By Hand London Tamzin Pattern Hack

Those of you who follow me on instagram will know that before the dust had settled on my first By Hand London Tamzin, I was cutting a second. This time I wanted to make a few changes to give a different look.

I used the aubergine colourway of the infamous Lady McElroy ‘dotty about dots’, from Felicity Fabrics which I bought specifically with this dress in mind.

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My first change was to omit the tucks. While I love the look of them on my linen version and they bring some interesting detail, I wasn’t confident in how straight I would manage to press them into a light viscose lawn. I know myself well enough to know that no tucks are preferable to wobbly tucks!i

In order to add interest and texture to the sleeves in the absence of the tucks, I decided to gather the fullness at the cuff into a bishop sleeve. To do this, I used the hem shaping of the By Hand London Hannah sleeve. Instead of turning the hem and adding elastic into the channel, I chose to make a binding.

This consists of a strip of self fabric 4 cm wide. I cut this on the straight grain as there are not any significant curves to navigate.

The length was calculated by deciding on how tight I wanted the cuff and adding 3cm to that measurement for seam allowances. I then pressed this in half lengthwise, opened it up and pressed the edges into the centre crease. This resulted in what looks like double fold bias binding.

The hem of the sleeve was then gathered using basting stitches, and the binding sewn at 1cm (in the first fold) right sides together. This is then flipped up and over to enclose the raw edges of the sleeve hem and the binding is folded in on itself to the wrong side of the sleeve.

This can be finished by stitching in the ditch (in the seamline of the binding from the right side) and catching the binding on the wrong side. Whenever I try this method however, I find it difficult to catch the inside consistently, and I struggle to get a neat finish. I have recently taken to hand stitching the binding on the wrong side of the garment for an invisible finish.

In order to add some weight to the skirt, I decided to add a ruffle. As the gathers of the skirt on Tamzin are beautifully full, I wanted to replicate this look. I decided on a ratio of around 2:1 for the ruffle. As the hemline was just a little under 2m in circumference, I went all in and gathered 3 panels of the full width of the fabric. This gave me a whopping 420cm final circumference to hem!

I always find the vertical proportions of dresses with ruffles difficult to judge. The wrong length can really make or break the look (in my opinion). I looked through some images and decided that my first tier would be 56cm (including 3cm for the top and bottom seam allowances) and the ruffle 30cm (including 1.5cm seam allowance and 2cm for the hem allowance)

And there you have it! A dress that makes it socially acceptable to go out in comfort that is comparable to wearing your nightie! Admittedly, it is not the most wheelchair friendly thing I have made. I may need to reign in the length of the sleeves just a tad; that being said, I may just leave it as a delightfully impractical housedress or car to chair dress!