Pattern Review: Simplicity 8637

I bought this deep red, waffle-texture poly over Christmas while on honeymoon in New Zealand, from Drapers Fabrics in Auckland. I very much have a habit of buying fabric simply because it's pretty, without any real idea of what I will make with it. That was certainly the case here. I just thought, "some sort of floaty-summer-skirty-dress-thingy" and asked for the standard 1.5 metres that I always ask for when I don't have a clue what I'm doing.

It can be tricky to find a suitable pattern when you simply have a vague vibe in your head. I tend to browse through the patterns of all the companies I know and love (Papercut, Colette, Simplicity, Sew Over It, McCalls), and save any potential winners on Pinterest. I now also ALWAYS check Instagram for "real-life" versions of each one. This is incredibly helpful to consider fit issues, learn about the construction process and be inspired by alterations.

And that is how I settled upon Simplicity 8637. I saw a lovely version with altered sleeves and shortened flounce by @hobos_of_hoboken on Instagram and I was totally sold. So I have made Version D with these alterations too.



I shortened each flounce piece by 3 1/2".


I reshaped the sleeves from billowy to fitted, shortened to elbow length and added a flounce.


Due to my shortage of  fabric, I didn't cut a bodice lining. I just cut out the neckline interfacing pieces in the fabric as well as the interfacing, and finished the edges on the overlocker (the perfectionist in me wishes I had bought red overlocker thread!!)


I cut the skirt-back on the fold instead of as two separate pieces, by removing the centre seam allowance on the pattern piece. I did the same for the flounce-back. It just seemed unnecessary to have a seam since there isn't a zip there or anything...


I also made a second version, for which I shortened the bodice by 1" to improve the fit.




Cutting out is a bit of a mission, as there are plenty of pattern pieces, thanks to the flounce, bodice lining, waist-tie, sleeves... One thing that you need to remember is that the front flounce pieces are not symmetrical. There is a left flounce and a right flounce. The right is longer because it sits on top when you wrap the dress around. If you are cutting out on the wrong side of your fabric, you will need to flip both these pieces over so that they are face down. Otherwise (like me on my second dress), you'll end up having to put the shorter piece on the right hand side and it won't reach all the way up to the waistband. This is a bit hard to see thanks to the jazziness of the fabric!



The instructions and diagrams are clear, and the process is not too long-winded. There are a lot of darts to contend with right at the beginning (12 altogether, so you will be a pro by the time you finish!). The sleeve shoulder is slightly gathered, and so takes a little care to distribute evenly. The waist tie pieces take some patience to turn the right way round and iron flat. Remember to trim the seam allowance from the corners while still inside-out, or you won't get nice sharp corners once you've turned them!

I'd never sewn a flounce before and was relieved it was straightforward. It hangs in those beautiful ripples simply due to the curved shape of the pieces and not because of some clever work you have to put in. It takes a bit of pinning, because you're lining up two edges that naturally curve in opposite directions and so you need to tease them both straight.


The first time round, I made life very easy for myself. I hadn't used a lining so no handsewing needed to fix it down. I also left the sleeve and skirt edges unhemmed, securing them just with a zigzag stitch so that they have a soft, slightly frayed finish, which I'm kind of in love with.


The second dress took longer, since I did include a lining and I did hem. I was worried that it might not hang as nicely once hemmed because of the slight bulk, but it is absolutely fine.


I love this pattern. The style seems pretty versatile. It's always going to be a little bit fancy, but I feel like I could wear it on a nice summer's day, as well as dressing it up with heels on an evening.

The wrap-around is flattering and the overlap is wide enough that you don't need to worry about flashing anyone your downstairs, even on a windy day!


Upstairs can be a little more of a concern... As shown in the alterations section, the second version is significantly better because I shortened the bodice, but on the red version it does have a tendency to open up around the cleavage due to the way the waistband sits. I have been using body tape to stop me falling out of it.

All in all, I'm very happy indeed to have two new wearable and super-pretty dresses.And I can certainly recommend the pattern. For a dress with quite a few details, none of the process was particularly fiddly, and the instructions were easy to follow. I know I made quite a few alterations, but only one (shortening the bodice) was related to fit issues with the original pattern. And it was easily remedied. All other alterations were just personal preferences!

Fashion Fix Friday

Since the big IPCC report came out last October warning us of the urgency for action against climate change, I have spent many hours anxiously pondering how I can help. Somehow at that point, after many years of passively agreeing that global warming was a problem - and one caused by humans - I finally felt the weight of it, the sense of responsibility and the necessity to act now.

With this new personal sense of urgency has sometimes come panic and despair. I have found myself emotional, fearful that I won't be able to achieve enough, and as a result I have done very little. I look at big companies and governments who either don't care or flat-out deny climate change and it makes me feel helpless. But I think many of us feel like this, and we need to shake it off. Our first focus must be on the one thing we have full control over. Ourselves. What can I do? What am I willing to do?

Having read about the changes we can make as individuals, Tom and I immediately cut down our meat intake. The idea of being officially vegetarian still seems intimidating, but opting for veggie dinners three or four times a week has actually been incredibly easy. And cheaper. And it has been heartening to discover that friends of ours have done the same. It has been fun to share recipes. It has been a relief to talk about our concerns and our actions and find ourselves united. A month after making this change, we read that UK supermarket meat sales had dropped by 30% in the last year. It felt empowering to be part of a movement.

Small actions taken by many individuals lead to significant changes. Sure, we haven't done anything radical. We haven't done enough. But in our classically awkward British way, we have each tentatively, politely poked a finger in the air and said "Erm, excuse me, I don't know about everyone else - but I do trust in and care about the findings of the climate scientists, and I am open to making changes to my lifestyle. (Sorry, I hope I haven't offended anyone.)" Collectively, that message has been carried through the media, to tell our government - the people who can change our culture - that this nation cares. 

Aside from my meat reduction, I haven't done much yet. I've taken a course on the science of climate change on FutureLearn to help me understand the issues and communicate more confidently. I've vaguely been thinking about driving less and saving energy around the house. But I have been stalling. I've felt like I need to come up with something amazing, a solution that will fix everything, and I can't - obviously I can't! I'm one person. No matter what changes I make personally, they are negligible on a global scale. I need everyone else to take action too.


So here I am.

When I found out that the fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, waste and micro-plastics, I congratulated myself on having barely bought a single item of clothing in the last three years. But the truth is, I haven't stopped buying clothes because I've been eco-conscious. I've stopped because 1) I can't really afford it anymore and 2) I simply get no joy out of buying clothes now that I can make them.

And then I found out that the fabric I buy to make my clothes goes through all of the same carbon-emitting processes as the fabric used in large-scale clothing manufacture. Which I guess is pretty obvious really. Looking at the mounds of fabric in my sewing room, I realise I shouldn't be congratulating myself on rejecting high street fashion. This stuff doesn't even get worn!  It just sits about in my cupboards, hoping to one day be turned into clothes. I also have masses of shop-bought clothes that haven't seen the light of day for years, packed in cardboard boxes, for - I don't even know what.... Just in case. And of course, there's that pile of clothes that I have planned to repair for the last year that always gets pushed to the back of the sewing queue.

So I have a new mission. I might not be willing to stop driving, or give up cheese. But I can certainly look at reducing the waste and increasing the longevity of my clothes. I can donate things to charity shops, recycle, repair and alter, and be disciplined in working my way through my hoard of untouched fabric. I'm going to give myself a project each week - from simple tasks of resewing a button or lining, to more creative challenges like updating or refitting a decade-old dress and the "from-scratch" endeavours using the fabrics I bought on a whim because I liked the texture or the print or the price.

I will share these projects with you every Friday as what I'm dubbing #FashionFixFriday. And if anyone fancies joining in at any point, you would be so very welcome!

Goodbye, skinny jeans

After the great success of the shorts, I was keen to crack on with the trouser version of Mum's vintage pattern. As someone who has obediently followed the skinny jeans trend for the last decade - despite their tightness, tendency to fall down and their generally unflattering shape on me - I am now very ready to jump ship in want of a looser fit.

On the first day of our honeymoon in December, I packed Tom off with a local friend in Auckland so I could explore some of the city's fabric shops. I spent a very enjoyable hour in Drapers Fabrics, inspecting the bolts thoroughly and dreaming up new garments. I came away with two perfect trouser fabrics. One was a lightweight monochrome-striped cotton, and the other a medium-weight crepe in the most beautifully warm and rich blue. (This picture does NOT do the colour justice!)


Over the last month, I have sewed up both pairs and I am massively excited about the results.

First were the monochrome stripes. I cut the pattern to the full trouser length, using my previous edits to loosen the waistband with narrower pleats and darts. I took care to get the stripes exactly vertical across all my pieces, and did my best to align the stripes where they joined along the centre seams, and from the waistband to the trouser legs.


As with the shorts, I added belt loops and made a belt with a matching fabricated buckle.

Having seen on the high-street lately a wave of wide-legged cropped trousers, I spent a couple of days agonising over whether to shorten mine, turning them up and trying to get a feel for how they would look with various footwear. But I eventually chickened out, worrying they might make my legs looked a bit stumpy, be less versatile and age faster fashion-wise.


Plus they look fab full-length anyway! I just have to hope they don't immediately get scraggy from dragging along the ground...



I still really wanted some lovely cropped trousers though, so Trousers #2 were more of a leap of faith. I studied the shape and length of the ones I liked on the Topshop website, and decided I would like them cropped mid-calf and more billowy than the last pair.



Again I used my edited pattern for the waist, but this time I also altered the legs, taking a conservative 10cm off the length (with the intention of probably shortening them further), and flaring them by 5cm on the outside leg and 2cm on the inside. Before hemming them, I tried them on with my various footwear again, and then cropped them an extra 10cm.


Now I am completely in love. Particularly with a pair of heels on, they look super-chic. They even make Grandma's old hand-knitted jumper look glamorous!





(As a technical note on working with crepe: it was a lot trickier than the cotton. It doesn't much like to be folded and tends to slip around a lot. It also becomes quite bulky when lots of layers are joined together, like around the waistband. I think it would have been wise to make the front pockets out of a much thinner lining fabric to avoid some of the bulk, but a lot of steaming with the iron helped to keep them looking sleek. Steaming was also absolutely essential on the side seams to have the trousers hang well.)

Retro Tiger Shorts