I’ve been doing very little sewing this week because of the London Olympic, reason no. 1: I’m hooked to watching the game on TV and reason no. 2: I spend a lot of time trying to get tickets through the online system every night but still have no luck. That said, I managed to take some photos of the Pattern Magic 2 flip turn dress mockup which I did before the Olympic has started. I mentioned in the Pattern Magic Knot Bow Dress post that I’ve drafted more patterns from the Pattern Magic books. Here’s the flip turn dress from Pattern Magic 2.

Pattern Magic 2′s flip turn dress

I started making the mock-up on third day of the Pattern Magic class at Morley College but didn’t finish it at the class. The tutor helped me a lot on analyzing the design and understanding how to make up the dress as the book only talks about making the pattern.

My flip turn dress mockup

I chose to make this dress because it’s one of the few patterns which are more wearable among other design in the book.

The flip turn dress bodice

Generally the dress fits me quite well but I have re-drafted the armholes so they are less deep. I used medium weight calico (muslin) for the mock-up and the fabric is definitely too stiff for this dress.

Full view of the flip turn dress

For the actual garment, I’m going to use this black cotton hopsack fabric which has a lot of drape. I’m also going to line the dress to hide the seam allowances.

Black cotton hopsack fabric

In order for the dress to have the ‘flip turn’ effect, a large slash (almost like a super-sized buttonhole) is required at the right bodice front. I’m going to make it as a bound buttonhole (be it 2 1/2″ long). I’ve never made bound buttonhole before so I practiced making one using the hopsack fabric.

The wrong side of the fabric with small patch of pinked interfacing

I followed instructions from Vintage Couture Tailoring book which I reviewed earlier. It wasn’t perfect as I didn’t press the shorter bound edges properly. According to the book, the patch fabric which will be turned to the wrong side of the fashion fabric should never shown on the fashion fabric’s right side. You can see a tiny ‘lip’ on the shorter bound edge on the right, the left side looks better.

Test bound buttonhole

So I’m going to give the bound buttonhole another go while watching more Olympics and trying my luck on getting some tickets to the game.