Ollie the Ornament Dress - Part 2

In my last blog, I covered how I did the front of my Ollie the Ornament dress.  Today, I’m going to show you how I did the back of the dress.  Remember, I chose a pattern that buttoned down the back.

• On a large piece of paper, draw a left back and a right back using the original pattern piece.  I used my ruler to draw the straight edges and short dashed lines to draw the curves.
• Draw the seam allowances (long, black dashed lines) and the center back (solid, blue lines) lines on both pattern pieces.

I wanted the curve on the front of the dress to be the same curve I used on the back of the dress.  The back curve goes in the opposite direction so that it is a mirror image on the backside and matches at the right side seam.

• On each of the back pattern pieces, match the front pattern piece’s center front line to the center back line and transfer the curve to each of the halves.  This is the dashed red line shown in the pictures.

At this point, I always debate with myself which side are the buttonholes supposed to be on?  I remember hearing “Girls are right, boys are wrong”, but I’ve seen it both ways! I put my buttonholes on the right half of the back jumper. 

• To make them easier to work with, cut the paper in half so that each pattern piece is on a separate sheet of paper. 
• Overlap the two back pattern pieces with the right pattern piece on top of the left pattern piece.  Match up the center back lines, bottom, and neck edges.  Temporarily tape the two halves together.
• When you do this, you will notice that the two curves do NOT match at the center back.  Tweak the overlapping curve on the right pattern piece so that it will match the left side’s curve.  This is the dashed green line shown in the pictures.

I used this same technique for the right side seam.  As you can see in the picture, it took me three tries before I got a curve that I liked.  The upper red curve would have worked, but I wanted to make it easier to add piping between the layers.  The blue curve is the one that I will use.

• Once satisfied with all of the curved lines, cut the upper half of each of the pattern pieces away from the bottom half. To make sure that I laid out/cut out the pattern correctly, I labeled both the upper and lower halves of both of the pattern pieces to indicate the right side of the fabric.
• Along the curved edge of all four pattern pieces, I made a note to add the seam allowance when cutting out the fabric. Please, don't forget to do this - otherwise, your halves won't fit together properly.

Remember that you can click on each picture to see a larger image!  I hope that you have found this helpful.  If you have any questions, please send me an email!