I made this dress for the sytyc knock-off theme. I blocked out my model’s face since she was also my model for my book clutch.
Preface: I love Shabby Apple , so I feel a little bad telling you how to knock one off. I have a collection of them in my closet, probably more than I should have. I recommend them to everyone looking for a cute dress to wear anywhere. As a seamstress, I love buying good quality and well designed dresses. So, as a disclaimer, I LOVE them and think they should be supported. So go buy one!
Instead of giving you the full tutorial, I’ll show you how to make the magnolia applique and walk you through the patternwork. It’s super simple patternwork that will get you started at patternmaking. Patternmaking was my first love.
I really love it.
I really love it.
The basics are:
flower applique
Cut out a bunch of circles, about 3″ in diameter.
Then stack about 3 on top of each other and fold them in half.
Pin them on to your finished dress. (This, obviously is not a finished dress)
Make some more, folding either in half or in fourths.
From the side, it will start to look like this:
From the top:
Once you have enough to make a full flower, sew an X in the middle:
Take out the pins and fluff it up:
You’ll need three of these total, staggering in placement to put on the dress.
elbow length sleeves
To lengthen a sleeve, start with a basic sloper.
Continue the current seam lines down. You’ll want to measure your model to know how far to go.
Then draw a line to connect them. This line must be parallel to the current sleeve hemline.
That’s it! Make sure you add enough to hem the sleeve.
faux wrap V neck bodice
to make your bodice, you can start with a basic bodice sloper, or find an empire waisted pattern to use. From your current neckline, just draw a line down, creating the depth of V that you want. Then, close up the bottom with a straight line. This part will attach to the bodice and one side will overlap the other. My dress only has one dart, so I closed up the side sloper dart and made the front dart bigger.
This is a photo of how you’d do this. This is a mini sample drawing, not the one I used and is not empire waisted. To make it empire waisted, just shorten the bodice about 3-4 inches.
Gathered skirt
The skirt of this dress is just a rectangle. Measure along your bodice bottom and decide how gathered you want your skirt to be. Then measure to the knee, or however long you want it to be, from the empire waistline. You need about 1 1/2 times the width of the bodice to get the right amount of gather. Sew your skirt pieces together and hem the bottom, then gather the top and sew it onto the bodice.
Think you can do it? I know you can!
Do you like patternmaking tutorials? Maybe I’ll try to throw a few more in there if you like them.
Have the best Friday ever!
This is super cute but I feel like the empire waist needs to be a little more fitted so that its less maternity. Love this color way better than the original!
This is gorgeous!
Very pretty, although I do agree with Tiffany about the empire waist. Other than that, a very well deserved applause.
Coming out of lurk-ville to say I love the pattern making. I always try and fail miserably…. In fact, I am working on a very similar one now but in shirt form.
Thanks, Katie
wow that looks amazing!!! no joke! it looks exactly like the shabby apple dress! thanks for sharing :)
As soon as I saw this I thought it was a maternity pattern…. which I’m looking for. I’ve never tried pattern making, but you make it seem so easy!
I am a new follower to your site and after clicking around your site for over a half an hour I decided that we have a lot in common. I love my ruffling foot, lace, and lots and lots of ruffles. I love this pattern making tutorial. I find that this sort of tutorial is much more accessible, than tutorials that are filled with a million pictures and a thousand steps.