That’s right! I can’t stop meddling with the B6806 dress pattern – it’s the ultimate all weather dress to me. Perfect with tights, lovely long sleeves and now with two new details.
You might remember I already experimented with a v neckline on my hackalong challenge dress that used this bodice. It’s an easy fold on the bodice pattern piece to get this shape. And then draw a new facing for the shape you’ve created.
I also kept my “drawstring hack”… (The naughty secret of B6806 is that it’s an elastic waist with a tie sewn to the front to give the illusion of a drawstring) because I prefer a real drawstring; elastic wiggles and rides up.
Next I decided to play with the skirt. I fell in love with the skirt on this Pink City Prints dress. But didn’t have enough fabric for all the skirt tiers and was worried about how gathered my ruffles could be.
Generally a good looking gather is at least “1.5 x the length of the piece you’re matching it to”. I prefer “2 x” gathers (aka double length) for frills and tiers where possible. You can do this if drafting a gathered skirt yourself too but I find “2 x” a bit bulky at the waist.
I settled for two tiers on my skirt with two ruffles, with one placed around 6inches above the hem. The ruffles are 8cm tall pieces folded in half lengthways and gathered to fit. I used the full width of my fabric (150cm) and cut 4 pieces in total that turned into two ruffles and achieved about “1.7 x” gathering.
You also need to either draw a new skirt extension piece for the next tier (adding in a seam allowance at the upper edge), or cut your original pattern piece into two and add seam allowance above/below the slash line so you can join them back together.
The fabric was 2.5 metres of viscose challis from Rainbow Fabrics. Challis loves to be gathered and is very floaty. I’ve worn this dress lots since I made it with both tan tights and black tights. I love wearing red accessories with it.
This might be one of my most worn dresses next year… let’s wait and see! Check out my previous 3 versions of this pattern.