Asymmetrical Wrap Dress

Hello all!

In this first post, we'll go over a dress I made with a glorious viscose georgette from Mood.

Agh it's so much fun. It is a very simple style, just an open robe-like garment that wraps and closes with a belt. It's light, floaty, saturated with colors and flowers, it pretty much ticks all of my boxes.

Notes on the pattern

For my garment, I copied a robe I own from Anthropologie that I absolutely love, but I made some adjustments to customize it to me. The original robe is too long for me and the ruffle at the hem hangs in a straight line. So I shortened the overall length on my pattern and decided that I wanted to create some asymmetry. I chose to have it wrap left over right (in a nod to traditional kimono, of which I have a growing collection) and make the left side angle up from the side seam to the opening. When I made my pattern I started by drawing some preliminary lines where I thought I'd want the ruffles to hang. For something like this that would be wrapped and drapey I knew it would be best to first construct the top portion, try it on and belt it, and then decide where the ruffles should go. I'd recommend that step if you plan on making a garment like this. And to make sure to mark the new seamline on your pattern for future versions. The lines may look different than you'd expect.

The robe I copied from has a center back seam, which works great with narrow fabrics. Here I decided to sacrifice a little on the sleeve length and eliminate the back seam and the need to try to match the pattern. I'd go crazy trying to get it perfect and for my situation, I avoided the headache.

Pattern marking and cutting

If you were to buy something like this that was mass produced, chances are it would be cut in a huge stack and who knows if it would actually be on grain and hang nicely over time. So what I did to make sure that this thing was dead on, was to pull out a thread along the bottom edge of my uncut yardage before marking my patterns. That way there would be no shifting on the cutting mat without me noticing and no chance of the finished garment twisting or losing its shape. Time consuming? Yes. But absolutely worth it.

To mark my pattern pieces I used a chalk wheel initially but I knew that with handling this thin, sheer fabric would easily lose all of the chalk lines. Thread tracing can feel like a tedious step but it saves so much time later and I'd highly recommend doing it on a fabric like this. Once a seamline is lost it takes so long to take an already cut piece, try to get it on grain again, and find and mark the lost line. So I thread traced all of my pieces and to make sewing it together easier and to avoid having to cut the basting out of my finished seams, I removed the basting from only the section I was about to sew and stitched it on my machine.

In terms of pattern matching I did the best I could with it, I used just about every inch of the 4 yards I ordered for this dress. Sewing pattern companies always recommend ordering extra yardage for pattern matching and I wish I had gone ahead and gotten an extra half yard or so. The perfectionist in me would've liked to have had a little wiggle room but on the other hand, the pattern is so busy it's pretty forgiving. What I'm glad I did do was cut my front pieces out next to each other at the same level. By doing that, it kept the pattern consistent across the front pieces. For a moment I considered shifting the shorter left front piece down to try to save yardage later, but it likely would've made the large motifs sit at different levels, which would've bothered me.

I ran into an issue with the large motifs being at different levels for the bottom ruffle. I ended up with two sections that would have large motifs at a close enough level, but the last section was shifted up a few inches. So I put the most obvious piece on the front right, which is the side that gets mostly covered when the dress is on. I did make sure to try to keep the spacing of the large motifs horizontally consistent. I would probably notice something like that on a garment, it's probably not a big deal once again but the little details add up and make a garment look more polished and expensive, so I take the trouble to do them.

Construction

Now what's the best seam treatment for a garment like this? That depends. It could be serged, the robe from Anthro is serged, and sometimes it provides a nice, lightweight finish. Bulky seams on fabric like this can cause heaviness or puckering. But I looked through some other garments I had that I knew were well constructed to see what the makers chose to do. Kimonos from Rujuta Sheth and Spell both employed french seams even on some very curved areas. I like a french seam because it completely encloses the seam allowance and produces a very tidy finish. So I used a narrow french seam and took extra care in the curved part under my arm, and I'm confident it will wear well and last a long time.

Here you can see the french seams at the shoulders and underarm, as well as the facings at the neck and sleeve.

For the front opening, back neck, and sleeve openings I used a 2" wide facing. The robe I have has interfacing in the facing around the neck and front but I didn't want to add any sort of stiffness to my dress so I skipped it. To reduce bulk at the shoulders I decided not to sew french seams on the facing pieces. On the facings I used a regular seam, and sewed another line next to it 1/8" away for extra security. When adding a facing to a garment it is helpful to press the seams in the facings and outer pieces in opposite directions. So on the body of the garment I pressed the french seam toward the back, and on the facing I pressed the seam allowance to the front. No overlapping of extra layers of fabric.

I also threw around the idea of easing the front opening over the chest just a tad, maybe 1/2" since it's not cut on grain. In couture sewing it's a lovely trick to keep a deep V neckline from gapping. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but given that my dress is adjustable because it's just wrapped around my body, I decided to not go that route.

In preparation for adding the ruffles to the bottom of the dress I hemmed the body first. Instead of doing the usual hem where the seam allowance is folded in to the wrong side facing the body, I folded it so it would face out. It is covered by a ruffle anyway so it gives the inside of the dress an even cleaner finish. A little detail probably no one would notice but one that to me feels more considered and elevated.

Here you can see the hem of the body of the garment and the stitching line where the ruffles were attached.

For the ruffles, I had to work around a few limitations. Since there is no center back seam on the body of the dress I didn't want to create a center back seam in the ruffle if I didn't have to. So I was limited to however wide I could cut my fabric and I had already cut a front facing from one side of what I had left. So I measured my ruffle width and it came out to about 1.7 times the length of the back section. Using that calculation I measured the front openings (which were different lengths because of the asymmetry) and calculated how wide I could cut my ruffles. I think they have an appropriate amount of fullness for this garment.

To finish the top and bottom of the ruffle I went with a baby hem. It could've been done several ways, but I didn't really want to serge it and I didn't want to lose a lot of length so it seemed to be the best choice. I got a helpful refresher on ruffles and different finishes from one of my favorite sewing books, The Art of Manipulating Fabric. It's a great resource for different applications of many interesting techniques.

I also made a belt by cutting two pieces across the width of my fabric, 7" high to create a finished 3" wide belt. I think I'll wear the dress with other belts that have more contrast, but I wanted the option to have a belt made of the same fabric if it felt right with whatever accessories I favored for the day.

End notes

Well that's about it for this dress. I'm very happy with it. It feels like me and that's what I'm always after when I dress. I hope this provides helpful tips to anyone making something similar and if you have any questions drop them below.

Oh I also made the magnolia in my hair from EVA foam (SO FUN) and the red leather belt. I'll have posts about those kinds of pieces here in the future.

Thanks for visiting me here and I'll catch you on the next one.