How to copy a (muslin) dress

This summer a friend came to me with a request:

Could I make a copy of one of her favourite dresses for her? A long floaty summer dress made of muslin fabric.

I am a keen follower of the Sewing Bee, so I took on the project as a challenge to see how easy or difficult it would be to make a dress without a sewing pattern, just based on an existing dress. Minus the time pressure and the cameras!

Before I started, I had to check: Is copying a dress pattern even legal?

I am not a lawyer, so the following is not legal advice, but I had to look into this for my own peace of mind and I’m sharing it here as background information only.

The UK government’s guidance note on copyright for knitting and sewing patterns says that “a finished item may itself be protected in UK law as an artistic work in its own right, if it amounts to a ‘work of artistic craftsmanship’” but that “items of clothing [...] will commonly fail to satisfy the criteria for copyright protection as artistic works.” Because garments are primarily ‘utilitarian’ (functional) items, the basic construction or cut of an everyday piece is not protected by copyright.

This means that if you have a garment in front of you that is purely functional - a classic piece like a shift dress or an A-line skirt - that is intended to be worn on a daily basis, and you would like to recreate it, then you are permitted to do that.

If you think the item may be a work of artistic craftsmanship (e.g. haute couture), and/or you plan to create and sell dressmaking patterns commercially, it is better to get professional legal advice first. Laws in other countries will differ too, so it is best to inform yourself before you start.

If you are new to dressmaking

If you have never sewn a garment before, I would recommend starting by making a dress from a pattern. There are so many dressmaking patterns available online which come with easy to follow video tutorials that will teach you all the basics you need to know. They help you to understand the construction process and get a little bit of experience.

How to copy or ‘rub off’ a sewing pattern from an existing garment

You can either deconstruct (i.e. unpick) the existing dress and then cut the pieces from the original fabric pieces. This is a good method if you do not want to keep the original dress.

If you want to keep the original dress intact, you can use a process called ‘rubbing off’: You place the garment on top of a sheet of parchment paper and then pierce through all the seams with a needle to transfer the pattern onto the paper.

You need:

• An ironing board or large table (you can also use the floor if your back allows it)

• Parchment paper

• Pins

• A ruler

• Tape measure

• A pencil and colour pen

Before you begin, look at the garment you wish to copy and work out:

• How many individual pieces it is made of?

• Are there any pieces that are identical to one another (e.g. sleeves, skirt panel pieces)?

• Are there any pieces which look symmetrical (e.g. the bodice). You can cut those pieces 'on the fold' - i.e. you fold the fabric before cutting to give you a perfectly symmetrical fabric piece.

Make a cutting list like this:

• Front bodice pieces - 2

• Back bodice pieces - 1

• Sleeves - 2

• Front skirt pieces - 1

• Back skirt pieces - 2

• Bias tape - 1 (X cm)

Next, make 1 paper piece for each unique pattern piece - there is no need to make two identical sleeve pieces, for example, because you will only cut it once on folded fabric, which gives you two identical fabric pieces.

Lay your parchment out on the ironing board and begin with your first pattern piece:

Stretch out the garment over the paper, so that the pattern piece you wish to trace lies completely flat on it. Pin the piece down to prevent it from shifting. Take another pin and prick along the seam lines through the paper to give you an exact outline of the pattern piece - pierce every 1cm or so. When you remove the garment you can join up the pin pricks on the paper with pencil lines and you will have your first pattern piece transferred onto paper.

When you cut the fabric using these paper pieces, don't forget to add a seam allowance.

If you have identified symmetrical pattern pieces in your garment, fold the garment in half exactly and trace/rub off only that half, marking the fold to remind yourself to cut the fabric on the fold later.

With larger pattern pieces such as a long skirt, it is more efficient to measure and note down the width of the bottom hem and skirt length rather than trying to draw the pattern pieces on reams of paper.

How much fabric do you need?

As a general rule, you need two times the length of the dress - from the shoulder of the to the hem - plus 1/4m extra as a contingency and for shrinkage. How much you need also depends on the width of the fabric you choose - standard fabric width in the UK ranges from 115cm to 150cm.

To work it out more precisely, use the paper pattern pieces you have drawn. Lay them out on a large table (or the floor) with the grainline markings pointing the right way. Make sure you leave space for seam allowances (usually 1 - 1.5 cm around the edge of each pattern piece). Then measure from that layout how much fabric you need to buy.

Tip: Always wash the fabric before cutting or sewing it as you want any fabric shrinkage to occur before you make the garment.

In which order do you sew the fabric pieces together to make a dress?

When you look at the made garment that you are about to replicate, you can see in which order the pieces were attached to one another by how the seams overlap on the inside.

A common way of assembling the pieces of a dress is in this order:

1. Assemble the bodice starting with the shoulder seams and the neckline

2. Attach the sleeves and close the sides of the bodice

3. Sew the skirt: create gathers or pleats and stitch together the sides of all the skirt panels

4. Join bodice to skirt

5. Add zips, buttons/button-holes

6. Finish the hems

How long does it take to reverse engineer a dress?

The answer to this obviously depends on the size and complexity of a dress. But this dress took me 11 hours to make.

I must add that I have not sewn a dress for over a year, and this was my first sewing project without a pattern. It was the creation of the pattern that took up most of my time - muslin fabric is quite stretchy, so making a precise copy of the pattern was tricky and I had to check and double-check my pieces before I started cutting, and even with all that care I still had to make a few adjustments after sewing.

The sewing together of the fabric pieces is always surprisingly quick - and it is the most gratifying part of the process as you can see your dress coming together.

The hard and time consuming work in dressmaking is definitely in the planning and the finishing.

Muslin fabric for dressmaking - my verdict

I was slightly apprehensive about sewing a long dress out of muslin fabric because I didn’t know how it would behave. But my verdict is that it’s a great fabric for beginners because it is very forgiving and there is no pressing involved, which is usually an important part of the dressmaking process.

What I did find tricky about sewing with muslin was making the bias tape and creating an even neckline for the dress. Machine sewing the bias tape to the neckline made it gape, so I ended up unpicking and hand-stitching it to give the dress a clean finish - and that was likely also why it took 11 hours.