Friday, June 14, 2013

Sewing Friends: Zoeope from Zoeeden Designs



Hi, I an Zoeope from Zoeeden Designs. I am a working mother with three children and I lovee!! making dresses for my girls mostly. I'm just so happy when they outgrow thier dresses, more excuse to make more. :) Thank you so much for inviting me over Project run and play.  I have been blessed by this website with all the tutorials and designs posted and I am so happy to be able to 'give' back.

I play with the basic bodice pattern a lot. I use it for pretty much everything. I just alter and use it. Used it for Dresses, Jackets, A-line dresses, different neck designs etc.
I get my dress designs mostly on-line as I don't go shopping for clothes (ha ha ). One place is pinterest, I have my own collection there now. I came across this dress one day and thought it will make a nice design for a little lady. :) So I made mine. Will show you how to alter the front bodice to get this design.



Inspiration Picture from Pinterest

Tutorial for making front bodice piece.

This was made for a three year old.


Front Bodice with grainline
Take your front bodice pattern, mark out the 'fold' and 'grainline' (this helps you position your pattern piece on the straight grain of the fabric for cutting)



Take a ruler and draw out a slant line.  Notice that the ruler is not at the tip of the fold line, if you do this, the centre piece will form a "v" which is not what I wanted.


The slant line is the pink line which is then cut.


Add your seam allowance to the two pattern pieces. 

Pieces all cut out.
Skirt here was for second dress.

Side front pinned to centre piece
Pin the two side front to the centre front piece, sew.

Front Bodice ready
This is your new front piece. Take a look at the picture and you will notice that the black (centre piece) extends down a bit at the bottom and up a bit at the shoulders. Trim. 
Note: this trimming did not affect the size of my top bodice but if you feel it might then add about 0.5" to the length of the pattern from the beginning.

Variation
The centre piece could be made into horizontal pleats for added texture/effect.
Simply get a piece of fabric three times the length of pattern piece and 1" wider than its width.
e.g bodice was 9.5" long and 9" at width. Fabric used will be 30" long and 10" wide.
Make the pleats (1" wide), Iron in place, then place pattern on top and cut.
Jess from craftiness is not optional has a similar tutorial on her site.

Skirt: Long rectangle pleated at the sides.
My shirt piece was just a long rectangle 76" long. ( I like me a full skirt !!) which is then pleated at the two sides. To get this, fold your long rectangle skirt into two. At the centre I measured 6" (inches) then did the pleats after that on the two sides leaving another 3" after that to have the same look at the back.

I then join the front bodice to the back bodice (back bodice not altered) at shoulder and sides.
Join the bodice to the skirt
Add the zip at the back.

Will not go into too much construction details, which can be found on-line.



She will not standstill for a picture, decided to use my dummy.







Extras
I always make the same thing for my girls. This time around however I wanted to try out a different design so came up with this second dress.




Thank you so much for having me, hope to visit again.
To all the wonderful ladies (and men) out there, keep designing and  God bless you. :)

Thank you Project run and play!!!




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3 comments :

  1. I love the center panel look with those great buttons. Thank yu for sharing this technique with us!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What fun dresses! Thanks for sharing the how to. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Happy you like this and can now make it. :-) Quite an easy alteration.
    Happy sewing.

    ReplyDelete

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