I’m beyond thrilled to announce the publication of our very first pattern! The Perth dress/blouse is an unlined, loose-fitting little summer frock with a bit of a buttoned-up menswear vibe to it. It’s kinda like a shirtdress, but kinda not. A faux shirtdress. The shirtdress to make when you’re not making a shirtdress. Hehe, I joked in my own head while making it that it’s the shirtdress to make if you loathe buttonholes, since there are barely any at all in this one! Also, I say “our”pattern, not because I’m using the royal “we”, haha; but because I’ve gone into partnership with my daughter! #whatdotheysayaboutfamilyandbusiness but it’s OK, Cassie and I get along very well. Plus she has mad magic Illustrator skills, which perfectly complements my complete lack thereof, hehe. So we are the Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co – this warms the cockles of my heart SO much I can’t even tell you! I never dreamed we’d have some kind of venture together like this but now we do I think I can tick it off some sort of subconscious bucket list that I never knew I had.
So we have a brand new Etsy shop, CarolynandCassie; situated here… Right now there’s only one thing in it, well TWO, since the pdf pattern and paper patterns are listed separately, but we harbour big dreams of having lots and LOTS of designs there in the future. Or maybe that’s just the happy glow that comes with having it OUT THERE, FINALLY! I’ve been basically living and breathing this thing for such a while, well …. it’s out there now. Time to stop obsessing!
So this is what I’ve been working on for the past few months, not just pattern making but lots and lots of sewing too. Apart from well over a dozen muslins, I’ve made four Perths in my quest for the perfect Perth. I shall now proceed to bombard you with Perths, ahem…
1. My chocolate/tobacco version above; this is not strictly a Perth but a “sort of” Perth dress, really. This is my prototype Perth, a Perth in spirit since the final pattern is actually quite different everywhere in small ways … you can see in my little movie below that it’s super bouffy, for one thing, and I tamed the boufff in that back with a big ol’ stern box pleat. Down, boufff, down!
I made this one back in April of last year! and because I’d already had the idea of making it into a pattern somehow it never got blogged here, even though I wore it a few times.
2. My white one… a true Perth and currently my favourite mostly because of the perfect fabric. It’s a white shirting cotton from Fabulous Fabrics, almost like a sateen, but a super fine one, crisp, lightweight and with the perfect amount of drape. LOVE IT SO MUCH and actually I’m slightly regretting that I didn’t buy the whole roll #addicted In fact, this might be a good time to state what I think is the ideal fabric for this design… lightweight, thin fabrics that have some drape, yet still have just enough body for the tailored collar to work. Basically, if you can imagine a mens’ business shirt made in it, then it’s probably just about perfect. Sad sad times… I went back to the fabric store yesterday on another quest (long story and a pretty “big” one too in lifetime terms, I’ll relate it another time…) and had a quick but hopeful look out for this perfect white fabric.. they’d sold it all!! *sob* #gottagrabitwhileitsthere
This one has slightly longer sleeves, that I eventually decided to shorten for the final version of the pattern. I shortened them back to the length of my original brown design because I thought the shorter sleeves looked a little more feminine and “perkier”; a nice offset to the overt masculinity of the buttoned-up, very formal looking collar.
3. Further playing upon the menswear influence, I ran up a third version with a smart white collar, a lot like the shirts that I’ve made for my menfolk over the years.. these ones here are prime examples. I used a lovely lemon-y yellow, lightweight pinstriped linen that I bought in Fratelli Bassetti Tessuti in Rome when we visited six years ago. It was my Roman souvenir, and I’m fiiiiinally making something with it, haha. Well, it’s nothing if not well marinated! I used a single black button at the throat as a small but definitive focal point on the dress.
Going back to my point about the perfect fabric, this linen has a little bit of body, maybe if I’m being super picky then I would say it has slightly too much body for the design to drape perfectly? But it’s still pretty nice to wear, and cool!
4. And finally; along the way I realised the design would make quite a nice blouse too, so we went about making this happen. I like this length for a blouse slightly cropped and a little boxy. For the blouse, I used a dark indigo chambray, leftovers from this dress actually! and a wooden button.
The chambray is a touch on the spongy side with some body to it so Im a teeny bit meh about it for this design really, but well… I’m completely ok with it for testing out, and I think it turned out a pretty cute wearable muslin.
So, want to hear the story behind the pattern?…. it’s ok if you don’t just stop reading now. If you want to know to whole boring saga, carry on! SO: nearly a year ago I made my brown dress, my prototype as it turned out. I’d bought this lovely, slightly blotchy chocolate/tobacco linen from Tessuti’s in Melbourne during my trip there with Mum, Cassie and Tiffany, and drafted my own pattern, using my own block that I made years ago from my own measurements using the diagrams from Pattern Magic (originally blogged about here), though I tacked on the collar and collar stand from my favourite Burda mens’ shirt pattern… but before you cry “plagiarist!” I did NOT use that Burda collar and stand for my own Perth pattern! I drafted the Perth ones myself from scratch, as I did all parts of the pattern. I promise you, I’m very ethical and would never try to claim something as mine that is not…but more about the drafting process-ario later, I’m getting ahead of myself.
So, I made my brown dress. I put quite a bit of thought into the closure, and worked out a solution to get the look I wanted. I liked it, but overall thought the silhouette was a little “booffy” and was definitely planning to streamline it a bit down the track. In the meantime though I’d posted a progress picture on instagram, and there was a small number of polite comments suggesting an interest should I make a pattern for it. The seed was planted!
I thought more and more about it.. I wasn’t daunted by drafting a pattern to fit “me”, but I was wondering how I could grade it. At first I thought I’d get a qualified person to grade it for me. I approached several people I know who have completed fashion design school at tech, none of whom had time. But my friend J, fashion school graduate, and all-round awesomely inspiring lady, was extremely encouraging and assured me I could “easily do it” and it was “super easy”. I secretly had doubts about this… but she piled my arms high with her pattern drafting books and sent me off. I definitely felt challenged, and like I couldn’t possibly not do it now! I was honour bound! J would think I was an idiot! Well… I am obviously, but no need for the world to know that, hehehe…. I spent the next few months studying the books J had given me, taking notes… the best by far was Winifred Aldrich’s Metric Pattern Cutting for Women’s Wear, I pretty much got everything from that. There was also a vintage Burda book, I can’t remember its title at the moment but that one gave some very helpful grading tips too.
So I eventually graded my pattern! I’d drawn it out by hand on large sheets of paper from a flip chart pad, with no seam allowances, graded it all by hand, and proceeded to trace and test each individual size myself before getting it scanned as a full sized pdf. Yes, this is definitely NOT the most efficient way to go about it… I had early, highly romantic ideas about a hand-drawn pattern… aaah, so naive! I quickly abandoned that fantasy!! though hand-grading was an essential step in the process in the end, and I happily had complete confidence that my pattern “worked” in all the sizes… Then I started thinking about learning Illustrator. I made a few low-grade investigations… and then Cassie got wind of what I was doing and reminded me that she basically spent her whole degree using Illustrator. I was like, wow, would you teach me? and she replied, oh Mum, I could make that pattern into a pdf for you in half a day… I was, like OH My GOD! My saviour!!! At first, I was just going to pay her for her time… but as time went on, and we were working side by side on our computers, her on the pattern (it took a lot longer than half a day, btw!) me on the illustrations and instructions (also way longer than half a day!) and the idea of a partnership came up and it felt totally natural. She was keen. And I’m so very happy about it! This means that if either of us come up with an idea then we have this outlet for it, and we have complementary skills.
Of course, it’s our first pattern, and the learning curve has been steep. I reckon I did some things three or four times over, simply because the right way wasn’t immediately obvious. Almost like, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get a prince. Or maybe you can’t see the trees for the forest? Making a pattern turned out to be something like that!
The next step was the all-important “real” testing phase, and it’s SUPER important! I’m completely indebted to my delightful and awesomely helpful testers… who went through my amateurish instructions with a fine-tooth comb, thank goodness since I could barely see anything anymore for having re-written them a hundred times over. Those that sent me pictures have made the most beautiful dresses which has been SUPER exciting. I will do a separate post highlighting my lovely testers, soon, once everyone has got “final” pictures in to me.
Making the pattern a tangible thing: well at first I was just like, A4 is enough, yeah? Then one of my lovely testers SaSa of paisley pirouette mentioned a firm preference for A0, and I had a lightbulb moment that I should offer that too. Sounds so obvious in retrospect but truthfully I was kinda overwhelmed with it all at this point, so I really appreciated the reminder! SaSa also kindly recommended to me a massive comment thread about people’s pattern preferences, over on sewbusylizzy, which I sat down and read in a night. I got from this that sewing peeps were pretty evenly divided three-ways in their allegiance to and/or total avoidance of A4, A0 and/or paper patterns. Meaning in fact, a pattern designer pretty much has to offer everything if she/he wants to a. please everyone, and b. be taken even half-way seriously! So Cassie got to work on the A0 file and I went about making paper patterns happen. I got my patterns printed at Officeworks, folded ’em all myself, and printed out and compiled my own instruction booklets, put together the pattern envelopes myself. Goodness, that took an entire day all by itself, phew! And then I set up our etsy shop… aaaand sat on the edge of my seat waiting for my first sale! The excitement when the first one popped in, wheeee! What a rush!
So that’s it! Want to try out my pattern?! We are the Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co. our shop is CarolynandCassie on Etsy, and we have the Perth dress/blouse pdf pattern and the Perth dress/blouse paper pattern on offer. I’ve also put a link to the shop up in my sidebar. And I would love to see your Perths! If you make one, then please either let me know in the comments, or tag us @handmadebycarolyn and @shyshycassie on instagram, and use the hashtag #perthdress
Perth, and Perth! hehe
Am I thinking about my next pattern…? well, of course!!
now for the embarrassing bit…
Details:
Dress/top: ours! the Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co Perth pattern!!! (duh) white is a shirting cotton, yellow is lightweight linen, with a linen collar, brown is lightweight linen, blue top is a cotton chambray
White skirt: Vogue 1247, made from an old curtain, details here
Shoes: all made by me, actually! ha! black clogs blogged here, caramel brown/ivory clogs here, white oxfords here
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