New-ish Pattern: Optimatium Dress

By lizhaywood | June 26, 2024 |

The zero waste Optimatium dress is a pattern which appeared in Tauko magazine #9 in October last year. The copyright has since reverted to me, and it’s been re-graded to a bigger size range and formatted as pdf pattern.

It’s now in my shop – please enjoy 25% off for the next month.

Optimatium means conservative or the best in Latin, and the dress is both conservative in style and has a conservative use of fabric because it’s zero waste.

The dress now comes in nineteen sizes, to fit a 86cm/34″ bust to a 178cm/70″. Re-grading this pattern took a long time – not because I’m inexperienced at grading, but because the patternmaking software practically had a hernia grading a zero waste pattern. After grading, every size had to have the curves checked and adjusted so that the shape still tessellated.

Optimatium can be worn as a buttoned up dress or open as a flowing duster coat. It can also be worn as a long-line shirt over trousers depending on the fabric choice. As it’s essentially A-line in shape, it’s very comfortable around the waist.

It has in-seam pockets, a scooped hemline, gently pleated cuffs, a high neckline and optional bust darts. The length of the body and sleeves can be changed without affecting zero waste.

Suitable fabrics include linen, cotton, chambray, quilting cotton, Liberty Tana lawn, viscose, lightweight wool and suitings. Although it isn’t suitable for napped fabrics and one-way prints, it does work well for stripes and checks.

In case you’re interested, here’s a tiny drawing scanned from my sketchbook, showing the very beginning of the design process. It had a bit of a “prairie” vibe initially.

Layout-wise, there’s an evolution from the basic tessellated dress/coat in the Zero Waste Sewing book.

Here’s a gallery of makes…

The dress as it appeared in Tauko magazine. The blue check fabric is Merchant & Mills, and the green is by Viikuna.
The original dress I sewed as part of my submission to Tauko. It’s sewn from a curtain which is very similar to quilting weight cotton. This sample is about 20cm longer than the pattern.

Tauko has a program called Make and Share, where makers choose a pattern from an upcoming issue and share piccys of it when the magazine comes out. From top left clockwise: @brigittes_hobbys, @hsudolly, @sewfreshness and @shelburyuk.
As this pattern has been “out in the world” for a time, the pdf instructions have benefited from feedback on fit, clarity and fabric choice.
A version sewn in beautiful wool/silk Dormeuil checked suiting. This is me wearing it. I found this fabric at the op shop, and could hardly get my money out fast enough! Alas, the fabric is riddled with moth holes!
These are two dresses which I used to fit-check, but were tricky to photograph due to the colours. The black one is some sort of heavy viscose, and the checked one is a fine lawn. The checked looks wonderful in real life; after taking this photo, she wore it the rest of the day at work. The orange top underneath is Xanthea, another zero waste pattern.

The details:

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2 Comments

  1. Juliana Bendndi on June 26, 2024 at 6:27 pm

    Hello Liz! Thank you for this beautiful dress – I was do excited about it when I saw it in Tauko and was raring to go…and then life. I can‘t wait to finally make it up! Best, Giuls

    Reply
    • lizhaywood on June 27, 2024 at 10:11 am

      Thank you Giuls, I hope you enjoy sewing it 🙂

      Reply

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