The Making of a Greenland Gown: Page 2

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Cutting the Fabric

I like to use my cutting board for clothes made from rectangles and triangles. It is much easier for me to cut the long straight lines with my rotary cutter. Here, I've laid out the fabric and I'm cutting the long rectangles for the body.

I use the ruler to help me cut long bias edges. I can cut shorter gores by eye, but if they are longer than the cutting board, I use the ruler to keep the line straight. The width of the narrow end of the gore will have a tremendous impact on the size and chest measurement of the finished gown. If you use a 2" width at the top, and sew with 5/8" seam allowance, the chest measurement will be 43.5". If you use a 4" top to the gore you get a 59.5" chest measurement. If you are a small person and you don't want to be swimming in this, I'd recommend eliminating two gores on each side.

I'm using a watch band as a visual reference point to line up the top end of the gore at the proper width.

I've discovered (the hard way) that I'm not very good at cutting neck and armscye holes by eye. I used Simplicity 8725 (Scroll down to 8725 and click on it to view the pattern image)for the neck and armscye. I did not cut anything else out from this pattern, just the neck and armscye curves.