Simple Sew Brigitte dress Sewalong. 1: Assembling the pattern

Hello there! Welcome to the first instalment of the Simple Sew Brigitte dress sewalong, the free pattern you can get with the first issue of Love Sewing magazine. Hopefully by now you have printed the PDF pattern and you are ready to assemble it. If not, click here and get printing! :-) When you print the pattern, ensure that you print actual size, i.e. no scaling.

The pattern pages are numbered to help you fit them together in the correct order, starting at top left with number 1. Each page overlaps the adjacent pages slightly. Although it always looks simple enough, it can be quite difficult to tape all these pages together in one go and to get everything lined up properly. My tip is start laying the pages out and lining them up roughly but without actually taping them together yet. If you have a big table, use that, or you might be better off using the floor!

Lay out the pieces of paper in the correct order before taping together

Once you’ve done this you can see how the individual pattern pieces are pieced together, and I work on one pattern piece at a time to help simplify all the joining up. In my experience if you just start top left and join it all together in one go, it ends up not matching up correctly somewhere further along or further down, and it becomes a very frustrating experience!

So, I take all the pieces of paper for each pattern piece and roughly cut around them, like in the photo below. I hope this makes sense!

I cut roughly around each pattern piece before starting to stick together

I then only have to worry about aligning each individual pattern piece correctly for the moment. I overlap the edges and tape the papers together, taking into account that the print won’t appear on the edges where the paper overlaps. I don’t cut or fold the edges of my papers, I just overlap and tape because it wastes less time in what is already a tedious process! This is a picture of my sleeve pattern piece, to give you an idea of how it overlaps:

Sleeve pattern

Once you’ve got your pattern pieces assembled, you’ll need to decide what size to cut. This pattern doesn’t contain a whole load of ease, so I would measure very carefully! You can then either trace off your size, preserving the master copy, or cut your size directly from the paper. As you can see, I chose the latter option! If you do too, it might be an idea to use glass headed pins when you pin your pattern pieces to the fabric, as it is quite tough pinning through printer paper.

That’s all we’re doing for today. On Tuesday 6th May we are going to cut your fabric and transfer all the pattern markings, so if you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to buy your fabric, pre-wash it and iron it so that it is ready to cut.

Just to warn you: I won’t be going through the process of making a ‘toile’ or ‘muslin’ (i.e. a test version) with you in this sewalong, so if your fabric is utterly precious and you are worried that the dress might not fit exactly right, then please use a less precious fabric and make yourself a test version! Toiles are usually made out of calico because it doesn’t stretch, it’s pale, so it can be drawn all over, and it’s easy to see fitting issues that a busy print may help disguise.

Any questions, just comment below. See you on Tuesday, and have an excellent bank holiday weekend!

Oh, and if you want you can add this blog button to your blog to show you are sewing along with me!