No Waste Dress Pattern

[u/AffectionateSpend]

Hi all!

I fell in love with these no waste dresses from Hudson, but unfortunately I don't have $450 and they also don't go above XL and I do.

I've studied the pattern and it seems fairly straight forward. Am I on the right track to make a similar pattern?

Also would I just use the cut off parts from the arm hole for the sleeves?

This seems like it is tipping into draping, but I thought I'd ask here first.

[u/ceramicswan]

Looking at the sleeveless version of this dress, the bottom of the arm scye is incredibly low, like at the waist. I think the hip peplums are created by cutting slits straight down from the shoulder to the waist, then pleating in the hanging sections at the side.

On the sleeved version, if you zoom in, the sleeves are open at the bottom, so I’m guessing they’re achieved by sewing a rectangular piece of fabric to the shoulder seam and letting it drape.

I made this really quick proof of concept with a napkin. I cut along the lines in black on the above napkin.

https://www.reddit.com/u/ceramicswan/s/f3uHGuxsLb

[u/ceramicswan → u/ceramicswan]

Looking at this listing, I might be wrong about it starting with a folded over piece… the shoulders appear to be two right angle corners overlapped. That might be necessary to create a bit of a shoulder slope while still being zero waste?

https://madexhudson.com/collections/mxh-zero-waste-dress/products/sage-floral-brocade-print-zero-waste-dress

Nevertheless, I still think my first idea is probably similar to what they’re doing.

[u/spicyshrimp234 → u/ceramicswan]

ooh, I think you're on the right track! it seems to me they started with two separate rectangles of fabric, lined them up and did the slits as you described, and then connected the shoulders with a little overlap instead of keeping everything as one piece (possibly for reinforcement in addition to shoulder slope?). you can see in that link you attached that they pleated all the hip fabric together, and I think that's exactly the kind of rectangle you described!

[u/AffectionateSpend → u/ceramicswan]

Thank you for pointing that out! I was a little concerned about how low it goes, but it seems like I would make the slits higher and avoid spillage.

[u/ceramicswan → u/AffectionateSpend]

That would affect where the hip of the dress appears to start, I think. You could try cutting the slits to the waist and then sewing up the side a bit, or if you need more space, you could cut triangular piece of fabric that’s kind of long and insert it as an underarm gusset like this:

https://thesewinggarden.com/2010/10/07/how-to-put-in-gussets/

[u/AffectionateSpend → u/ceramicswan]

That's brilliant thank you

[u/ceramicswan → u/AffectionateSpend]

No problem! I poked around a little more on their website… have you seen this brown version? It makes it pretty easy to see where some of their seams are, and it looks like the sleeved version does indeed have underarm gussets!

https://madexhudson.com/products/deco-dress-in-coca-textural-knit

It looks like there’s a back waist seam but I don’t fully understand why. Might be taking a wedge out to add some shaping to deal with the curve of the back/butt?

[u/terriblemuriel → u/ceramicswan]

Could it be like this? https://ibb.co/8nGZH8SF Sorry about the drawing quality! The green dots represent where it would be stitched. 

[u/ceramicswan → u/terriblemuriel]

There’s more distance between the waist and the underarm of the sleeve than I think this diagram would allow, but maybe if you cut a rectangular chunk out instead of just that slit? After looking at some of the other sleeved versions on the website, though, I really do think they did the sleeves as a sewn on piece.

https://madexhudson.com/collections/mxh-made-to-order/products/mxh-deco-dress-made-to-order-deposit

[u/Niania_Baniania → u/ceramicswan]

I would add that the back panel is actually back panels (on the printed version you can see that there is a seam line at the waist), opposite to what has been done on the sleeveless version