03 Oct Mioara Cretu
Posted at 12:56h
in Pattern Making Instructions, Pattern Puzzles, Stretch Patterns, Womens Knit Block
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Mioara Cretu, a textile teacher from Iassy, Romania submitted the fabulous pattern shape you see below. Such a challenging shape had our #PatternPuzzlers staying back after school to solve the problem. With collective zeal Julie Eilber, Alison Calderwood and Karen Vogelsang finally solved the puzzle early Wednesday morning. Such stamina!
Mioara has a particular interest in clothing made a jersey and admires the Donna Karan idea of the ‘one pattern dress’ achieved by removing the side seams with clever pattern making.
The front dress has a very subtle cowl with most of the interesting detail featured on the back view. The back detail starts with an asymmetric neckline that leads to a twisted seam flowing from the back to the lower front dress. Some gather/drape is developed at the shoulder blade level and both shoulder seams have been moved to suit the back styling and keep the pattern piece as one.
Below is the photo of the original Donna Karan style that inspired Mioara.
Although this dress is made from a two-way stretch jersey, Mioara has used a block with a front bust dart to produce and control the subtle cowl in the front neck. This is very unusual and also very clever. It is possible to convert a fitted block to a jersey block and still keep the bust dart for shaping. This I know in theory. However, I have rarely seen this done and never tried it myself. The pattern plan below shows the bust dart transferred into the neckline to make a small but controlled cowl.
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The back view of the pattern plan is much more detailed. The asymmetric neckline and the twisted seam are the dominant features on the back of this dress. Note the style lines where small portions of the back pattern will be removed and added to the front shoulder to complete the one-piece pattern. Also at the top of the twisted seam are the cutting lines for the drape alteration to make gather on the back panel.
The drape alteration is set out below in detail. This extra fabric will become drape and you can gather it or form small soft tucks.
The final pattern piece below has enough detail for you to see where the original pattern has been altered to form the new pattern shape. Please note that Mioara has very cleverly transferred the side seam shaping, to the twisted seam edge, to maintain a sharp fit in this gorgeous dress.
A beautiful design, a challenging pattern and finally a very simple dress to make. Is anyone tempted to try this style?
Wishing everyone a glorious long weekend. 🙂
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