on one of the dozens of email lists i read there is a mom getting ready to make her daughter's wedding gown. and like most brides-to-be, this daughter wants a very specific dress: mccalls 3788, long out of print, a beautiful givenchy design that i myself now covet. what this mom's "baby" liked about this dress was the princess seams, which i myself think are very flattering to just about any figure.
the problem is that, being out of print, this pattern is very hard to come by, and this mom was frantic. and now that i'm a mom too, i could feel my heart racing for her. so i offered to teach her how to make this pattern.
luckily her online cry for help was fruitful, and someone located this very pattern for her, and i trust that she is now happily on the way to making her "baby" the wedding dress of her dreams. and in the meantime, i'm going to teach you how to make this pattern, or more specifically i'm going to teach you where the magic is in this pattern so you can go out and make a dress-of-your-dreams too.
the trick is this: princess seams are nothing more than darts that have been connected.
that's it.
and here's how it works:
the bust and waist darts are lengthened so they end directly on the bust apex itself (normally they stop short of the actual bust point so as to avoid the "bullet bra" effect).
then the bust dart is rotated--i.e. moved--to the location where the princess seam is to be. the usual locations are the shoulder or the armscye but it can go to any edge on the pattern. to rotate the dart, all you do is slash the pattern where you want the new dart, then close the old dart, and as i used to say to the singers, "viola!"--you have moved the dart.
then you separate the two sections of the pattern, smooth out the pointy parts, and again-viola--you have PRINCESS SEAMS!
wasn't that easy?
you do the same thing to the back bodice if you wish.
the princess seam in the skirt is even easier--you just slash the pattern from the bottom of the waist dart all the way to the hem, separate, and yet again i say unto thee, VIOLA, princess seams R us. if there is no waist dart printed on your pattern, just slash from the waist to the hem.
now of course the beautimous mccalls pattern does not have a waist seam--that is because the bodice and the skirt pieces have been married to each other, and cut as one. the skirt has also been flared as in this post i wrote a couple of years ago. the back of the dress has straps from the shoulders instead of a full back bodice--you just slice the back bodice pattern straight across at underarm level, then lengthen the front shoulders to make straps. a rectangle for a drape completes the pattern.
and now that i've gone thru the patternmaking steps for you, i can now add this lovely dress to the life-long list of "things i'd look beautiful in if only i had the time to sew them".
