A quick Spanish Cockerel dress DIY

Happy week-end everyone!  Just thought I'd share some more pictures and a 

quick how-to of the spanish cockerel print dress I posted on Instagram a while back, 

using fabric with a repeat print.  

A basic shift dress pattern is an easy one to get started with for this, just make sure 

any darts on your pattern are at the side seam of the bodice and not elsewhere. 

I know this is not not rocket science, but a diagram would have saved me a few head 

scratches very late in the evening when I was sewing this!

1)  Mark the point on your fabric where you want the centre front to be (in the drawing 

below, in the middle of the heart)

2)  Find the mirrored half of the pattern (the right side of the heart) when you have an 

appropriate amount of fabric for the fold.  

3)  Now that you have marked your two "external" mirrored centre fronts, go back and 

find the midpoint between the two.  This will be your actual centre front.  Extend the 

centre front of your paper pattern to this point by growing it from the original 

centre front, and cut your fabric on the fold from here.

Keep in mind that you want a deep enough fold to make a strong feature and  that 

some of the folded fabric is likely to lay under the bodice and lay underneath the 

shoulder as well.  Your cut off point is ideally the bust point if you want to 

keep the fabric as one piece. Any further than that and you are in dart territory 

and it may not lay flat.

If you are working with a very large print and you have to go beyond the bust point,

 at construction stage I would trim the folded fabric in one vertical cut at the bust 

point on each side and sew back together.  Then you'll have a nice, sharp underfold 

that dosen't interfere with the dart.

To sew, stitch down the length of the fold at the centre front, to below the bust 

point, otherwise it will keep flipping open.

Oops...I know mine are not perfectly lined up (...it was very late at night!), but if you 

are working with a repeat print like this I think still better than having half bodied 

cockerels cut in half randomly on the front of a dress!

 No excuse for the back either, in an ideal world that should have been one piece.
I just didn't have the extra fabric needed to match this up either.  Don't forget to
bargain for extra fabric you'll need if you are trying this!

The cockerel wax print cotton fabric is from Fabric Godmother  - there's a heap of
beautiful fabric on sale at the moment.

Happy sewing!