Last night I finished laying out and cutting the fabric for the practice dress.
Not only is this practice dress a test of the pattern itself, I wanted to make sure the pattern pieces would fit properly on the green silk. The green silk is only 42″ wide (nowadays, typical (clothing) fabric widths are either 45″ or 60″ wide, so patterns are geared to those widths), but I have 3 1/2 yards of it. The dress pattern called for 3 1/8 yards of 45″ fabric, so I was pretty sure I could fit it all. But to be sure, I cut out a swath from the brown-flowered sheet that was 42″ x 3 1/2 yards to use for the practice dress.
It was pretty tricky to lay out the pattern. In most (all?) of the patterns I’ve made, the fabric is folded lengthwise and all the pattern pieces are laid out on it at once. This way, you get mirror-image pieces with half the cutting. But for this pattern, the most economical use of the fabric requires the pieces be laid out on the single-thickness fabric– and there is only one pattern piece for the front half of the skirt, and one pattern piece for the back half of the skirt.
I had to sort of eyeball and estimate how much space to leave for the mirror pieces, since I had to cut out the first piece before I could re-use the pattern. So even though I was cutting test fabric, it was still pretty nerveracking.
And I have to say, it is awfully nice to have a dining room table that stretches out to a huge length! I put my rotary cutting mat under the fabric so that I could pin the pieces without scratching the table surface.
But in the end, everything fits really well, and I sketched the layout on the pattern instructions next to their suggested layouts so that I don’t forget when I go to cut out the real thing.
Depending on what’s on the agenda for this evening, I might start putting the dress together.
