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I took a class recently on how to draft a pattern by tracing a garment that already exists. You may have seen my mother’s post on the dress that she made in the same class. 

I knew from the get-go that I wanted to make lounge pants for myself. I work from home, so I wear sweatpants or pajama pants all the time. I also got a dog this year, and I’m taking him for five walks a day. I don’t love wearing pajama pants outside, but I was sick of changing into jeans every time I took Fozzie out. 

I wear one pair of pants more than all the others. They’re lightweight cotton, slightly cropped, and super comfortable. They are also covered in unicorns. 

I traced the original pants onto Swedish tracing paper by laying a sheet of carbon paper under the tracing paper and then using a roller-wheel over every seam. This took WAY longer than I thought it would. The pants I traced are old and pretty stretched out. The seams really didn’t want to lay flat, even when I ironed them. I got it eventually, and had a pattern I could work with. 

I didn’t use muslin for a mock-up. I decided to go with a quilting cotton. My reasoning was that I might as well use a cute fabric in case the pants fit on the first try. 

I sewed up the pants and then I was pretty much done! …Except the pants didn’t fit. They were close, but it was a little tight across the hips. I tried to do a squat in them and totally ripped the pants up the butt-seam. Rough. 

I ended up letting out the side seams by 3/8ths of an inch, and that gave me just enough give. Fun fact about making a mockup: don’t do French seams. They’re so nice and so tidy, but if you have to make adjustments, they suck. I’m saying this from experience. 

After letting out the side seams, I was done for real! 

I made one big adjustment that helped them not look like pajama pants. The original pants had a cuff at the bottom of the leg with white piping.

I took out both the separate cuff and the piping on my new pattern. 

It’s a small detail, but I think it makes a big difference. 

(Ignore the little patchwork wedge at the bottom of the leg. I didn’t have quite enough fabric. Oops.)

I’m really happy with how these pants turned out. They fit just like the old pants, but they don’t look like pajamas, so I feel fine wearing them out and about. I’m actually wearing them right now while I write this! 

Woohoo! I made a dress! A cool, comfortable, colorful dress! From fabric I designed! And a pattern I drafted!

I am so happy right now. 😁 Absolutely grinning from ear to ear.

Let me back up for a minute.

Jo and I started The Wardrobe Project back in March. For me the problem was that I had very little clothing, and most of the pieces didn’t fit and/or didn’t work with each other, so I pretty much wore the same black yoga pants, black tank top, and black cardigan every day. Click through to that post to see a photo of my daily uniform and an inventory of what was on my closet. Sad.

One of my first steps was actually to buy some new clothing that fit my requirements – comfortable, colorful, and well-made. You can see the two dresses and two pairs of pants I bought here.

I loved that purple dress so much that I decided I would copy it. It’s a pretty simple silhouette with a loose fit, so I thought I could figure it out myself, but then I got a notification that Modern Domestic (my local fabric store) was offering a class called Copy Your Favorite Garment.

I’m so glad I took that class! I learned a ton, and having the teacher there to help me out with some quibbly sleeve stuff and a very weird pocket construction was amazing. Thanks, Colleen!

Here’s the muslin I made in the class.

The muslin had a few problems…

But none of those problems that really affected the pattern, so I forged ahead with the fancy fabric.

It’s my own design, printed on linen that I washed and dried a million six times to get the shrink out.

And now I have a finished dress!

I’m wearing it with pants made by me using the Nocturne Pajamas pattern from Sew Liberated.

You can read about my pants adventures here (accidental pajamas) and here (same pattern, but not looking like pajamas).

I’m even wearing socks I knit myself!

Here are a few detail photos of the dress. It’s even better than the original!

It has pintucks down just the bodice part of the front.

You can also see in this photo that I opted for a neck facing instead of the bound neckline in the original dress.

I switched to a prettier (and easier to construct) pocket.

The original just has a side seam opening. On mine I gave it a pretty curved opening with a nice facing.

In that photo you can also see my seam finishes. They’re all French seams that I topstitched down. Here’s what that looks like from the inside.

I did that on every seam. A lot of people think you can’t do French seams on an armhole, but you can.

So neat and tidy. 🙂

And now I need to make another!

I’ve been wanting a dress I can wear to Portland Thorns games – instead of the too-small jersey I have. 🫤 I think this fabric will be perfect (and something I can wear for everyday, too) so I’m ordering some today.

Since I’ve started re-vamping my wardrobe, I’ve been getting SOOO much smocking content on my Instagram. Smocking was never something I’d been interested in before, but I kept seeing videos of people using smocking to add a “spine” to the backs of button-downs. This post from purpleivvy on Instagram is an example of what I’m talking about. It seemed like it would be a quick, fun way to add a pop of excitement to a basic shirt. 

I picked a shirt out of my wardrobe that fit, but was a little baggy. Honestly it made me look like a line-cook. In a true power-move, I forgot to take a photo of what the shirt looked like before. Please enjoy this photo from a website that sells black shirts for line cooks. It’s honestly a pretty perfect representation of what the shirt looked like. 

With that out of the way, I started in on the smocking. I watched a couple short tutorials on Instagram to get me started. The one that I found the most helpful was this one by im.morii17. She has a bunch of smocking tutorials for various patterns. If you’re at all interested in smocking, I would definitely check her out. 

The smocking process in this case is pretty simple. I drew a grid with chalk onto my shirt (and I of course drew it on the outside, which is the wrong side, so I had to redo it on the inside.) Then I drew lines on the squares that I needed to stitch through for the pattern I picked. 

It’s a little brain-twisty at first, because the line is telling you which two corners are going to touch, not the line that the fabric’s going to fold on. I had to watch the tutorial a few times before I really got it. 

Honestly, this part of the project was really quick. I watched a few episodes of tv, and then I was done. This is what it looked like right out of the dryer. 

I ran it through the washer and dryer to get all the chalk off, and then it was time to hem it.

I’m not going to lie to you guys, this hem gave me SO much trouble.

The smocking really warped the back of the shirt. I expected that, but I didn’t expect just how hard that would make hemming it. I will also tell you at this point, that hemming it was such a frustrating pain that I didn’t take any photos until I was finally done.

Here’s a brief rundown on what I did. 

My plan to just take a rotary cutter and omnigrid to the bottom of the shirt didn’t work out. Instead, I put the shirt on, and my mother marked my hemline all the way around. We couldn’t just measure up from the bottom, or down from the top because of all the warping of the smocking, so we had to eyeball it. I trimmed and hemmed to that length and then tried it on. It was too long, and I didn’t like the fit of it. It fit a bit like the Ivy Sweater that I made a while back that I also didn’t like the fit of. Go figure. 

We tried taking in the sides to improve the fit, but that made it uncomfortable, and it made the smocking on the back pull more, which choked me a bit. So that didn’t work either. 

We settled on something that was tedious, but worked. I unpicked the previous hem, and my mother pinned up a new hem while I wore it. We eyeballed it again, which ended up being the best option all around for this shirt. I basted the new hem down right on the fold line. 

From the outside it looks like a perfectly normal hem, but look at it from the inside!

Totally irregular!

I trimmed out all the excess, and then did a standard ½ inch double fold hem. 

After that, I was finally done! I think that hemming the shirt took longer than the smocking did. 

And here it is from the front.

I’m happy with how this turned out in the end, but I definitely think there was an easier way to get there. I think that if I did this again in the future, I would do the smocking on a separate piece of fabric and then stitch it to the shirt. Doing it that way would give me more control over the fit of the shirt.

Jo and I have been taking a class at Modern Domestic, learning how to draft a pattern from a completed garment. We just had our last class, and this is my finished muslin!

For reference, here’s the dress I was copying.

It’s very loose-fitting, with pintucks on the front and excellent pockets. This is my favorite dress. I wear it all the time and I want a million copies.

I had hoped to be able to wear my muslin, but there are a few problems with it. Nothing that affects the pattern I drafted – just this particular version I made. 🙂

Everyone says not to use expensive fabric for your muslin, and they are right. I found this sheet at a thrift store for $3 and it was perfect for testing, but I don’t think I’ll keep it to wear – even though I think the print is super cute and I’m 100% comfortable wearing a dress with a giant, quirky animal print. 😂

• I didn’t have quite enough fabric to make the dress, so I patched in a weird bit at one shoulder. The seam looks kind of like a yoke seam, or a raglan sleeve seam, but there’s not a matching seam on the other side. Worse, I didn’t mess around with getting the pieced bit on grain, so now it hangs kind of funny.
• The sheet didn’t have a fiber content tag, but judging from the smell when I pressed it on a cotton setting, I’m pretty sure it’s 100% polyester. That makes it a static generator – especially since I like to wear my dresses with loose pants. So Much Static Cling!!!
• The fabric is too light weight to hang really well. (Lesson learned from these pants.) But it’s still uncomfortably hot to wear? Weird, but true.
• My white chalk didn’t show up on the fabric, so I used yellow to make my pintucks. I had to press those lines, and that set the color. It didn’t completely wash out. 🙁
• I also messed up sewing one pocket, and the opening is so tight I can barely get my hand into it. Oops! Sadly, it’s the right pocket, and I’m right-handed. 😂

So all of that makes the muslin less wearable, but that’s ok. I spent $3 on the fabric and learned a lot!

I decided to remove the bust darts. On a dress this loose and with my body shape, they’re completely unnecessary.

I decided to change the pocket to a different style my teacher showed me. Same basic construction, but a prettier opening, and one I’m less likely to mess up when sewing in the nice fabric.

So that’s the next step! Making this dress in nice fabric!

Remember these socks I made?

That pretty fabric under my feet is the fabric I’m using for my “real” dress. I designed it! I had it printed on linen and I’ve been adding it to my laundry every week for the last month, hoping to get all the shrink out of it before making my dress. 🙂

I’m very nervous to cut into it, but also eager to get started. Wish me luck!