gathered dress!

I bought the fabric a while back with the intention of using the patterned fabric for some cute bags and the yellow for the lining. But then I kept looking at the fabric, loved it, wanted a dress, and decided the bags just weren’t as necessary.

I pinned this dress a while back because I liked how the bodice and waist band were gathered.

(Not sure of the original source.)

I like how my dress is a more casual version. I have a feeling I’ll be more likely to wear it often if I don’t feel like it’s too dressy.

I didn’t take the right pictures for a full tutorial, but I can show you how I did the bodice. If you have never sewn before, I highly recommend getting a Simplicity dress pattern and use it to learn more about how a dress is properly assembled. Then, once becoming familiar with it, you’ll find it easier to just make one up as you go. If you aren’t very comfortable with reading a pattern, check out this post and this post.

I cut out the front of the lining in the correct size for myself (used another dress as a pattern), but for the gathered front piece I added several extra inches to the middle to allow room for the gathering.

Using pins, I marked where I wanted the gathers to start and finish.

Then did a gathering stitch (set my tension to the highest and stitch length to the longest). I then sewed back over the gathering stitching with regular stitches to hold the gathers in place. Repeat along the bottom of the bodice.

Then I ironed the gathers down to give them more definition. This gave it a bit of a randomly pleated look.

Pin the front and lining together, right sides together, along the neck line and sew together.

Turn right side out and press your seam.

To do the waist band, I cut a five inch thick panel that was long enough to go around my entire waist. Then, every four inches I did gathering stitches (going up and down rather than side to side like on the bodice), zig zagged over them and pressed to give those gathers definition.

The waist band was sewn to the bodice, then I gathered the skirt (I used a lot of fabric because I wanted a full skirt) and sewed it to the waist band, added a zipper and hemmed.

I like how the bodice has some looseness to it and that the waist band mimics the bodice, even though it isn’t too obvious when you just glance at the dress.