This is my pinspiration:
To be honest, I wasn't really aware of this brand until I started seeing Jenna of The Lady Who Lunches and Tiana Herring talking about it. Tiana Herring made a pattern, but it didn't have some key features I wanted and it was also the short view.
Originally I thought I would be able to hack the Franconia but I asked Saremy of SewSewLive in the SewSewGuild.com and she showed me how to do it using a buttondown as the basis.
Prior to this, I had made the Tarawi a bunch of times, including once as a dress, and I knew it worked. I made the Franconia once as a dress and it was good, too.
These are the steps she had me take:
- make the back piece whole by folding up the pleat and combining the yoke with the body
- straighten sleeve from underarm to length
- measure from center back to bottom of sleeve for the franconia and use this to cut off the tarawi sleeve (leaving hem allowance)
- adjusted width and length of skirt to be like the Franconia
- we did a bunch of figuring to replace the placket with the #5 zipper. It ended up that we cut at centerline and then added back in 1/8"
- got rid of the collar stand - extended the collar by adding 1/2" to top and 1/4" to end - cut this out of muslin and tested before cutting from the good fabric
- drafted a facing for the back neck and zipper
- drafted a zipper guard (this was actually all me)
This all worked amazingly well. The only thing I would do differently next time is to mark the channel location for the elastic in advance. I thought I would do it once I could try it on to get some blousing right and then also if I needed to move things around to get the hem straight... but that was actually pretty miserable to do.
I didn't make a toile because it's a lot of fabric, but I used a Walmart bundle which is a pretty light twill
Finding a 2-way zipper that was >45" was hard, but ZipperShipper.com came though - good price, quick shipping, made in the U.S.A.
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