Hello everyone!
Thanks to everyone that read my last post and any other post that caught your eye. I’m pretty pumped to walk you through my milkmaid dress project I self-drafted for my time in Venice. Now, is it really summer without a milkmaid moment? It’s a rhetorical question, but the answer is no. Although, if it’s a trend, it may be out next summer. Regardless, I’m very excited about this make.
I know there are plenty of milkmaid dress patterns for sale on Etsy and other pattern selling sites, but I really wanted to make my own to challenge myself. It was definitely a challenge, but a welcome one. The above video shows the process of me putting the front bodice together. For the front, I contoured the front bodice at the waist dart, contoured the upper bust and the center front of the bust. Afterwards, I lowered and shifted the armhole 1/2 of an inch. Now comes the difficult part of creating the bust cups.
Fabric Choice
I wanted to make this dress in a very sweet, fairy-tale like color. I looked through my stash and found a cotton poplin I purchased at fabric.com during Act Fast Friday where certain fabrics are 50% off. I pre-washed the fabric and although it’s lovely, I had a hard time with it in my machine. I’m not sure if it was the thread I used or the fabric, but it wasn’t as smooth as it normally is. Regardless, the dress came out stunning and I’ll chalk it up to one of those weird machine days.
Milkmaid Bust Cups and Front Bodice
So the act of creating the bust cups isn’t difficult at all. The challenging part is figuring out how low the neckline should be. The bust cups use the general bust radius of 3 inches. I lowered mine by 1/4 inch to 2.75 inches for a more modern look. I also drew a diagonal line from the center front to the bust cup to allow for the peekaboo effect. Then, I added a 1/2 inch seam allowance for the elastic casing. The remaining parts were the front and the side front panel pieces. I cut two pieces of the front and side front pieces because I wanted to use boning for some structure. The boning used is from wawak.com and it’s 1/4 inch covered plastic boning.
Shirred Milkmaid Back Bodice
For the back bodice, I ended up contouring the back and splitting the back into a back and a side back because I wanted to have faux shirring in the back to allow for eating. I doubled the back piece and used the elastic method from my New Look make in the fall. Typically, when garments are shirred or elasticated, there isn’t a zipper. However, I didn’t want a gathered skirt because I thought a gathered skirt would throw off the balance of the dress. I was dreading the zipper, but insertion wasn’t bad at all.
Skirt Construction
The skirt used is a half circle skirt. I used the standard formula of waist size + 1 inch for each seam used divided by 3.14 or ∏. For example, a 30 inch waist with 3 seams would use the measurement 10.5 inches for the waist circumference. The skirt length I used was 25 inches assuming a 1/2 inch seam allowance. I also added pockets using the pockets I used from the last post. Attaching the skirt to the bodice was a breeze. I’ve had quite a bit of practices learning from my mistakes in circle skirt patterning.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed making this milkmaid dress. Even though the fabric gave me a bit of a hard time, it was a joy creating it from beginning to end. It’s a pattern I would make again for sure but maybe in a viscose next time.
As always, thank you for reading.
Happy sewing!
