Adapting A Sewing Pattern

I recently finished sewing a dress as a gift and although the project was quite fun and easy, a few adaptations were necessary to make the project work with the materials I had.

First of all, I bought a wrong-sized pattern. I've often worked under the assumption that when I buy a sewing pattern one of the sizes listed on the back panel should work. However, for this particular product, sizes 4-10 were sold in one envelope while sizes 12-20 were in another. I bought the larger of the two and only realized my mistake when I got home. I didn't have time to drive back to the store and exchange it, so I studied the measurements on the back and with a little math and a ruler penned in the missing size cutting lines.

Another contingency (that I thankfully remembered to plan for) was the fabric thickness. While cotton fabrics are great for many projects, they can often appear slightly too transparent when used in clothing. The pattern called for only one layer of fabric, but having experienced this before, I went ahead and bought a remnant of plain fabric to use as a liner. After cutting and ironing out all the pieces and sewing them together I could immediately tell the difference. I didn't have enough liner for the skirt ruffle, but what I had lined was plenty.

The fabric I needed wasn't available on a regular bolt, but was sold instead in 1 yard packages. I only found two in the store, and although it looked like enough, I couldn't be sure. I cut all the most important pieces first, leaving the ruffle for last. If I had run out I could have used a solid color for contrast or joined pieces into coordinating bands of color, but thankfully I had close to enough. It turned out that the fabric, when cut very carefully, was only 2 inches short of what the pattern had called for. The ruffle still offered plenty of fullness and it was easy to adjust how I sewed the pieces together as the gather is very forgiving.

Perhaps the greatest challenge was creating the elastic channels. The pattern called for bias tape sewn to the inside of the bodice. However, as I had added a liner to the dress, I omitted the bias tape altogether and created a channel through stitching alone. I ran into problems at the side seams. As these had already been joined per the pattern instructions, I ended up doing a fair amount of seam ripping to open up the channels at the side, followed by hand stitching to repair the gap. The extra work paid off, though, as the liner was fully attached to the bodice, freeing it from bunching or twisting.

Overall, the project was a success and fit the recipient perfectly even though I didn't follow the pattern perfectly!