Making curved or flared frills, skirts, shorts and sleeves using the Slash and Spread method

When I first started on this post, I'd intended just to cover adding a curved frill to the bottom of an A-line dress. But I've realised that the method, called slash and spread, is the same for any time you want to make a flared or curved pattern, so I'm killing a few birds with one stone. However, I will cover a curved frill, because that may be how you arrived at this post!

I will also cover:

• making a twirly skirt pattern
• using the same approach for flared shorts or culottes
• a hack for flutter sleeves
• and a cowl neck.

I'm going to start with the Twirly Skirt, because it's easy to show the method you use to hack any pattern into something more flared. I owe it all to This Mama Makes Stuff, who has this tutorial on how to design your own pattern for a twirly skirt for a girl (though it would work for a woman as well!) (That link may no longer work - try this one.)

All you need is the length of skirt you want, and 0.75 x the waist measurement required, to make a rectangle. (The tutorial says multiply the waist measurement by 1.5 and divide by 2, which is the same as multiplying by 0.75.) Then you put slash lines about 3" apart across the width, but don't cut them completely apart - stop just before the top. And spread the sections out evenly about 3" apart (or wider if you prefer). You can see below that I've stuck the spread sections onto some other paper - newspaper is cheap! And finally, you draw a nice curve at the top and the bottom, and this gives you a pattern piece to cut on the fold. (The fold line is marked on the left on my pattern.)

I've used this pattern in different sizes to make skirts for all the grand-daughters - it's so easy. For the baby, I made a waistband of the same fabric and threaded 1" elastic through. 

The older girls all had wide waistband elastic attached (stretched slightly as I sewed it, to fit the skirt top, as in the This Mama Makes Stuff tuorial).

Now for a curved frill at the hem of a dress. I think this can look quite sophisticated, and makes a change from a gathered frill,  especially if you don't enjoy gathering - some people hate it.

Let's assume you have a pattern for an A line dress. If you don't, I can help (see this post). First, you need to take off the part that will be replaced by a frill - but you need to leave half an inch seam allowance on the main part of the dress. So I add half an inch to both pieces where they are to join. For example, if you want a 7" piece for your frill, you need to cut the pattern at 6.5", and then add another 1" to the top of the bottom piece (because it needs to be 7.5" not 6.5" - you'll lose the two half inches in the seam). You'll need to do this on the front and the back pattern pieces.

The piece  you will have cut off will be rectangular or slightly curved, depending on the pattern you are hacking. You'll need to do just the same as for the Twirly skirt, slash and spread, i.e. divide the piece into sections and flare them out as much as you want, sticking them onto another larger piece of paper, and drawing a new top and bottom curve. For example:

Then, when the frill is re-attached to the main part of the dress, it will fall as an extra flare. (In fact the dress below only has a small flare, and the piece taken off was flatter (nearer to a rectangle) than I've shown in my drawings, But I wanted to illustrate that this can be doen whether the piece taken off is rectangular or already has a slight curve.

This enlargement shows how I've neatened the seam after joining the frill onto the dress.

Here is the curved frill completed. 

You can vary the amount of flare by spreading the sections of the pattern further apart. You'll note that in my diagram, I've shown the gaps as about half or less the size of the sections - whereas for the Twirly skirt above, the gaps were the same size as the sections.

I promised you Culottes, or flared shorts. I made my own pattern for these, as I'll show you below, but I first need to credit Misusu for the idea. Misusu tells you in this tutorial  how to make your own pattern for a pair of culottes, and, while I didn't actually draw out the pattern in the way suggested, I certainly used the slash and spread method to create flared shorts.

The pattern I actually used for making flared shorts was the free Oliver+S Sunny Day shorts pattern,  as I was already using it as it comes for some other shorts. You can read about those in another post. As I had the pattern out, it was easy to trace the size I wanted (between 2 and 3). There are two main pattern pieces, a front and a back. But as the side seam is completely straight, I simply overlapped them at the seam allowance and made them into a single piece. Then I carried out the slash and spread method that  you've now got the hang of (haven't you?) Here you can see the pattern piece cut out in the fabric (two pieces right sides together so I had a left and a right leg).

The picture below shows you the pattern piece 'put together again', so you can see how much flare was added compared with the original pattern - not a huge amount, just enough to make a more girly pair of long culottes for my grand-daughter. I was very tight on material, too, so I had to cut right into the selvedge - but that was going to be hidden in the seam.

Not the greatest of photos, as the culottes are partly hidden by her jumper.

However, she liked them, and her Daddy said they were a great fit, so I made another pair:

The second pair are a jersey knit (the others were a pretty Liberty print cotton, with flowers and peacocks). With this longer style, I think they'll fit her for years if I let the waist elastic out!

I love Flutter sleeves on dresses for little girls. Having a sleeve, even a small one that just covers the shoulders, is a big help on hot sunny days - it cuts down on the bare skin that needs plastering with sun cream! 

Of course, some patterns come with a flutter sleeve already. But if you just have an ordinary sleeve (especially a short one), it's easy to convert that to a flutter sleeve as well. Here's an article from Craftsy (now taken over by Bluprint, I'm somewhat sad to say) that gives a clear tutorial in how to do that. 

The flutter sleeves below were not actually made using this method, but they could have been - and it's a pretty photo!

Here is how I made a flutter sleeve pattern to fit a a different peasant dress - there was a 'normal' sleeve pattern but I wanted a shorter and skimpier flutter sleeve similar to the above. First I did the slash and spread, then I drew a new shape so the sleeve would finish halfway down the armhole.(The solid red line.) There are two sizes on my pattern, the other semi-dotted red lines indicate the 4-6 size, and the top curve and the left hand side give a 7-8 size - the solid red line marking the hem is the same for both sizes.

Here are the part made resulting sleeves, about to be hemmed.

Finally, I'll mention the use of the same slash and spread method of making a pattern for a cowl neck. This article from Threads magazine explains it clearly. The main difference is that they are recommending curved slashes in the bodice top rather than the straight ones we've seen so far. This is just one illustration to give you the idea of it. You should look at the article to get the full tutorial. 

I have made cowl necks on tops for my daughters - though I have to say that I use an even simpler method, that I suppose you could argue has just one straight slash. It may be that you would get a better result with this method described by Threads. It's just not how I learnt to do it - but I will try it in future.

This is a maternity top based on a Burda round-necked pattern 6607,

And this is a silk jersey top based on a New Look pattern 6356. With hindsight, it wasn't the greatest pattern to try and add a cowl to, because of the bust dart, but I managed it by redoing the dart.

So there you go - several different ways to use the Slash and Spread method.  It's not a comprehensive guide, but I hope you'll be able to use it to put more flare into your projects!