The Patio Dress by Gertie
Oh Hi! I’m just dancing in my new dress.
As sewists, we often see things out in the world and say to ourselves, (or out loud) “I can make that”! And, then we go home and usually do. Whether it takes a year or five is not the point. Ha! Rewind to last year when I went to Viva Las Vegas and saw beautiful vintage patio dresses. They were all priced waaay out of my budget, so I said to my husband, “I can make one. And, it’ll actually fit”. Vintage sizes aren’t always accommodating to me.
I already had the pattern. All I needed was the fabric. Oh, and trim. Lots and lots of trim!
I was gifted the absolute perfect fabric for a patio dress, so let’s dive in.
I wrote down a sketch of how much fabric I would need. It reminds me of a tiered wedding cake.
I was contacted by Fabric Wholesale Direct for a collaboration. I picked out the fabric, and they sent it to me in exchange for a blog post. That’s a win-win in my book!
I immediately thought of sewing the patio dress because it was fresh in my mind. I asked for 5 yards of shirting in a coral color. I’ve seen a few people make the dress out of heavier fabrics and I knew I wanted something very lightweight. Shirting was the perfect choice! The color is gorgeous too! Exactly what I wanted.
Let’s get to sewing a patio dress.
Gather your tracing tools. Rulers, markers, a pencil, and your favorite paper. I used medical paper this time.
I originally wanted to go with a Western theme, fringe everywhere, and then decided I wanted Ric Rac instead. So, make sure you choose the direction you want for your dress before you go trim shopping. I’ll use the fringe for something else, I’m sure. Eventually.
What You’ll Need
At least 4.5 yards of fabric, I cut a size 12, short sleeve version, and had leftover fabric.
Gertie Sews Jiffy Dresses book, by Gertie
Matching thread
22” ish zipper. I say “ish” because I used a shorter one I had on hand and it worked just fine.
Trim. Yards and yards of trim. I used 20.
Sewing machine
Serger. Not necessary, but it is nice if you have one.
The usual sewing notions
Interfacing
Tools for tracing off your pattern: paper, pencils, ruler, weights, etc.
A ruffler foot. This is reeaaally nice to have.
I bought all the pretty colors from JoAnn. Luckily, they were on sale.
The Bodice
Start by washing your fabric. This is always step one.
Trace your pattern from pattern page 5 in the book envelope. I used medical paper, fun markers, and a ruler to trace the straight lines.
Cut out your new pattern pieces. I use a small rotary cutter for this. I never used it for anything else, so it’s my pattern paper cutter.
Transfer all markings to your fabric. Then, cut out your fabric.
I like to apply the interfacing now, to get it done and over with.
Serge the vertical edges if you’d like. The shirting fabric I used wasn’t too bad at fraying, but the serger keeps the edges nice and clean.
Stay stitch your neckline, both front and back. This is an important step, especially for this lightweight fabric. You don’t want to stretch out the neckline while you're sewing rows and rows of trim.
Gather your trim. Originally I thought I could start sewing the dress first and worry about trim later. Nope, that’s not the case. The trim goes on the bodice in step number one.
I rummaged through bags of what I had on hand and started with those colors. I liked how they looked with the coral fabric, so I stuck with a fun color palette. It was deemed my Candyland dress.
I was surprised that I didn’t need to add interfacing to the back of the fabric considering the amount of Ric Rac I added. But, this fabric held up just fine.
Place the trim along the lines. I snipped into my seam allowance to mark those spots.
Play with your different trims. Use ribbon, pom poms, and/or ric rac. Move them around to decide on the layout you love.
Pin everything in place and sew.
Go slowly, pulling out your pins one by one. I just eyeballed the seam line and kept it in the middle as best as I could.
Repeat on the other side. If you transferred your markings correctly, they should meet up in the center perfectly. Mine met up, but the nature of ric rac looked wonky. I decided I didn’t mind and kept it as-is.
Ta-da!
Sew your darts in the bodice pieces before you sew the center front seam.
Now it’s time for the collar.
The collar was easy enough, thankfully.
Below is a 1,2,3 of which direction the sew the collar and facing together.
Start at the top out edge, sew along the top to the corner, then down. Clip corners and turn out.
After that, you’re going to sew the collar to the bodice neck, at the back.
So far, so good. We’re moving right along.
Overlap the back collar. Mine didn’t really overlap, but I made it work.
Sew the neck facing.
This is easy-peasy. Pin in place and sew.
The collar should look like this. Sorry for the blurry photo, womp-womp.
Next, sew the side seams and back seam down to the marked area. The zipper will go here, eventually.
Start stitching from the waistline and go up to the arm opening.
Sew the short ends of the sleeve facings.
I chose to make the short-sleeved version of The Patio Dress. Sew the short ends together, and press open.
The long-sleeved version will be different.
The sleeve facing didn’t line up perfectly with the sleeve opening. I don’t know if I did something wrong, or if the pattern was wrong.
I marked where the correct seam needed to be and sewed a new seam.
It matched up perfectly. Yay!
The Skirt
Buckle your seatbelts, this part is a doozy.
In her book, she guides you on how to measure the skirt tiers. I followed what Gertie did.
Measure your waist. Write it down. Double it. This will be your first tier.
Then, double that measurement to create your second tier.
Then, double that for your third tier.
Easy enough, right?
Okay, she does some math to get the height of the tier, in the end, she makes them 10” tall. I did exactly that.
For example: The top tier will measure 60” long by 10” tall, for a 30” waist. Then, the second tier will measure 120” long by 10” tall, and so on.
I folded my fabric in half, selvage to selvage.
Measured 10” from the bottom edge and marked it. I ended up cutting 9 strips. My fabric was 56” wide. So keep in mind how wide your fabric is.
I serged the short edges together to form one super duper long strip for gathering.
My advice for this next part? Put on headphones and play a podcast or fun music. This is going to take a while.
The ruffler foot. It looks scary, but it’s easy to use once you get the hang of it.
To make sure the ruffler foot works out for this pattern, Gertie has you grab a piece of fabric that measures 10” long. Insert the ruffler foot, and change the settings until it gathers the fabric to 5” long. Basically, half the amount.
My foot was set on 6.
Now it’s peanut butter, ruffle time! If you don’t get the reference, sorry. Random songs live rent free in my head.
Afterwards, you’ll have a huge pile of ruffles.
Whew! It takes a minute, doesn’t it?
Grab an end and start measuring. You want the first tier to be the length of your waist. Measure, then snip into the mark and rip the fabric to get an even edge. Or, just cut through.
Next, you’re going to pin and sew the top tier to the bodice.
Pin those riffles in place from one back bodice opening to the next. Sew.
Oooh, it’s looking like a peplum shirt now. Yuck!
Next, you’ll add the second tier. Pin to the top tier raw edge, then sew. And repeat with the last tier.
Time to Trim the Dress
Gather your trims and start pinning at the seamline. Gertie said to start above the seam, but, I liked covering it up a little. Choose your own adventure here.
Pin all the rows at once and then sew. Or, pin each row and sew. It’s completely upto you.
Pinned ric rac before sewing.
A little word of advice: Pin the trims on and try on the dress. I found that I didn’t like the blue because it clashed with my teal trim on the bodice.
Time to bust out the seam ripper. Boooo!!
I turned on a show and ripped out all the blue. Face-palm. Wasn’t a fan of the shade.
And, the green looks much better.
Overlapped rick rack with a drop or two of Fray check.
If you use packages of trim, you’ll need to overlap it. Line up the edges as well as you can and use Fray check to keep it from unraveling.
Next up is the zipper. The pattern calls for a 22” zipper, but I only had an 18” on hand. I made it work. You’ll sew a lapped zipper.
The zipper is in the middle of the back seam. I don’t think I’ve done this before, it was fun doing something new. It was easy too.
You’re almost finished. The hem is next! Yay!!
Make a narrow hem.
I serged the raw edge, then turned it under, and under again to create a nice narrow hem. Use your iron to steam it into position. Pin and sew.
And, you’re done! Throw some flowers in your hair and dance the night (or day) away.
Back of the fun dress. It’s a little baggy and long in the torso. Ah well.
Thoughts:
I thought this dress would be difficult to make but, it was pretty easy.
It was somewhat of a fabric hog, but not as bad as I anticipated. I used about 4.25 yards of fabric. If I were to sew the long-sleeved version, I would have used the full 5 yards.
The fabric really understood the assignment! I didn’t have a single issue. With all the weight of the ric rac, the fabric held up. And, it’s the perfect weight for the many tiers. I would use this fabric again. Oh, and wearing it is comfy too. It feels like a nightgown. The fabric is a little see-through, but I wore skin-colored underthings. No issues.
I didn’t make a muslin because it has kimono sleeves. They usually seem to be more forgiving for the larger bust gals like me.
I would have made a smaller size. the 12 fits, but it’s a little baggy as you can see in the photos. Size 10 for me, for next time.
I wish it had pockets! I assume they could be easily added.
I should have done a short waist adjustment. Whoops! I do them for everything, usually. But, the pattern either didn’t have it marked or I was abducted by aliens during the pattern tracing part.
That’s it. I hope you liked following along. I sure enjoyed making it. If I were to count how many hours it took from start to finish, I’d say around 18 hours.
What do you think? Is there a Patio Dress in your near future? I’m packing it for Viva 2025 for sure!
Happy sewing,
Annette
Wearing my Patio dress by Gertie.
All photos taken by Annette Marie Photography. aka me ;)