigger than needed muslin and work my way smaller was spot on. This helped to make it so I didn’t have to re-cut and sew many muslins.
• Next time I will use my notes of the finished garment measurements from this dress, or measure another garment in my closet, to start with a closer amount of ease.
• With some body shapes you just can’t avoid darts and seams. I chose to angle the bust darts similar to deep V in the neckline. Now they’re a design feature instead of just a functional element.
• To keep the fabric from puckering along the curves, I distributed the fabric I needed to remove from the back waistline between the center back and side seams.
• Once I got my pattern almost perfect with two cotton muslins, I just needed to relax and trust that it would translate onto the rayon. I held the fabric up to my body before cutting to imagine how it would drape and lay.
• To get the sleeves to have soft waves, I cut the pattern on the bias. The hem of the sleeve is cut on a straight line while it’s eased into the armsyce with a curve.