I made this dress late in 2019 ( so yes, this post has been a long time coming.) This dress is made using French Navy’s Orla dress with a self-drafted peplum on the skirt bottom and quarter-length sleeves with a teeny tiny cuff.
In essence, I took a pattern that I really loved, took the simple elements and made it into something pretty and girly.
Patterns and Tools:
“Orla” Dress pattern from French Navy
Self-drafted peplum using (this handy circle skirt calculator )
2m of viscose ( For reference, I am about 1.8m tall :) )
Rotary Cutter
Matching thread
Lightweight interfacing
Pattern tracing paper ( or anything you have on-hand )
Design:
The main design feature of this dress is obviously the peplum. I was obsessed with peplums! I loved the girly-ness and (yes classiness) that adding a peplum gave. Oh and the swishy-ness… I really wanted to wear a dress that would swish around my legs as I walked. :)
Skirt:
I lengthened the skirt pieces quite a bit as I like a more modest calf-length dress. I worked out the total length including the peplum to get the length I wanted.
Peplum:
I used By Hand London's useful little circle skirt calculator to work out the radius for my peplum and to draft my own pattern. When finishing the hem of the peplum I didn't want anything to show, so I did a 'rolled hem' by folding the hem over by 1cm and then again by another 1cm.
Steps to draft Peplum:
I measured the bottom circumference of my skirt and used this as my ‘waist’ measurement.
I then used the calculator to work out the radius to draft the peplum.
I chose the ‘quarter-circle skirt’ because I didn’t want the peplum to be too full.
I drafted the peplum pattern on some old pieces of newspaper with the length I wanted. ( I did 27cm length, including seam allowance and hem.)
Then I cut out 2x of the peplum pattern pieces.
Sleeves
The “Orla” Dress pattern has a slightly gathered sleeve. I didn’t like the way the sleeve gathered and poofed at the top, so I downsized the sleeve pattern by two sizes. This allowed me to get a nice set-in sleeve with no gathers at the top. I also lengthened the sleeve to be just above my elbow.
Cuffs
For the cuffs, I measured the ‘circumference’ of the sleeve bottom, added seam allowance and then cut out 2 pieces with the cuff depth that I wanted. I interfaced my cuffs with light interfacing, just to give the cuff a nice crispness. I tried sewing the cuff onto the sleeve without the interfacing, but it came out too wobbly and didn’t look nice at all. I didn’t want any part of the wrong side of the fabric showing so I sewed the right sides of the cuff to the wrong side of the sleeve. Then I turned the cuff out and folded it up towards the right side of the sleeve. ( I also sewed in the ditch to keep the seam allowance still and hidden away. )
Working with Viscose:
Before this project, I had never sewn with viscose. Was I crazy to tackle a new fabric and a new design at the same time? Probably yes, but I always seem to do this... (Don’t worry though, I did manage to make a peplum tester from some random scraps in my too-big material stash.)
Viscose is really slippery and it moves a lot. I used silk pins in order not to damage the fabric, lots of pattern weights and a rotary cutter. I found that viscose frays a lot too and fairly quickly. I tried not to handle the cut pieces too much and overlocked religiously! I was a bit nervous about putting a zip into a fabric that moved so much but I learnt a great technique from my sewing teacher ( *insert here*). I put a regular zip in. The original pattern does call for an invisible zip but I’m still conquering that invisible zip. :)
Lessons learnt:
Choose good quality viscose: my viscose was on the cheaper side and unfortunately the dye bled a bit when I washed it. It still worked out okay, I just have to be super careful when I do wash it. :)
Sew the skirt and peplum pieces together first before sewing up the side seams.
And that’s a wrap!! I wear this dress all the time! It’s comfortable and pretty without being too much. And yes, I wear it even though during this lockdown none of us really leave the house! Thank you for reading this post and see you next time. :)
N.B: In no way is this post sponsored by any of the bloggers mentioned here. I'm just blogging about my sewing journey and the tools that I love. :)
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