Two weeks ago I stumbled upon a Blog called Sew Tessuti. It’s about a fabric store in Australia but the owner also loves sewing and vintage patterns. She made a wonderful orange dress following a vintage Simplicity pattern. I tried to find the pattern on ebay but well… it’s like finding the famous needle in a haystack and so I decided to make some alterations on my standard dress pattern which I wanted to share.

A Standard Dress Pattern

I made a standard dress pattern years ago alterating a simple dress pattern from a vintage BURDA magazin. The advantage of altering a standard dress pattern over buying a new one is pretty clear: Altering every single pattern is time consuming plus there are a lot of patterns you can make out of a simple one! I do this all the time – for Blythe as well as for myself.

If you need help making your own dress pattern I recommend the wonderful Colette Sewing Handbook by Sarai Mitnick. Chapter 4 is about pattern alterations for a fantastic fit.

Back to my standard pattern: To make the overview easier, I made an illustration of it. As you can see, the pattern is really simple but the perfect base for all kind of styles:

Looking at Tessuti’s orange dress you see there is an insertion left and right on the upper bodice. I added this insertion just tracing its form over a copy of my standard dress pattern like this (the illu just shows it on one side):

Afterwards I cut the insertion out.

That’s it! When you cut your fabric you just add seam allowance (illustration: white) all around your new pattern parts and sew the parts together again. For a nice finish you add a top-stitch and – if you like – Buttons on one or both sides.

Hope this was helpful to you!

Have fun sewing and altering,
Jasz