Simplicity 9327 Hack

Today I’m talking all about pattern hackathon. I hope you’re as excited as I am that this Instagram Sewing challenge is back for its third year. Basically, you take a pattern during the month of July and put your own unique spin on it for a chance to win some amazing prizes. I’ve included the rules, just in case you need reminding what you need to do.

I’ve entered in the past and had a great time, and this year they actually invited me to be one of the ambassadors for the challenge! And each week, different teams of ambassadors are getting you excited for the five categories that you can enter. I was team one. We called ourselves “Kamizzy” because it’s me and Kizzy Stitches.

Our category to promote was “Keep It Simple, Stupid” aka hacking a pattern with ten pieces or less. We challenged ourselves to take Simplicity 9327 and hack it in totally different ways. This is a pretty easy princess seamed dress pattern… but I thought I could make it a little bit more special.

My inspiration started on Pinterest. I have a board called Sewing and Design Details where I pin interesting garment construction like cool intricate pockets or trim details. Things that inspire me. And I realised I pinned a few images with this sort of tabbed lacing effect. And I thought, let’s get that go… And here’s the result.

A chambray dress with lacing around the neckline and a lattice effect laced skirt detail, and then the little bows to add extra cuteness. Why not watch my 10minute video on how I made this dress over on YouTube?

I started with a basic toile of the bodice exactly as it is. Princess seams weren’t quite in the right position, and those shoulders kept falling off because of that big open back. It just wasn’t working for me. So I redrafted the back to make it a standard zipper closure.

This is a really great way of stopping this pattern from being neglected because of that back. I’ll get much more wear out of it now.  And the skirt had a panelled seam down the front, but not the back. So I simply folded out the seam allowance, taped them together before cutting off to hemline C.

Then came the fun part, playing around and figuring out how I wanted the bodice to look. I made up a sample with 1cm wide tabs inserted at regular intervals with a long tie fed through the loops to lace into a bow.

Then I started playing around with what I could do for the skirt. I repeated what I’d done on the bodice but with tabs on two sides, so I could interlock them to make a laced effect. This was so much harder than I realised to get the maths right.

My dress is made from some large remnant pieces of chambray from Minerva that I had in my stash. I had a 2.5m piece of one shade, and then a metre and a half of a slightly different shade. I spent a good chunk of my week making the little tabs from every possible scrap piece I could find of my fabric. They all had to be pressed flat and then pressed in half so they were ready to attach. Burnt my fingers a couple of times. Thank God for my mini Prym iron and pressing mat.

Then the hell started. I had to attach all the tabs to the skirt. Started with the main skirt, which was then the hem. All the tabs extended off the hem. You can see it all pressed down, and that slightly darker chambray as the lining, helping me keep things straight. I actually thought, hey, why not just do a row of lacing like the bodice and stop there? But I committed to my original idea and I made a hem band with the same tabs – over a hundred tabs. Laced everything through and added a little bow to finish it off.

Here’s the finished dress… with that, crazy lacing on the skirt. It’s not my favourite finish. I think it could have been more polished, but I learned a lot doing it. And I think the bodice turned out exactly how I wanted. I had so much fun wearing this out and about in town. The cute little bow on the back, mirroring the bow on the front makes me so happy.

I hope you’ve been inspired to take part in the hackathon challenge. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about how to take part or have follow up questions about this project.