Latest Design: Plaid Button-up Dress

This design might look sneakingly familiar! WHY? Well it is because we combined two designs into this hybrid dress. Remember the tailored tear-away jumpsuit and the plaid button up skirt? We combined the bodice of the jumpsuit and the skirt to make this dress. The only drafting involved was adjusting the front opening of the skirt to be aligned with the surplice bodice opening. This created an asymmetrical front opening on the dress.

A super hack for those who pattern draft their own designs, is to use what you have. There is no need to draft from scratch for every design. Look at your past drafting and see if you can modify a design to create a whole new look or a variation of an already drafted design. Many apparel manufacturers do this to decrease development costs, why can't you!

Did you know? This type of dress can also be called a jumper? A jumper is technically a dress that you throw over another piece of clothing like a blouse or shirt. Also, you can jump around in this dress!

Project Specs

• 1.4 M of Wool fabric from Atex Designer Fabrics
• 1.2 M of Silk charmeuse lining from Fabricana
• 0.4 M of Fusible interfacing
• 8 Self fabric covered buttons

• 1 Spool of brown thread
• All major seams stitched on a Juki DDL 8300
• Buttonholes stitched on a Janome 4030 QDC
• 13 Hours over the span of 3 weeks

Design Elements

Asymmetrical Front Opening 

 As mentioned above, the only drafting involved in this design was adjusting the front opening of the skirt to be aligned with the surplice bodice opening. This created an asymmetrical front opening on the dress.

Superhero Shoulder Straps

We can’t get enough of the superhero shoulder straps—Two long shoulder straps that button-up at the shoulder seam and drape down the back of the garment. This visual element is a personal fave that makes this dress so special!

Plaid Matching

Here we go again with our recent plaid obsession. We graciously thank Atex Designer Fabrics for killing it in their plaid choices as of late. This plaid has a much looser weave than we normally work with. While sewing the seams, we hand wheeled over pin matched plaid seams to ensure the lines would line up from piece to piece. 

Do you notice the slash pocket? As usual, we matched the plaid from front skirt panel into the pocket facing. To achieve this perfect match follow these steps.

1. Mark pocket opening line on pocket facing paper pattern piece.
2. Cut out your front skirt pieces.
3. Press back the seam allowance along the pocket opening of front skirt pieces.
4. Hovering over uncut fabric, place front skirt piece down on matching plaid area.
5. Slide under pocket facing pattern to line up the pocket opening line.
6. Pin and cut pocket facing.
7. Repeat to opposite side. Remember to flip pattern piece for a symmetrical look.

Fully Lined

You may have noticed we love to line our wool designs with silk. In particular silk charmeuse. Pairing natural fibers together will lend to the garment aging in a similar fashion. What are your go-to lining fabrics? Let us know in the comments below.

Final Design

This jumper is definitely cute and wearable. Wearable being key here. We loved the surplice bodice of the tailored tear-away jumpsuit, but despised the time it took to button and unbutton to go to the restroom. This dress solved all our problems.

Learning how to pattern draft for your body is empowering and fun! If you want to learn how to pattern draft a dress, contact us to BOOK lessons.

Happy Sewing!
Designed, photographed and written by Sheila Wong Studios.