The Garden Delights Dress

First Draft of Garden Delights Dress

I SOOOOOO wanted this dress to turn out! It is so beautiful! I love the color because it is chic and close to my skin tone. This started as a bodycon dress and the fabric is super clingy. When I first tried it on the spaces in between the buttons gaped in certain spots. So I sewed down the placket starting just above the bustline and stopping one button up from the bottom hem. I cut off the sides starting four inches down from the underarm area and added the gorgeous green floral. Then I rooted around in my stash of scrap materials and found a velvety floral patch to add as an embellishment.

I loved the first upcycle…so simple yet pretty. But the dress was still to tight. It was too form fitting in the bodice. So the dress sat in the back of my closet for a couple days, and I kept thinking that if I had just removed the sleeves altogether I could probably make it work! So I went to work this afternoon. First I cut off the sleeves with a pair of scissors. Then I cut a straight line down on either side of the placket, about six inches away from the placket on either side.

I cut out two huge pieces of knit fabric that measured 22 inches wide by the width of the fabric. I did not measure the width, instead I started at the front of the dress and sewed the piece on either side. It was the weirdest thing, because even though the length of each piece should have been the same measurement when sewn, they in fact were not! So once I got the two side pieces attached, they were not long enough to go all the way down the back of the dress and one side piece was shorter than the other!

So I got out my cutting mat and rotary cutter again, and sliced off the back of the dress to even everything out. I added a panel in the back, it goes horizontally across the mid back to the bottom hem. At this point the dress looked kind of like a poncho.

I pulled it on over my head so that I could estimate the sleeves. I was originally thinking I would do a wide sleeve, but because the finished dress was going to be so roomy I thought a form fitting sleeve would look best. (Look up basic caftan pattern instructions online if you want to try this yourself. The sleeves I did are basically the same only more form fitting.) I wound up measuring my just above my wrist, then at the widest part of my arm right before the elbow. I added an inch to each measurement. Then I folded the dress in half, with the raw edges of the fabric at the outer edge. I started at the sleeves and simply cut them out, with the starting measurement matching my wrist measurement plus one inch angled out to the measurement from the widest part in front of my elbow plus one inch, then went from the armpit area down to the lower hem of the dress at an angle. It finally started to have the shape of a dress again!

I flipped it right side out and, starting at the sleeves I sewed the side seams. Because the fabric doesn’t fray, I left the edges raw and just trimmed everything off.

I love the way this dress turned out, and cannot wait to wear it everywhere!