Hi everyone, I'm Shari Fuller from Thimbles and Acorns. In our previous tutorial, I introduced the concept of bias-cut garments using Madeleine Vionnet's simple handkerchief dress.
For this tutorial, I have designed a dress pattern specifically for the purpose of demonstrating the difference bias-cut and straight-cut fabrics have on the fit and drape of a garment.
Let's get started.
The pattern is called “A Shift in Bias” and it is a simple shift dress design that is just the thing to introduce the concept of bias-cut garments. In this tutorial, I am going to make one cut on the bias and the other cut on the grain using the same fabric to show the contrast.
Bias-cut fabric behaves much differently than straight cut fabric, so there will be different things I will be talking about as I work through these tutorials. The first thing I need to touch on is balance. Because a left facing bias hangs differently than a right facing bias a garment will have a tendency to twist if the pieces aren't balanced.
To get balance, adjacent pattern pieces should not be cut parallel to each other, instead they should be turned turned 90 degrees from each other.
One thing to thing to keep in mind when cutting pieces out on the bias is it is best to lay out your fabric flat on a table in a single layer, and cut each piece out individually. This will help keep you from getting the direction of your pieces mixed up as well as make it easier to align patterns on the fabric - but we'll get into that more in our next tutorial.
Because this dress pattern has one piece for the front and two pieces for the back there are two ways we can lay it out for the optimal balance. The back pieces can be rotated 90 degrees from each other as I am doing here OR the they can both be laid 90 degrees from the front as shown in the pattern layout. Either way, two pieces will end up being parallel we just need to determine which way will give us the optimal balance.
Before hemming the bias-cut dress, put it on your doll and stand it up for 24 hours. Letting the dress hang will give it time to conform to the shape of the dolls body. Because of the smaller scale of this dress, there isn't a lot of weight to the fabric to help it stretch, so you can dampen with water and smooth it down with your hands to help with the shaping, if necessary.
After the dress has hung on your doll for 24 hours, use a ruler and fabric marker to redraw the hemline. Trim the new hemline along the marked lines. Finish the bottom edge of the dress with serging, bias tape, or lace.
Notice how the straight-cut dress stands away from the body whereas the bias-cut dress follows the shape of the body. Also note where the skirting flares out, the fabric on the bias-cut dress falls in soft draping folds. While the difference between the two dresses is subtle, the bias cut dress is definitely more elegant and looks more haute couture.
I designed this dress specifically to demonstrate the difference between bias and straight-cut fabric. In our next tutorial, we're going look at how to adapt pieces from existing straight-cut patterns to bias-cut. See you next time!
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Mollie Bradford
September 12, 2024
This was such a good video tutorial! I never understood balancing a bias cut pattern before! Thank you Shari for teaching this (and many other!) useful professional sewing techniques!