Wow this took a long time, but here we have it the Gaza toile / muslin completed. Why so long? you ask, the long seams are flat felled by hand. Don't know why, I needed a little zen sewing.
It looks so much better after a good press.
It looks so much better after a good press.
I'm not going to lie, this pattern gave me some problems. It might have been the fabric choice, they say not to pick a light fabric, because of the embroidery, and this is a cotton lawn. I could see this being better in a double gauze, or something heavier with drape.
It's an interesting pattern, there's a front, back, three side panels, two piece sleeve (with an option to make it one piece), and two yoke pieces. It is one size fits all sizing.
So my first hiccup was with the neck circumference, my neck is 15", the pattern was 15 - 15 1/2, that didn't leave a lot of space. My personal preference, is not to have anything too close to my neck. The final measurement of the neckline after alterations is 23".
And if you remember from my last post, I also had excess on the sleeve cap. The sleeve is set in an interesting way, there are no gathers at the cap, almost like a kimono sleeve with a gusset (except with no separate gusset piece). The armhole encompasses the side panels, so the armhole opening is 31".
The center of the sleeve seam, aligns to the center side panel.
In the end, I added a panel to the shoulder to fix both the neckline, and the sleeve excess. Adding the shoulder panel fixed the sleeves, and the neckline. It also had the benefit of not having to cut into the yoke making it shorter, which I did not want to change.
Later, I wondered how I got this piece in there if the sleeve was the same size as the armhole. I measured the pattern, front, back and across the three side panel that make up the armhole and the pattern is correct. I can only surmise that I opened up the underarm seam on the sleeve in excess of 1 1/2" while setting it in.
I shaped the shoulder a bit just to reduce the excess fabric.
I've always drafted patterns with a shaping at the shoulder seam.
As you can see on the pattern, it is straight across.
I did a little research and found a traditional Gaza dress, and there is a slight taper to the shoulder seams, which reduces some of the excess fabric around the shoulder and armhole.
You can also see that the shoulder yoke neckline is a different shape than the dress front and back neckline. They measure slightly different aprox 1/2".
When I cut out the pattern pieces, I did not cut the neckline out, but kept it intact. Then I marked the neckline from the shoulder yoke and sewed it, and trimmed away the center. I thought this made things easier. What didn't make things easier was the seam down the center front yoke, which made things very bulky, and made the slash opening a bit tricky. This is not part of the instructions or the pattern, it was me trying to make things interesting with the Chevron yoke. I won't be doing that again.
The one last item that needed to be fixed is the sleeve width, at the wrist/lower sleeve. It does fit, as is, but I am accustomed to rolling my sleeves up, and it is too narrow to accomplish this. The wrist measures 9", I would need to add another 2" to get a comfortable rolled up cuff circumference. I'll wear it and see if I need to do that, if I do, I'll update, but thinking a slit, bias and buttons might be the way to go.
In the end I have a new dress to hang around the house in, and when I find the right fabric, I'll make another, with the modifications. In the meantime, I have two embroidered yoke pieces that will need to be used, and a tunic might be in my future.... or a kilt. Stay tuned.
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