I made this dress back in 2020. I was choosing between making it and a button-up shirt, and figured a maxi dress would be easier. Silly me! Maxi dresses understandably have a LOT of fabric to wrangle. It was a really fun learning opportunity though and I’m glad I did it! The result is quite nice! I’m a big fan of Cashmerette patterns.
The company Bootstrap Fashion has the option to input your measurements to make a DIY dress form!
Most dress forms are quite expensive, and they’re also rather generic. It was super fun to make this, though I intended to be more for display purposed for works-in-progress rather than something I’d be pinning/draping on to make patterns (I’m not that advanced! That would also require more precision with the measurements).
This project involved some really fun and interesting pattern construction, such as a fabric tube that runs up the center of the form on the inside, so it can be placed on a dress form stand (as I have done). Inside the neck is a sponge, and cardboard supports the bottom and the arms.
This was my first foray into the big pattern-makers. In this case, I used a Butterick pattern as shown in the images.
I went to a Renn Faire last year and enjoyed dressing up for it with their rental costumes. It got me excited to sew a version for myself. I was suprised how much I liked the dress, and created a soft home-dress version with the same pattern that I’ve added at the end. It’s basically a muu-muu and it’s great.
You’ll spot this dashing lad in the background of some of these sewing pics — if there was any doubt about what a cat lady I am!
