Bye Bye, Drape Drape

The Drape Drape no. 3 Gather dress has been the subject of a few posts, and most of my brain cells over the past month. I have written about this thing scarily frequently...

You know I made the (original) rayon jersey muslin, realized there was much to be desired (though, overall, I was thrilled with my progress), and I proceeded to make it again. Like 6 times.

It's starting to feel like bra-making all over again! :-)

I could show you breakdowns and photos (more than the ones in the posts I've linked to above), but really, who cares?

Seriously though, here's what I did:

• Traced - that an Olympic sport in itself - and cut original L pattern to make original rayon dress. I wanted a woven dress though (no stretch) so I proceeded to...
• ...Revise original L bodice, adjusted with FBA, and traced, cut ML skirt
• Made muslin which was laughably small. It's amazing I didn't have a nervous breakdown.
• Despaired until my husband agreed to help me try to fix it.
• He had a fun time drawing all over my (muslined) breasts and slashing the fabric with scissors. (Whatever gets you through, that's what I say...)
• Redrafted the bodice. Didn't work, so...
• Redrafted the bodice pattern from muslin markings (that sounds easy but it's like rocket science).
• Made muslin. Almost worked so...
• Redrafted the bodice pattern from muslin markings.
• Made muslin. Almost worked so...
• Redrafted the bodice pattern from muslin markings. Eureka! Seemed to work so...
• Attached the bodice to the skirt (went back to the L skirt just to avoid grading nightmares).
• Last minute: Decided to drop waist by 2 inches cuz the original, ill-fitting muslin's waist was too high. Word to wise: When you alter everything else in a bodice, the waist is just as likely to lengthen as anything.
• Made dress with fashion fabric. Painstakingly bound edges, spent 2 hours working on amount to trim back seam - it was complicated.
• Finally tried it on and...

...the dropped waist wrecked the line of the dress, which was then too big in the midriff (should have considered that biggening up the bodice and dropping the waist would have this effect but seriously, what was left in the universe for me to consider?!

Sixty-plus hours later: Dress over.

I will not remake this thing. In the vein of a beloved song that one hears so many times it eventually becomes a torturous twang, I just don't want to know of it anymore.

Now, don't pity me. I can't tell you how much I learned. (Wait a minute, perhaps I can!):

• Figured out how to work from muslin to paper.
• Figured out how to alter collar height on one piece pattern! (*The fewer the pieces the harder the adjustments because every change effects every element of the dress.)
• *Lowered armscyes.
• *Did really complicated FBA that worked!
• Learned Japanese :-) (OK, this is not true but I did work with Google Translate rather professionally.)
• Improved my spatial reasoning re: sewing and techniques like invisible zips and binding.

My husband, a true inventor, having the brain - though not vocabulary, thank God - of an engineer, was indispensibly helpful. (Engineers, please don't be offended that I'm sterotyping you as inarticulate. I also generalize that you are mind-blowing smart when it comes to, let's say, nuclear science or making buildings.)

As a skills development tool, Drape Drape no. 3 Gather Dress, I respectfully bow to you. As a finished product, not so much.

Maybe I'll find it within myself to take a photo of the final blue dress, before I put it out on the lawn for some unsuspecting treasure grabber, soon to own an ORIGINAL K.Line :-)

What I Wore Teaser: Drape Drape Dress

So this photo shows the dress skirt before I altered it to better suit my shape. I'm loathe to show it because the skirt piece actually looks a lot better as a result of the adjustments (no photos yet). This shot is not particularly flattering (what up with the static look? - there was no static, my legs were bare!) but it does show you my newest bag purchase. That bag is new (vintage). I got it at I Miss You. It's Italian embossed leather, so chic! Works perfectly with the dress. I do promise to show the altered version as soon as I can.

Shout Out to the Experts: Gather Dress No. 3

Dear Fabulous Sewist Blog Friends:

You know this dress? I'm trying to figure out how to customize it to my curvy frame. It occurs that - especially if I choose to make it in a woven (which it's designed for) - I should probably give the chest a little bit more room.

If this were a regular bodice - or one with a regular sort of sleeve - I'd simply remove the sleeve and do an FBA. Of course, since it's got that crazy sleeve (see pattern below) (non-sewists who haven't run screaming from this post: the sleeve is the bulbous protrusion at the top left) I'm a little bit concerned:

Nonetheless, I think I'm still going to cut the sleeve off where that black vertical line is (below).

Then I'll do the FBA (which shouldn't affect the armhole, right?) and then I'll reattach the sleeve back on. Note: I don't intend to lengthen the sleeve because the part that the FBA impacts, as I understand it, is BELOW armhole. As such, it need not change dimension - or go through alterations along with the bodice - as part of the FBA. Experts, can you corroborate or tell me otherwise?

Also, will the extension of length on the bodice - produced by the FBA - have unforeseeable, which is to say "bad", implications for where the bodice attaches to the skirt part (the bottom section of pattern)?

Can I merely keep the curve and make the bodice only slightly longer? What will that mean for the part of the skirt that doesn't attach to the bodice (the part that will gather)? I don't think it will have implications (except to drop the waistline slightly) but maybe I'm wrong.

Any thoughts you can provide, any advice, would be so appreciated.

I'd prefer not to make this up entirely :-)

Love, K

Turning Japanese

I'm going to dispose with modesty on this post - which will be followed soon by another post requesting expert sewist guidance on modifying an extremely bizarre and utterly AWESOME pattern.

Drape Drape Gather Dress no. 3 is an unstoppable fashion classic. Give Ms. Sato her own fancy label (presuming she doesn't already have one). And give me a pat on the back cuz I KICK ASS! In other languages!

First, here's a little glimpse of the 1-piece pattern I spent many hours figuring out:

Let me tell you that I was mistaken in my last post about this. The multiple patterns in multiple sizes on one page are NOT in different colours, which is high on drugs. The reason this pattern looks like a dog's breakfast is because, initially, I added a seam allowance onto the fold cut side (right) which, after scrutinizing the photos in the book, appears not to be there. Its removal had impacts on the part where the bottom meets the top. I had to tape them together but the seam allowances there were off as a result of the removed seam allowance on the fold.

It occurred to me that, the second I cut off the seam allowances, no doubt the fates would require me to have them, so I folded them back instead of cutting them off. Nonetheless, just looking at the photo is bugging me.

Here's a look at the cut fabric:

Why didn't she call it the butterfly dress??

Somehow, between very good photos and an arguably drastically improved sense of three-dimensional reasoning - or maybe just a good day - I ended up with this:

The colour is all off (to show the contrast I altered the photo). It's actually chocolate brown. Note: It looks like a sack on the hanger because it needs a figure to show its shape.

It has numerous flaws, many of which can be seen here, but I don't care. The bones of this dress are so good, all I need to do is figure out how to modify it and it will be a staple. (It's very strangely put together based on my minimal experience so I don't know where to start yet. My brain, however, is mulling.)

This one is too large in the waist and hips and too tight in the chest. I used rayon jersey, instead of a woven, which gave me a lot of latitude. I actually darted the side under arm (at bust, in 2 places on each side) to suit my shape. Only with stretch can one take fabric away when, arguably, one requires more, and still achieve the desired shape. The seams on this are horrifying. One of the things I've got to sort out is how to make the chest on this slightly wider and a bit longer.

I opted not to hem it. It was cut with the rotary blade and it's totally straight. I think it gives the dress an edge. I also opted to omit the zipper, which is unnecessary with the jersey, but I should have stabilized the back neck with clear elastic tape. I will do this as soon as I find some.

The shape at the hips is a tulip. I imagine, if one were wide in the hips, this would not be the ideal. On a narrow-framed hourglass, however, it's ideal. Esp. one with medium-sized breasts (maybe C cup).

Its most fabulous feature is the neckline which is stupendous. And the gathered sleeve - so chic and so complex.

My initial thoughts about the sizing: It's not crazy small, though I did make it in a stretch fabric . I would say the large is like a medium. For me that means too small in the chest and too big in the bottom. I'm thinking of doing a pretty major - but easy, I think - alteration to the hip gather at the front (darting it on the outside so that the centre-most gathers affix on top of the gathers wider out). It will narrow the hips and give extra volume, effectively making the tulip more extreme. You can't see how that would occur in the photos. But if I put it on and pinched the fabric I want to adjust, you'd see immediately what I mean.

So, now I will go drink a glass of wine, eat some creme patissiere with nectarines and think about my accomplishments and what I still need to learn.

It's been a very good day.

Information Gathering

For my birthday, Nicole gave me the most fantastic sewing book: Drape Drape by Hisako Sato. The design is phenomenal – all flowy-plus with many opportunities for sewing with jersey, my personal fabric fave.

The arguable downside is that the book is in Japanese. After the debacle of the last 2 weekends, wherein I spent more than 2 dozen hours sewing 2 bras, neither of which fit (again), you’d think I might want to take a break. Or at least sew a pattern whose directions I can get with somewhat other than pictorially.

With his poetic sense of metaphor, Scott suggested I aim to avoid potentially smashing with a hammer, the finger I have already gashed with a knife. (What a silver tongue.)

Just call me a masochist.

A host of posts on this book and the beauty of the one-piece Gather Dress No. 3 are compelling me to give it a go. Of course, it may be easier to learn Japanese that to make this dress – I’m not fooled by its one-pieced-ness. It’s gathered in 47 places (give or take).

On the plus side, it took no time at all to read the directions!

Drape Drape is one of those Euro-style pattern books that prints six different patterns, in six different colours, all one on top of the other on the same oversized page. Having finally seen one of these up close, I shrieked with laughter. Like inappropriately. On observing me (and the page), the unflappable poet said: That is utterly ridiculous. What are you making? A jet?

The beauty of needing nothing, while simultaneously knowing nothing, is that the state yields its own kind of liberty. Tonight, I’m going to try to trace this baby out. If that works, I’m going to try to find a fabric in my smallish stash that will drape well. If that works maybe I’ll aim to figure out what the pictures are trying to tell me.

You'll be pleased to know that Scott advised me to make a muslin. That conversation quickly degenerated into a pedantic, 15-minute discussion wherein he accused me of being pedantic for suggesting you can’t make a muslin out of a knit fabric. (By nature muslin is woven.) His final edict: Make the freakin' dress with cheap stretchy fabric so if you wreck it, it won’t be the end of the world.

What does he know?

To my sewing friends, I would so appreciate any answers, you might have, to the following questions:

• The Drape Drape dresses appear to be made in jersey – except the one I’m going to make (No. 3) which apparently has a zipper. I did find evidence that someone else has made it in jersey without the zipper, but that might not make my job any eaiser. Can anyone clarify the best fabrics to work with?

• The sizing is S, M, ML and L. I don’t have the slightest idea which one will fit me best, if at all. There aren’t any measurements. Are these dresses cut for boyish, tiny-breasted figures (like the photo models)? Can anyone tell me what measurements these sizes correspond to?

• Are gathers generally difficult for enthusiastic, beginning sewists? I mean those who are already nuts enough to make bras but who don't have a world of experience with draping and gathering.

• Do the photos provide adequate instruction on their own?

Crazy Update: I figured out where the sizing is, amazingly enough! Pg 33 (adjacent to, unsurprisingly, How to Make - a title graciously written in English!). You will not believe how insane resourceful I am - I went into Google Translate and discovered that the English - Japanese translation feature provides translation into characters! I have verified the cm measurements for S, M, ML and L. How great am I!? So fun.

Next Update: I'm most definitely a Large.

Next Update / Also a Question: Does anyone know if there are seam allowances built into the patterns. I doubt it entirely, but as I don't read Japanese... Any feedback would be great.