I finally used my sloper to draft a dress! yaaaay!

It’s a very simple dress so far. The bodice is my sloper straight-up, the skirt is a half-circle skirt I drafted last year. I ran into some problems making this pattern, despite how simple it appeared.

The first issue I encountered was due to flaws in the original sloper. It needed a SBA. I’m a bit mad at myself for not realizing this from the start because, when I drafted my fitted shirt, I had to make an SBA on that pattern as well.

So, I made the SBA on the sloper. I left the CF waist darts as they were post-SBA. This was a mistake because it made the bodice wider than the skirt and the side seams did not match! To remedy that, I added the original waist darts back in. That got the bodice and skirt side seams to match.

The other issue with my old sloper was the armscye. I carved it out a little bit on the fitted shirt (not enough BTW) but I failed to apply that to the sloper. The armscye was about 1″ too big (the seam hit on my arm not my armpit). This limited my comfortable mobility quite a bit. The sleeve was also too small.

And the final problem – the bodice fit perfectly at my waist, but had alot of extra fabric in the underarm side seam area.

I took my pattern to the Cut and Sew Studio for a little help. Under the direction of instructor Sophie, we took in the side seam above the waist, fixed the armscye, and expanded the sleeve.

It worked like a charm! In the pictures below, the grey dress with cats on it was made with the original, flawed pattern. I took it in and chopped off the sleeves to match the new armscye.

This Mountains dress was made with the new pattern (Firecracker Fabrics FTW! also photo by Firecracker Fabrics).

And finally, to show the new sleeve in action, is an updated picture of my fitted shirt! I applied the new pattern’s armscye and sleeve to this pattern. The tunic pattern will also need this change and I hope to make one soon with some lovely summer rayon I want to use before Fall!