Hello Sewing Friends! It’s Tamar from Tamar Hope Designs back on the blog with a new sewing 101 installment. If you’ve been following along, we’ve done a lot of sewing this year and have learned so many valuable skills together! Now, I want to teach you how to take the next step and create virtually anything that you can dream up by taking your favorite patterns and combining them to create totally new designs!
Pattern mashing is so much fun! With a few tips you can pick any bodice and combine it with any skirt. You can switch up the sleeves and backs. You can make something that is just like that gorgeous high end dress that you’ve been eyeing up, or you can make something that you dreamed up.
For this make I wanted to come up with a sporty summer dress that I could make with only one yard of fabric. I love how it turned out. I’ll show you how I made this mash up, but more importantly, I am going to take you through the steps to create any mashup that you can dream up! Come along with me!
Pick your Bodice
The first step is to pick your bodice. Go through all the Sunflower Seams patterns and find the bodice that most closely fits your vision. Cut out the bodice pieces using your model’s chest and height sizes.
If you like the sleeves of that bodice, cut them out as well. If you want to use different sleeves, pick a pattern with your ideal sleeves. Go back to this Sleeves post to learn how to add different sleeves to your bodice.
If you want to use a different back, you can use your bodice back piece as a guide and alter it to have the back features that you want. (Just don’t change the arm hole, shoulder seam, or side seam, otherwise it won’t line up with your front bodice piece). For this make, I wanted the Ren back and the Cornflower bodice. I cut out the Cornflower Bodice front. Then I added an inch along the center back of the back pieces to account for the overlap for the buttons.
Pick your Skirt
Next you get to pick the skirt that matches your vision. If it’s a gathered skirt, simply cut out the same size as your bodice. It will fit just fine. If it’s not gathered, you will need to make sure it is exactly the same width as your bodice. Measure and cut the size that works even if it’s a different size than the bodice or in between sizes. I cut out a size 10 bodice, but I knew that because of the elastic waist, the skirt would need to be a bigger size than the bodice in order to fit. I needed to cut a size 14 Palm skirt to fit the size 10 Cornflower bodice.
(Note: Another reason that the skirt size needed to be sized up to fit is that palm is drafted for knits and cornflower is drafted for woven fabrics. Typically you will want to stick with woven patterns for woven fabric and knit patterns for knit fabric. If you do use a knit pattern with woven fabric, you will need to size up since your fabric won’t stretch like knit.)
Mashing a skirt with a dress is more complicated than mashing a dress skirt with a dress bodice. For the skirt to hit the model in the correct places, you will need to add the waistband. This can either be a separate piece that is sewn to the skirt, or you can cut it all out as one piece.
Sewing
The hardest part of mashing patterns is planning and cutting. Once the pieces are cut out, all you need to do is follow the bodice tutorial to assemble the bodice.
Then follow the skirt tutorial to assemble the skirt.
Finally, follow the instructions for the bodice pattern to sew the skirt to the bodice.
Modifications
Sometimes a few more modifications are necessary to make your vision come alive. Don’t be afraid to add bows, trim, a sash, or a faux drawstring. For my drawstring, I cut a piece 33” x 2.5.” I sewed a tube and attached it to the center of my elastic casing. I then simply tied knots in the ends of the tube.
For this dress, I also added 1 inch to the length of the skirt to make it more of a dress length instead of a skort length. I also cut two backs for the skirt instead of a front and a back. This gave it more of a sporty look as it resembles the cut of running shorts.
What pattern mashes have you been dreaming up? If you felt inspired by my 1 yard sporty summer dress, go grab Ren, Cornflower, and Palm for 20% off with code MASH20 from now through the end of August and get sewing!
Happy Mashing!
-Tamar
