The Daring Dolman pattern took a staple top pattern with dolman sleeves and gave it an upgrade. The banded v-back bodice and pleated lower sleeve certainly added to the wow factor.
When we decided to feature the Daring Dolman pattern this week, we had no idea our promo team would take Daring to new levels.
Zayna loves dresses and we absolutely love this pattern mashup she came up with. Zayna paired the Daring bodice with the skirt from Prevail and tada she has a fabulous new dress! We love the combo of a fitted skirt with the dramatic sleeve. And bonus Zayna did an easy and straight forward pattern mash.
She cut the Daring bodice (front and back) on the lengthen/shorten line which is also the natural waist. The sleeves remain unchanged, and she sewed the bodice together per the tutorial. Next Zayna cut and sewed the Prevail fitted skirt option and then sewed the bodice and skirt together. That's it. That's the hack.
Zayna's new Daring Dolman dress is made from French Terry fabric and we think it's stunning!
I loved Zayna's Daring dress so much, I jumped on the inspiration train and made my own. I was using this plaid sweater knit fabric and I didn't have enough to cut separate back and skirt pieces AND keep the lines of the pattern matched up after cutting. So that meant eliminating the waist and back seams.
Here's is an illustration showing what the modified back piece looked like before cutting. But keep reading and we break down the steps.
It's easy enough to eliminate the back seam on the Daring pattern. The center back bodice seam is "trued" meaning that once the fabric is sewn together at the seam, there is smooth line with no dips or points. (We will go into more detail regarding trued seams at a later date). But for this pattern mash we are cutting the back bodice on the fold. As such we no longer need the seam allowance and shifting the fabric eliminates that added seam allowance.
Referring to the illustration below, align the edge marked in red with the fold of your fabric. It's that easy. The red line marks the new center back and removes the seam allowance needed for cutting and sewing mirror images.
We also need to overlap the skirt and bodice pieces to eliminate the waist seam. To do that we overlap the pieces at the length shorten line. Again we don't need to seam allowance so aligning the trued edge of the skirt with the lengthen shorten line does that for us.
You need to overlap the skirt pieces in the same way for the front bodice to get your new dress length pattern piece.
Once you have your new pattern pieces, cut your fabric and sew as usual.
The sweater knit gave a slightly relaxed fit, so I made a waist tie belt to bring it in and give a little more shaping.
We hope you love what the team did. Are you up for making Daring as a shirt or dress?
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