Summer dress (for when you’re poor and/or trans)
so listen up. recently i went into a clothing store wanting to buy nice items for my sister and my mom, since mother’s day in france is this weekend. but it was expensive as hell and it kinda depressed me. so i decided what the hell, i used to sew a lot before my gender crisis made me turn my back on a lot of things i know how to do that my brain thinks off as “for women”. so i went to buy 10€ worth of fabric, and i decided to make a dress. or, more precisely, a skirt and a top with a hooking system that can turn it into a dress at will. and when i got home, i realized that this could be helpful. not only is it incredibly cheap, but i’m making this tutorial for people who don’t have much money or are not out or don’t want to show to their parents what they’re doing. this is for all my trans sisters, transfem, nb, androgynous, struggling folks out there. i hope you’ll enjoy.
scissors, a pen, pins (or hair clips, hair pins, clothespin, etc.), a needle, thread that matches your fabric, a couple of grocery bags, about three to four metres of fabric.
assuming you have nothing but scissors, pen and some type of pin at home, all in all, it should cost you less than 15$ max. you won’t find many dresses at that price.
if you have a sewing machine, great, but you can sew that by hand. it’s going to take a few days instead of the few hours it took me, but it will work just as well. i’ll explain a bit more below.
^^ as you can see, even tho i have actual pins at home, i tried all the methods to make sure i could offer them to you, and all types of pins work. also, i do have a pincussion for my pins (handmade) but i wanted to show you you can just use the spare grocery bag.
why grocery bags? because i’m not going to waste money on pattern paper and that way i’m recycling my grocery bags. + it’s easy to cut, it folds easily for storage if you want to use the pattern later and i have an endless suply of them
how does the skirt work? it’s basically a big circle with a small circle cut into the center. but because it’s impractical to have a full circle for a pattern, i made a quarter of a circle at the right measurements and used that five times (the fifth quarter is to allow for folding, which makes the skirt twirl).
to get your measurments, you can either get a measuring tape, or find your pants that suit the closest to your waist (leggings are ideals) and look up online what that size translates to in centimetres (or inches but i don’t know how that works). always count too big, you can always cut it down later, but the opposite is much harder.
now you have the circumference of your waist. you need the radius. radius is C devided by 2π. for exemple, let’s say your waist is 60cm. the radius of that is 9,5 (60/2π (or about 6,28)). check out this website that calculates it for you if you’re struggling.
now that you have that, take your grocery bag, cut it open until you have a big square. pick one corner and measure 9,5 (this is an exemple!! put your own radius here) on one side, then mark it down. shift slowly to the side, and mark again. do it until you have a half-moon of marks that you can link together. (there are a lot of youtube tutorial that will show you how to make a pattern for a circle skirt, but i wanted all the steps to be in this tutorial)
congrats, you have your skirt pattern! now you need to pin it down to the fabric using whatever sort of pin you have, and cut around while leaving a seam allowance, always!
^^^my grocery bag pattern before and after cutting the fabric
now you need to assemble all sides, good side facing, with pins. if you only have the alternative pins, that won’t work, which is when you need to get your needle and thread. put the thread in the needle and pull until you have two lengths of thread hanging from each side of the needle, then tie a knot at the end (video tutorial here). now once two skirt panels are facing each other, you need to make big, ugly stiches that are just here to secure the fabric while your sewing on the machine. if you don’t have a machine, i suggest investing in actual pins (very cheap, i promise) to assemble your skirt so you can try it on and adjust it, because it’s going to take you twice as long to ugly-stitch once to try it on, then stitch for real and then cut off all the ugly stitches once you’re done. (how to sew by hand)
^^ pins should be placed head facing you so you can remove them easily when you’re on the machine.
now to make your skirt twirl, you need to create pleats. for that, you need to get to one of your stiched lines (once they’re done) and fold each panel on the left and right on themselves until it creates a sort of curtain. (two pictures here and video here). on the video, her fabric is one long piece but it works the same way, just imagine that each “curtains” are supposed to hide your stitches
that’s what it looks like all assembled. however, once all your pleats are created, you need to take an extra piece of fabric (about 10-15 cm large, it’s up to you really) to create the waistband. fold it in half with the good side inside, sew the sides together to create a sort of sleeve, then sew a line on one side and finally sew the other side to the top of your skirt, effectivelly hiding the ugly seam of the skirt while keeping in place the pleats (as seen in the picture of the lady with the pink skirt, but here’s another one).
here’s the finished product on the model
now that the skirt is done, let’s make the top! but that’ll be in part 2 of the tutorial because this is getting incredibly long. little sneak peek:
