Dress hack tutorial: Turn Maple into a coat / jacket!
Hi stitchers! And welcome back to another dress hack guest post contribution. I love these posts so much. You can see how other sewists play with a CocoWawa pattern and what changes they make. I hope they inspire you as much as they inspire me! And in this occasion, we have the lovely Jeanessa (@nessiethemaker), a seamstress based in Washington DC, US.
First, I sent her a pattern of her choice -in this case, the Maple Dress sewing pattern. Then, I asked her to choose a fabric. She went for a beautiful corduroy from Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics. Keep reading to know how she hacked this pattern and to see her beautiful version!
Jeanessa's dress hack in her own words
"My vision for this dress hack was an open front, jacket-dress (dracket??) Maple. To complete this hack, I only needed to alter three of the Maple pattern pieces: sleeves, front facing, and front skirt. In my chosen size, I was able to complete the hack using the same fabric requirements that the original Maple calls. I achieved this by cutting all the mirrored pieces individually instead of on the fold."
"For the sleeves, I used the slash and spread method to open up the arm and give it the fullness of a jacket look. Then I borrowed some pattern pieces and techniques from my favorite shirt patterns to complete the sleeve placket and cuffs."
"For the front skirt, I measured the width of the front bodice piece to estimate how much additional width was needed to follow the crossover of the bodice. Be sure to measure at the seam line rather than the edge to get accurate measurements! As a note, I am usually a big stickler for sewing muslins when doing hacks, so I waited until I had sewn the front bodice to cut out the skirt pieces and used sewable tracing paper as a mock-up to make sure the seams would match."
"To keep the A-line shape of the skirt, I followed the pattern lines and cut out the front skirt piece in a size that roughly matched the measurements for the front bodice. Since I wanted an open front, I did not have to cut the front skirt piece on the fold."
"The front facing piece was simply extended to the full length of the dress. The original pattern steps ask you to attach the collar/facing pieces to the bodice as one of the earlier steps, however because of the open front modification, I needed to save this step until the skirt was attached to the bodice."
"The last thing I will mention for this hack is that the fabric you choose makes all the difference. I chose this corduroy because it has a more structured drape to look like an outer layer, but is not too rigid that the open jacket won’t hang nicely. The original pattern has some great winter-weight fabric suggestions to take inspiration from."
Thank you so much Jeanessa! And below you can admire her amazing work :)
So in love with her Maple. And it works SO WELL as a coat / jacket!
Hope you liked the dress hack post Jeanessa wrote and the final garment she created as much as I did. I will be back in the new year with more posts, tutorials and new patterns!
Happy sewing,
Ana
xxx