Tag: sewingpattern

The Lexington recently released from Annelaine patterns, and if you saw my last post, you know I absolutely love the pattern. If you didn’t see it, you can read all about it here.

In typical Danielle fashion I immediately pictured a hack of it to create a matching mother daughter maxi dress set I had pinned.

I decided to do the red, white, and navy combo with double brushed poly solids that I purchased from Amelia Lane Designs.

I used the empire cut line for the bodice and skirt, which meant that the only modifications/color blocking I needed to do was to the skirt piece and this is how I did it.

To start with I eyeballed my lengths for the color blocking and used the peplum front and above knee front cut lines to gauge a starting point. In the case of my daughter’s, it was the front peplum and front dress cut lines.

From looking at the pinspiration picture, I felt that the top red portion and the bottom red portion were about the same and the white portion was a little smaller than them. I also knew I wanted my blue strips to be the same size, and around 3”, when finished. I marked the skirt pattern piece a few times for each section, until I got it to where I wanted. Keep in mind the actual measurements, for your skirt color blocking pieces, will vary depending on your specific size chosen. Just to give you an idea, I will share what I used for my daughters and mine. I ended up with around 14.5” for the red pieces, 4” for the blue pieces, and 9.75” for the white piece. On my daughters, I ended up with around 11” for the red pieces, 3” for the blue pieces, and 9” for the white pieces.

Now comes the fun part. Since the center of the skirt piece color blocking was lower than the side seams, I needed to create that V for each piece. To do so I measured from each point I had marked on the fold line, UP 2”, and marked it on the side seam edge (pictured in red below).

I repeated until I had all 4 pieces marked.

Then taking my ruler I drew a line from the upper mark, to the lower mark, for each one. I wanted to curve my centers so I went slightly past my lower mark when connecting the two marks.

I chose to make my center points less V like because I figured it would be easier to attach the pieces and with the skirt gathers I didn’t want my lines to look choppy once the dress was done. Then I smoothed out the line and the marks to have a clear cutting line.

Seam allowance needs to be added to each piece as well. You can choose to do so now, by making new pattern pieces for each color block, or you can do what I did, and add it when you cut the fabric out. If you choose to add it when cutting the fabric, make sure you do, or your skirt will end up too short. I forgot on two of my pieces and it made me panic before I reminded myself that it was my hack so I didn’t have to follow exact amounts, whew, bullet dodged. To account for this “design adjustment”, I added a little more seam allowance to the connecting pieces.

When adding seam allowance, you will only need to add it to the bottom of the top red piece (R1), the top and bottom of the blue pieces (B1 & B2), the top and bottom of the white piece (W), and the top of the bottom red piece (R2). The original skirt pattern piece has the top seam allowance and the bottom hem allowance already included, so we can skip those.

You can use your new skirt pattern pieces to cut out your chosen colors. Since we are doing the straight floor maxi skirt, the front and back skirt pieces are the same which allows for us to cut two of each color block piece. When cutting, I marked my pieces and made sure to keep them in order so my skirt would fit back together correctly. I labeled them as R1, B1, W, B2, R2, in descending order from the top of the skirt.

Once you have all your pieces cut out (10 in total), you can assemble your skirt. To assemble I did both the front and back skirts at the same time, to avoid any confusion of which piece went where. I have this bad habit of walking away to tend the kids or some house thing, and I forget where I was in my sewing. I didn’t want anymore “design adjustments” and I figured this would be easiest to keep it organized.

Take your R1 piece and lay it right side up, fully open. Taking your B1 piece, lay it right side down on R1, lining up the bottom of R1 and the top of B1. Clip and sew that seam. Repeat for the back skirt piece.

Take your R1B1 piece and lay it right side up again. Place your W piece right side down on R1B1, lining up the bottom of R1B1 with the top of W. Clip and sew that seam. Repeat for the back skirt piece.

Take your R1B1W piece and lay it right side up again. Place your B2 piece right side down on R1B1W, lining up the bottom of R1B1W with the top of B2. Clip and sew that seam. Repeat for the back skirt piece.

Last one! Take your R1B1WB2 piece and lay it right side up again. Place you R2 piece right side down on R1B1WB2, lining up the bottom of R1B1WB2 with the top of R2. Clip and sew that seam. Repeat for the back skirt piece.

Now you have your front and back skirt pieces complete and you can attach them together and finish the dress exactly like the pattern instructs.

We really love our matching pinspiration and are on the lookout for our next color combos.

Pattern used was the Womens and Girls Lexington from Annelaine patterns which is on sale through February 13th. We used the empire, floor length maxi, sleeveless, and the scoop neck options. Fabric was red, white and navy solid double brushed poly from Amelia Lane Designs. If you haven’t heard of Amelia Lane, they are a newer fabric company. They have some pretty neat offerings and I’ve been impressed with the quality, shipping speed, and customer service. They are currently having a site wide 20% off sale with code PERFECTPAIR ending February 17th.

This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you make a purchase through that link, I may get a % back, at no additional cost to you. Let’s be honest, we all know it goes right back to adding to my fabric stash. All opinions on this blog are my own.