Dressmaking: The Easy Guide: Mix and Match Skirts, Sleeves and Necklines for Over 80 Stylish Variations

Awarded Best Sewing Book at the Creative Book Awards, 2024, "Dressmaking: The Easy Guide" by Helen Rhiannon provides step-by-step instructions on how to create beautiful, customized dresses for every shape and size. It includes a bespoke sizing chart, pattern pieces, and a sample (toile) in calico to adapt to create the dress of your dreams. With four style options for sleeves and necklines, five skirt options, and the option to add a Peter Pan collar or inseam pockets, the book also offers a comprehensive guide to sewing and dressmaking, with stunning images of the finished dresses to inspire you.

Format: Hardback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 23 June 2023
Publisher: Search Press Ltd

Create Bespoke Garments That Fit and Flatter!




Awarded Best Sewing Book at the Creative Book Awards, 2024.




In this comprehensive and informative book, Helen explains how to create beautiful, customized dresses for every shape and size. Choose the exact size that fits and flatters you from a bespoke sizing chart that takes into account differences in body size across bust, waist, and hips.

Trace off your pattern pieces, then create a sample (toile) in calico, which you can then adapt to create the dress of your dreams, in your own choice of fabulous fabric.

There are four style options for sleeves and necklines, including a flared sleeve, a capped sleeve, a sweetheart neckline, or a boatneck; and five skirt options, including a fitted pencil-style skirt, a zhuzhy circle skirt, and an A-line, with or without pleats.

You can also choose to add a sweet, classic Peter Pan collar, or inseam pockets, to your garment. Alternatively, you can even create a skirt as a separate garment, simply by adding a waistband or facing.

The language of sewing and dressmaking is demystified at the beginning of the book, as well as the equipment you need to get started. Nothing is left unexplained; and stunning images of the finished dresses, on a mannequin and on a model, are interspersed throughout the book to inspire your own finished pieces.

Extra copies of the full-size pattern sheets/pattern templates exclusive to Dressmaking: The Easy Guide by Helen Rhiannon are available here.

Weight: 1052g
Dimension: 223 x 287 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781782218913