Sunday 11 January 2009

A Chemise for the Austrian Dresses II - revised cutting plan

Well my plans have hit their first hitch. I conducted burn and other tests on my suspected linens, and I'm not really sure what the larger piece is, but I'm no longer sure it's linen. The smaller piece though, that at least behaves more like linen, though in my more skeptical moments I'm not sure it's pure linen either.

The smaller piece is 4m long, but it's only 112cm wide, so it's just enough to cut out a chemise. But if I use a trapezoid shape for each piece that is originally a rectangle, I gain only the width of the rectangle added to the circumference of the chemise, while with triangular gores, I gain nearly twice the width of the rectangle, as the rectangle is cut diagonally and the other end added to the circumference.

Now I guess some of this is false economy, since wider skirts over the hips would be really useful to me, but since only the calf section of the chemise will be visible under the dress, and extra width at the hem should help me dance better, and well I just can't fit in the size of trapezoids I want, I'll make a non-shirred chemise now, and aim to make a shirred one later in the year.

How the styles look and hang under the same dress, cut to the same plan except the gores should be a great comparison to see.

So here's my planned layout for the chemise:



And here's the pieces I will require:
And how they fit on my fabric:
I'm quite happy with the efficiency of this. The only portion not used is a scrap in the corner next to a piece that had been cut off. If there hadn't been a piece cut off, I would have used this to make my sleeves longer.

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