How to make a dress with princess seams and pockets

Welcome to a new patternmaking class. In today’s class, I’m going to teach you how to make a dress with princess seams and pockets.

The beauty of this dress is that we’re going to make a horizontal pocket that starts at the side seam and ends at the princess seam.

This type of pocket is integrated into the design and is not a traditional pocket.

Today’s class begins using the patterns from the bodices to the hip, where the first thing we have to do is lengthen them to create the dress.

Next, we’ll move on to changing the neckline to make this dress more eye-catching, where we’ll have to remove the ease so it doesn’t gape.

You can use the corrective dart guide or you can take up the ease by eye as I did for this design.

Next, we will create the princess seam pattern where we will also transform the waist dart.

Once we have the seam, we will mark where we want the pocket and all the pocket pieces.

We’ll add some ease to some of the pocket pieces so we can get our hand in without any problem.

We will finish today’s class by doing the back, which we will leave quite simple.

Class

Remember that it’s important to make at least one prototype to ensure everything works perfectly.

This prototype not only helps us check that the patterns are perfect but also helps us check if the pocket position is the one we like.

If you have any questions about today’s class, you can always email me through your student account, in the support section.

Submit your exercises

As you already know, the best way to learn is by practising, so for today’s class, I’m going to ask you to do the same patterns I did.

You can make these patterns at full size or half scale.

Please try to send me photos where the patterns and their notes are clearly and precisely visible so I can give you better feedback.