That odd pattern

That dress I told you about in the previous post... Ehm... I haven't had a chance to do anything else about it yet. 
To be honest, that was also because I was still working on something else which hasn't even made it to the blog yet. But still...
Hopefully, I'll get started tomorrow.

In the mean time, I thought I could talk a bit more about the pattern. 

I posted this picture before, showing the bodice pieces laid out on the fabric. Those pieces may need some de-mystifying, so here it is.

Without the gathers (which will be in every piece except the sleeves) drawn in, the design for the dress looks like this. The front is at the left, the back on the right.
To draft it, you obviously have to mirror both the front and back pattern pieces at their center lines and then draw in the design lines. I tried to pay attention to the placement of those: Not right over the bust point and not too low at the hip.

And then, I made sure the lines wouldn't form those awkward points at the side seams. Of course, you can do that either by making sure they are at a right angle to the side seam or by lining up the sides and continuing the line at the angle it was at. I also wanted to eliminate the side seams in some places.

In the end, this is what I went with. The coloured sections all belong to the same piece. The waist/hip pieces are separate and have normal side seams. 

At this is how those pieces were combined. No shoulder seams! 
After making these pieces, I slashed them at a right angle to the neckline and spread them to about double size. 
Gathered designs like this are always fabric-hungry and I knew I only had a limited amount of fabric. To deal with that, I decided to spread the bodice pieces in such a way that the neckline became a straight line and cut that along the straight grain. Which is how you get the odd pieces which I placed along the selvedges. 
Then, it was just an issue of paying A LOT of attention to the placement of each piece because all of them are asymmetrical.
I will make lining pieces without gathers, to avoid issues but for the outside, this should do it.