Sewing Indie Month, Pattern Hacking, Part 1

There are few things I love more than to take a pattern and see just how much I can basically keep the bones of the pattern and still change it so much that it looks nothing like the original. The pattern that I am hacking this week is a beautiful pattern from Sew Chic.

Laura Nash is the designer behind the pattern line and she has 15 lovely, vintage inspired patterns to choose from. You can find them all here, http://www.sewchicpatterns.com/shop.html. The Myrtlewood dress is, as I said a beautiful pattern that really needs no hacking, but for Sewing Indie Month, I'm supposed to hack away and that is just what I have done. To be honest, I feel that the better the pattern, the more style is has, the more hacking possibilities it will offer. I think the possibilities with this pattern are limitless!
Let's begin by taking a look at the pattern envelope. Laura is great as she provides the envelope to each pattern on her website. Look closely at the sleeve and you will see that it is a gusseted sleeve. That was the first design element that made my mind begin to churn. I also liked the fact that there are so many garments included all in one, a shirt, a straight skirt and a circular skirt.

Here is the front pattern for the shirt portion of the dress.

  The first thing I did was to fold the pattern on the center front line as I did not want a center front opening.

In the armpit of the pattern, you will see the various slash lines that have been given for the underarm gusset. I used this as a guideline.

I put my ruler on the slash line and drew a line up to the shoulder. I left just a bit on the shoulder so that I can connect the front and the back at the shoulder.

Once my line was drawn in, I folded the pattern on the that line.

If I left the underarm where it was, it would have been too low, so I had to add to the underarm. I began by putting my ruler on the side seam and drew a line that extended upward.

Once again I used the slash lines as a guideline for my underarm. I simply squared a line over from the tip of the slash line to my extended side seam.  

Then I connected the extended side seam to the angled line with a slight curve. I did the same to the back pattern piece.

Once I had prepared my pattern pieces, I cut a muslin. The muslin showed me that I needed a little more fit along the front angled line, so I pinched in a dart and then created a princess line seam.   Below you see my center front and my side front pattern pieces.

 The back pattern piece.

 My center front panel cut out of my fashion fabric

I am underlining the fabric with silk.

The fabric that I am using came from Britex. Britex very generously gave each of us who are sewing for Sewing Indie Month a piece of fabric for one of our projects. The fabric that I chose is rayon and it has the nicest hand of any rayon that I have ever touched. It feels like liquid silk. As you can see, it is a border print. I will be using the border print around the neck of my bodice and along the hem of my skirt.The fabric has the border on both sides and is 55" wide. You can find it here on the Britex website, http://www.britexfabrics.com/fabric/rayon/double-bordered-ikat-viscose-made-in-italy.html 

So phase 1 has been completed. You are probably wondering just what my dress is going to look like. Well, drop back by tomorrow and you'll see more!!!