Posted on 10 Comments

Built by Wendy Dresses

If you know me at all, you know that in the last few years I have become a skirt fiend (weather permitting), but what you may not know is that in all of my skirtmaking, I have successfully avoided having to do such things as make darts and sew zippers.  All of those pesky little details that make clothes fit you well, I have skipped by crafting skirts in a wraparound style, or by giving them elastic waists.  This has been fine with me, really, although I have often thought that if I could master those shaping techniques, I could actually make myself a nice dress or two.

As much as I love my summer wardrobe of tank tops and a-line skirts, nothing says “easy, breezy, effervescence” like a well-fitting sheath dress.

Built by Wendy Dresses

Enter Built by Wendy Dresses, the new book in the Sew U series by Wendy Mullin.  (Wendy Mullin is the genius behind Simplicity 3835, which, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know is my go-to pattern for shirts, and what I generally wear in the summer when I’m not in a skirt.)

The book includes patterns for three basic dresses: sheath, shift, and drindl (which is basically a dress with a defined waist and gathered skirt).  I went straight for the sheath, traced the correct size of the pattern on to tracing paper, cut it out, and made a muslin out of a thrifted bedsheet.

The instructions for putting the muslin together are somewhat vague.  There is sufficient detail when it comes to measuring yourself , choosing the right pattern size for your body, and cutting out the fabric pieces.  All of that is very helpful, but if you’re new to dressmaking, you might be stumped by the instruction to “stitch or pin the pattern pieces together” with no further elaboration. While the book comes with the patterns to put together three basic dresses, there are no instructions for any of these basic styles. I was able to overcome this by flipping to the projects section, finding a dress based on the basic sheath, and seeing how that one was put together.

BBW Dresses

My muslin had its fit issues, which is why this is all I plan to show you of it 😀  Luckily, BBW Dresses features a section on altering patterns to fit, and that alone is worth the price of admission. Wendy describes (and illustrates) how to translate your muslin’s shortcomings into pattern modifications.  I can’t stress enough what a valuable thing this is.  My muslin gave me practice putting in my first zipper, helped me get comfortable sewing darts, and then let me slash it up in an effort to learn a little something about my measurements.

Once I had my new, improved, basic sheath pattern pieces, I was ready to cut into the good fabric.  I bought and pre-washed two yards of the Wall Flower print in the New Day colorway from Denyse Schmidt’s Hope Valley collection, and laid out my pattern pieces.

They didn’t fit.

A word of warning: the front and back pattern pieces, if you are making one of the larger sizes, may not fit side-by-side on 44″ wide fabric. If this is the case, as it was with me, the two yard quantity called for in the pattern is not going to be sufficient.

Wonky neck of new dress

Since I didn’t want to wait to mail-order more fabric, I decided to get creative.  I perused the sheath-based projects in the book, looking for ones that involved making the sleeves or neckline shorter (thereby making them easier to fit on what was left of my fabric), and settled on the “Oktober Dress.”  I only modified the pattern in terms of the sleeves and neckline, and left the skirt as it was.  Theoretically, this would have given me the basic sheath silhouette, with just a deeper, wider neck and shorter sleeves.

Suffice it to say, somewhere along the line I screwed that up, tried to fix it with some homemade bias binding, but found that to be even more awful than it was without it.

First zipper

So, ok.  The neck looks terrible.  And the zipper isn’t perfect (by a long shot) but it’s in, and it’s better than my practice run was.  On the bright side, the rest of the dress fits so much better than the muslin did, thanks to the pattern-modification process.

New dress

I do love the way the skirt portion fits me (minus the static that plagued my photo shoot), and if I never manage to figure out how to fix the upper half of the dress, I can always just cut it off and make myself a nice fitted skirt out of it.

Anybody have any ideas for things I can do to improve the top half of the dress?  Is there any way to turn a raglan construction into a sleeveless style?  I could see this looking nice with spaghetti straps, if I could figure that out.

While I did have some difficulty with this project, it hasn’t soured me to the charm of the book.  Many of my problems were due to user error and lack of experience – both things that should be less of a factor the next time I try this process.  And I do want to try it again.  The bulk of the book is dedicated to projects that use the basic patterns as building blocks to more interesting designs, and I haven’t even scratched the surface!

I’d call this an Intermediate level book.  Or maybe a book for motivated beginners who have a comprehensive sewing guide they can refer to where necessary.

My Rating

4.5 stars out of 5

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Posted on 10 Comments

10 thoughts on “Built by Wendy Dresses

  1. I think you are very brave! Dress making scare me silly – I can be of no help at all but I really do admire you having a go and hope some one more talented than me can help you with the neckline problem 😀
    .-= See Mousy Brown’s latest blog post: Small Change re-usable snack bags. =-.

    1. Thanks 🙂 It really isn’t wearable as it is, but at least I know I can do *something* to it so it’s not a total loss, even if that means I have to turn it into another skirt.

  2. @BBW Dresses features a section on altering patterns to fit-that alone is worth the price of admission–@polkadotcottage http://su.pr/6UvazM

  3. Hi! How great to find your blog and this post just now when I was wondering whether to by the Wendy book and some Hope Valley fabric – that same one you used for your dress!
    You really inspired me now to get both! You did a greta job with that dress and the fabric of course is beautiful!
    Thanks! I’ll be visiting you more now!
    Barbara
    .-= See Barbara’s latest blog post: Snow Buds =-.

    1. I’m so glad to help you make a decision! I was drawn to that fabric the minute I saw it. I hope you have a little more luck with your dress than I have so far with mine. Thanks for dropping by!

  4. From the photo it looks like you could make this into a sundress pretty easily. Remove the sleeves and use long strips of bias (matching if you have some left or contrast, which I think adds an interesting detail) to enclose the armhole edge. Center the strips with the side seam and let them extent into ties over the shoulder.

    Don’t give up on your dressmaking. It takes some time to master, but it’s worth all the headaches.

    1. Thanks for the suggestion – I was thinking along those lines, but wasn’t really sure where to start!

  5. I think you did a good job for your first attempt. I have the book as well and the sheath is going to be my first project. I was most interested in seeing how the 4 darts in the front looked- I’ve only done 2. Your darts looks great 🙂 My first one of anything I make is generally pathetic- 2nd one always MUCH better!!Your next one is gonna be awesome!!

    1. I am happy with the darts, too, and I have visions of my next dress floating in my head! Still think I need to fix this one first, though or it may never get altered!

  6. Lovely choice of fabric! I’m about to make my own first muslin from the book, but I’m stumped on how to figure out which darts to use from all the dots and circles on the pattern.
    .-= See Robin’s latest blog post: Feliz dia de las madres =-.

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