Making Birgitta Helmersson’s Panel Dress
Sewing Without Scraps is out in the world, and plans are afoot to sew some of the things in the book by the other two designers, Birgitta Helmersson and Danielle Elsener.
This week I started making the Panel Dress by Birgitta. It’s essentially the top featured on the front cover, with the addition of a gathered skirt.
I’m using some beautiful fabric from someone else’s stash (now in my stash). It’s a fine cotton lawn with embroidered flowers on it. There was 1.90m which was not really enough, but it’s wider, and as this is a roomy dress, there’s leeway for tweaking the dimensions to fit the fabric.
We had big discussions on the right/wrong side.
Eventually, we thought the one on the right was the wrong side.
I’m making this for my teen, who wears only nighties due to long covid, but likes it if they look like dresses. This one ticks all the boxes: pretty, cotton fabric, neckline not too high, deep underarm/short sleeves for sweat issues. She looks great in red. (I know, I’ve made her a lot of nighties on this blog, but they’re changed daily and we need about 10 in rotation to keep abreast of laundry schedules.)
The Panel Dress’s cutting layout is reminiscent of Birgitta’s shirt from her book Zero Waste Patterns (made here – I wear this shirt a lot), where the sleeve head is nested into the shoulders of the front and back. However, she’s been very clever fitting multiple sizes onto a fixed fabric width.
I switched the layout around a bit to take advantage of the wider fabric.
From the offcuts, the big rectangle will become a patch pocket on the skirt, and I’ve already used the strip of selvedge. Meaning that the only offcuts will be the two strips used to straighten the cut edges at each end. Very satisfying!
The dress in the book has little pockets on the front which I omitted…
…and a nice finish for the centre front, which I did do.
The dress isn’t quite finished, as the sleeves, skirt and body all need to be joined and hemmed, but all the other bits are done.
No-one’s tried it on yet, however I think it will look quite different being worn than the flatlay below.
We think it’s giving Catherine Zeta Jones from Mask of Zorro. Or is that a stretch?
Join me next week for the finish.
Cheers!
UPDATE: here it is finished.
Discover more from The Craft of Clothes
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Most beautiful nightie ever 🙂
I think so!
Such wonderful fabric! I am keen to see your version with tweaked dimensions as the photographed one is too oversized for my personal taste. The neckline finish is inviting though.
I am pleased to have followed your bias binding masterclass (in the ‘zine, and by making the little backpack) as it is very useful for making things from this book.
It’s lovely fabric, to sew with as well as look at. I found myself feeling excited at the prospect of cutting into it. I only tweaked the dimensions slightly, as in the side panels are only 1cm-2cm narrower. They could be narrower, but the dress would be too small if they were omitted completely. It’s a lovely neckline finish, very neat on the inside. Will include pic next week.