Time for Alterations!
Fitting the Dress
I'm not sure exactly how pattern companies come up with their human shapes, but I have a few hypotheses:
Realistically I'm guessing it's closer to the first one, but you will be hard pressed to find a person who perfectly fits a store-bought pattern without any alterations.
Note: This doesn't matter on all garments. Something like a flowy skirt may only need to fit at your waist, whereas a dress shirt may need to be adjusted at bust, shoulder, hip, low back, etc. Fortunately there are tons of resources online to help with altering store-bought patterns into something that does indeed fit perfectly.
I lucked out pretty well on this pattern, which only needs to fit perfectly between about my armpits and my waist, and for reference, I'm normally a street size 6-8 (currently 39-29-41)and I typically end up cutting out a 10-12 from commercial patterns. If you haven't cut from a commercial pattern before and have somehow come to this blog post before doing anything else, don't wig out if your size seems way off. That's just how they are, and every pattern company is different. You'll want to measure and check your size every time, especially for high stakes garments like this dress.
So like I said, my dress only needs to fit about 12 inches of my body, so I'm going to show you a fit mistake I made regarding the length, and how I fixed it. The short version (hah) is that I didn't take into account the width of the lining fabric when I bought it, and wasn't exactly able to make a full length circle. Here is what it looked like when it was sewn together, this is one of the side seams:
Obviously it's more important to have the waist seam intact than the hem, so as I was laying out my pattern on my fabric and low-key panicking, I prioritized the top and figured I'd take it up at the bottom. Which brings us to a surprising perk of having circle skirts, you can fix it with sixth grade geometry. I laid out my skirt in quarters and marked where the center of the circle should be, then using a fabric pen and piece of non-stretchy fiber (probably cotton yarn) I made myself a little compass to mark the new length.
Whether hemming something flat like this, or on a dressform, first you'll want to find the shortest part of the length, and let that inform your marking and cutting. So there are parts of the skirt where I cut off an inch, there are parts where I cut off maybe 6 inches, and that's alright, because what matters isn't keeping the line at the bottom intact, but keeping it a consistent distance from the waist seam. Here is the lining hanging on my dress form after being cut. You can tell that it's not quite floor length anymore, but I lucked out in that my mistake was on the lining and wouldn't be visible during normal wear.
I'm not sure exactly how pattern companies come up with their human shapes, but I have a few hypotheses:
- Extensive data collection, and then they take the mean of all data points and label it "medium". Scale up and down as needed.
- Some describes a human shape to a person holding a pencil, and that person just does their darndest.
- You know that computer AI thing where they input a bunch of pictures and then make the computer draw? That.
Realistically I'm guessing it's closer to the first one, but you will be hard pressed to find a person who perfectly fits a store-bought pattern without any alterations.
Note: This doesn't matter on all garments. Something like a flowy skirt may only need to fit at your waist, whereas a dress shirt may need to be adjusted at bust, shoulder, hip, low back, etc. Fortunately there are tons of resources online to help with altering store-bought patterns into something that does indeed fit perfectly.
I lucked out pretty well on this pattern, which only needs to fit perfectly between about my armpits and my waist, and for reference, I'm normally a street size 6-8 (currently 39-29-41)and I typically end up cutting out a 10-12 from commercial patterns. If you haven't cut from a commercial pattern before and have somehow come to this blog post before doing anything else, don't wig out if your size seems way off. That's just how they are, and every pattern company is different. You'll want to measure and check your size every time, especially for high stakes garments like this dress.
So like I said, my dress only needs to fit about 12 inches of my body, so I'm going to show you a fit mistake I made regarding the length, and how I fixed it. The short version (hah) is that I didn't take into account the width of the lining fabric when I bought it, and wasn't exactly able to make a full length circle. Here is what it looked like when it was sewn together, this is one of the side seams:
 |
| Nobody would see, but I would know. I... would... know... |
Obviously it's more important to have the waist seam intact than the hem, so as I was laying out my pattern on my fabric and low-key panicking, I prioritized the top and figured I'd take it up at the bottom. Which brings us to a surprising perk of having circle skirts, you can fix it with sixth grade geometry. I laid out my skirt in quarters and marked where the center of the circle should be, then using a fabric pen and piece of non-stretchy fiber (probably cotton yarn) I made myself a little compass to mark the new length.
 |
| I felt like a damn genius at this point. |
 |
| Good enough for government work. |
But you know what? There are still some twirly wedding pictures where I can see the lining. My second takeaway from this is that it may be ideal to have your skirt lining be 6 or so inches shorter than your outer fabric. Maybe this is common sewing knowledge, I don't know, I don't sew a lot of lined skirts, but I'm glad this little accident taught me that.
There's one more alteration on the skirt I want to share with you, and this is one I found during the research phase of this project. If you're doing a full length skirt, cut the front hem about 2 inches shorter in the front. It will make it easier to walk without tripping, especially going up stairs.
I'm bolding this because I don't have any pictures of the process, it's not very involved, but it was so helpful that I don't want it to get lost in the post. I'll leave you with one last picture, where you can maybe tell that it's shorter if you're looking for it, because my shoe is poking out, but in all of the other pictures you'd have no idea. But I know... because I didn't trip all day.
Part four: Adding the Lace
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