Sunday, June 2, 2019

Blending and hacking the ultimate easy teen summer dress



Although I can sew a lot and do not mind sewing easy pieces, I also sometimes enjoy buying pieces in a clothing store. Two weeks ago, I went with our eldest and noticed that width wise she fits in the smallest adult pieces (size 34 was even too small!!), but that due to her length the shoulder straps of the sleeveless dresses that we wanted to buy, were way too long. The sleeveless child dresses had an absurdly large armhole and very loose fit, several centimeters of her tank top were showing under her arm.



She has reached the phase in between child and adult which I had noticed with my sewing before. Last year, I made her a Solis and ended up having to add darts because the armhole were gaping.  She is too developed for a child patterns and too short for adult patterns.   Especially, when wearing sleeveless this issues shows, so I decided to try a child/adult blended dress.



Adult patterns are tighter than kids' patterns, so even though she did not fully reach the Sofilantjes' adult size table yet, I was curious to see how the smallest adult Sofilantjes would fit on her. I wanted to make her a Vallis and the chest width of the pattern piece of the size twelve was very similar to the smallest adult size, so I took the plugde and blended.



I took the adult piece as my base. I kept the shoulders and armcycle of the adult piece exactly the same because the height of the arm cycles seemed similar. I did have to redraw the waist bigger though. The size twelve kids is wider, as can be seen on the size table as well. I used the size twelve waist to determine the needed with of the adult pattern piece. I also used the length of the size twelve bodice to determine the length of the bodice. Because I did not change the arm cycles, I did not have to recalculate the arm bands. I did draw a high back neckline, just because it is slightly more versatile, so I did have to recalculate the neckband. I also raised the front neckline with an inch.



I started out with a test dress, because I had no clue how it would fit, the bodice of the child pattern is significantly different from the adult pattern. I used a scrap and some matching uni fabric. I used the half circle skirt from the Regina  It was a perfect fit, so I immediately sewed a second. One from my recently acquired inspirational fabric pile from Joyfits. So, if your daughter has started to develop and has a chest of 76 cm or more, and you own both the child and adult Vallis, I suggest you also blend. It was easy. Now she has a dress that fits perfectly and does not show her tank top.


1 comment:

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