Charlie caftan

Summer is here! I have wanted to make the Charlie caftan for ages, it’s a floaty, comfy summery dress. I like the gathers in the front, I think they’re really flattering to the body and I’ve always loved the caftan style. Here’s how it went…

1 The fabric

For the fabric I decided to use a cotton lawn which was by Lady McElroy, bought from Higgs&Higgs. It has a super cute damselflies pattern and I couldn’t resist. I wanted to make this pattern in cotton for the first time so I could focus on the fit without needing to worry about sewing slippery fabric.

2. The pattern

The Charlie Caftan is quite an old pattern from Closet Core patterns. It comes in a standard size pattern, but you can also buy a larger bust size pattern (C&D). Unfortunately I needed the larger bust size pattern but I had bought the standard one, so I needed to do a full bust adjustment.

On this pattern the full bust adjustment is a little bit tricky, but Closet Core patterns suggest you follow a guide which has been written for a similar pattern: the Kalle Shirt. Although the guide is very good, you end up with the gathered section at two different heights. It didn’t say how to rectify this (as the guide is for the Kalle which doesn’t have gathers). So I held the pattern (after doing a full bust adjustment) up to my body and chose the best position for the gathered section. The only other adjustment I did was a narrow shoulder adjustment, where I reduced the size by half an inch.

I decided to sew View C which is the shorter dress pattern with the gathers but I used the ties from View C. After doing my measurements I decided to sew the size 12, which is slightly larger than I would normally sew from Closet Core patterns but we have had a pandemic and I’ve been inside a lot…!

3. The challenges

Overall I found this pattern very enjoyable to sew. The most challenging part for me was doing a full bust adjustment of the pattern. The gathered section was a little bit fiddly. There are lots of guides online: great sew-alongs on YouTube and Closet Core patterns have a helpful blog article on how to sew the gathered section on their website, so I felt prepared to do it even though it was difficult, and it went fine. I decided not to worry about pattern matching – the pattern is so busy I figured I could get away with it.

4. The final result

I have made a lovely summer dress and I’m chuffed with it! It fits pretty well and I adore the damselflies. There are some minor things I might need to change for next time. The gathered section is a tiny bit too high on me, I’m not sure if that’s due to how I did the full bust adjustment, but it’s easy to fix and doesn’t need to move much. Also the pockets feel really far back on my body – I’m not sure how to fix that. I think it may be because the fabric has some rigidity and the fullness of the gathers is pushing the dress backwards, so it might not happen with a more drapey fabric. Despite these things I’m so pleased – it’s really easy to throw on, super comfy, and I think it looks great. Definite success!