Qipao / Cheongsam dress 2 in velvet and silk
Having thoroughly enjoyed making and wearing my first Cheongsam dress seen below for my eldest niece's graduation, I decided to make another for her sister's graduation 3 months later.
With time being tight, I went with a similar basic design but with some adaptations. This was my inspiration from the Doveyaf store on Etsy.
What I liked was the pencil skirt shape as well as the longer skirt for warmth since it would be autumn, and I loved the overlay over the shoulders and upper arms. Having made a Zadie Jumpsuit when sewing with velvet for the first time, I knew just how luxurious this would feel.
The only issue that could get in the way is that I had 3 weeks to make it, and I only had the original pattern so far, plus I knew how fiddly sewing this gorgeous drapey velvet was. I used the Cheongsam dress from Porcupine Patterns with the A-line skirt for my first dress. It was going to take a bit of pattern work but at least I already had a reasonably fitting dress to start with.
The Cheongsam or Qipao is a traditional Chinese dress with a characteristic asymmetric opening over the right shoulder. I own two bought as RTW dresses in a brocade fabric and they always feel very special to wear. This pattern makes it simpler to sew as the asymmetric flap is sewn into place, with a zip opening in the centre back or side seams, depending on whether it is lined or unlined.
Fit
You can follow my entire fitting journey for the original dress here.
I already own a pencil skirt block having bought this from Pattern Lab a few years prior but not used it since. I did also try their bodice block but unfortunately it didn't fit me particularly well, likely due to my inaccuracy with measurement taking so I didn't do anything with that.
My first step was to try on the skirt over the last toile I made for the original dress.
This looked pretty decent. I just needed to lengthen the skirt, possibly make it narrower towards the hem and add a slit at the back.
I drew lines for where this skirt would meet the bodice and pinned it to the toile to keep its position while I removed it.
When comparing this to the original bodice pattern piece, I could see that the join coincided with the original waistline, which was a reassurance.
When comparing the darts from the waist downwards, I could see they were very similar and so I kept with the darts on my original dress toile rather than transferring those from the skirt. That meant all I wanted to do was to change the shape of the side seams and lengthen the skirt.
I retraced the original bodice pattern and then followed the side seams of the skirt block from the waist downwards but continued to taper it down where I added length. Since the bodice of my new design would no longer need the asymmetric flap, I traced only the half with the shoulder on so it could be cut on the fold.
There was some guesswork involved with the overall skirt shape. I started to taper down to the hem at a line 8cm down from the hipline. At the hem, I made it 3cm narrower on each of the front and back pieces and I added an extra 35cm of length.
The dress I was now making was sleeveless. To simplify this for my tight deadline, I wondered if it looked OK with just the sleeves removed, knowing it would be covered by the silk overlay. I was happy with the look and arm movement, so I kept the original armscye as it was.
Design
Once I had the base dress, I then drafted the pattern for the overlay. In the original inspiration photo, it looked like one piece of fabric with no seams. It appeared to be sewn at the neckline but otherwise not attached anywhere else.
For my dress, I wanted to attach it at centre back to keep it nicely in place. The easiest way I could think of to draft the overlay was to follow the existing front and back pieces since the neckline would be the same, as would the centre front and centre back. I could then draw a curve to join the two.
I folded over the shoulder seam on the front and back pieces, and butted them up against each other as they would sit on the final dress.
I estimated the length of the overlay for the front and for the back which was lower, followed a straightish line across the front and curved it by eye towards the back. This was the resulting shape.
I pinned this to the neckline of my toile to see how it would look.
I was really pleased with this and just had a couple of small alterations to make:
Shorten it a touch on the front to make it look more level
Adjust the curve on the back to create a sharper point at centre back
Here was the result of pinning up the front a little and trimming the back.
I was happy with this and so transferred it to a paper pattern piece, adding 1 cm for the hem using a double tracing wheel which I demonstrate here.
At this point I realised I had pinned this overlay on my toile with the raw edge at centre back, so hadn't accounted for the 2cm seam allowance here. I repinned it, checked how it looked and it was still OK so I carried on. Here was the resulting piece, with a notch marked where the shoulder seam was.
I made a note to cut the fabric slightly beyond the piece to allow for the turn of cloth since it would be sitting on top of the velvet. I made this a full pattern piece as I wanted to cut this in single layer on the silk, and made the front bodice into one pattern piece to cut the velvet in single layer too.
Fabric
Main fabric
I knew straight away that the velvet would be the same I had used for the Zadie Jumpsuit from Bloomsbury Square Fabrics. It was gorgeously soft and drapey, and the silk content felt amazing against the skin. It was difficult to sew but I was up for the challenge. I went with this navy blue colour, deciding to cut it with the nap running upwards as I had done with my Zadie so that the deep colour would look more uniform.
Overlay
The reason I went with blue was because I had a specific fabric in mind for the overlay. Having had a trip to Vietnam a few months earlier, I had bought some blue silk with a silver floral design and thought this would suit the garment perfectly.
Interfacing
Not wanting to use fusible interfacing on the velvet, I ordered Vlieseline sew in interfacing in both light and medium weights to try. I went with the medium weight as this supported the drapey velvet better. The pattern instructions specified to cut two pieces of interfacing so that both the outer collar and lining are interfaced. I just went with the one layer of medium weight.
Cutting out
I cut everything in single layer as the velvet and silk were too shifty for me to consider cutting on the fold.
Silk overlay
I wanted to cut the silk overlay in one piece with the centre front running down the grainline. However my fabric wasn't wide enough to do this so I cut it on the crossgrain instead.
Velvet
I used a lot of the advice for sewing with velvet and cutting it out as detailed here in my post about the velvet Zadie Jumpsuit I made.
For my Zadie I had access to a steam generator iron on a sewing retreat for some of the process, but I used a normal steam iron for this part of the project (although this convinced me to order a fancy one since it was on offer with £150 off).
For pressing prior to cutting out, I found it sufficient to hover above the fabric with the steam on without touching the fabric, wanting to avoid crushing the pile or marking it. I cut the fabric wrong side up as this was easier to keep the pattern piece in place, plus I could see the grain of the fabric to make sure it was laid out correctly. As before with my Zadie, I cut it with the nap facing up the dress so it appeared more uniform with a deeper colour to it.
Once my new iron had arrived, I was able to press seams by lightly running the tip along the wrong side of the seam with the steam on. I used a sleeve ham underneath to avoid the seam allowance from showing through. The sleeve ham was covered with a piece of scrap velvet to avoid crushing the pile. After running the iron over the seam, I lightly pressed with my fingers.
To mark the dart, I tried using a tracing wheel and Saral wax paper. This marked the fabric well, but from the right side, the pressure of the wheel did mark the pile on the right side.
For the second back piece I tried something different. I wasn't sure I could keep the pattern piece and velvet secured together enough to use tailors tacks, so I cut out the dart from the pattern piece to use a white fabric marker instead (Prym Aqua Trick Marker).
For the front piece, I did the same except I cut out the fabric first before cutting the darts out of the pattern piece, so that I still had the outline of the bust darts.
Construction
Construction followed as for my first version, but I've added any other relevant details below.
Darts
I hand basted the darts as before to reduce things shifting around too much. I found that sewing this in velvet was much more tricky and my basting wasn't quite enough to hold everything very securely.
As mentioned in my first post, for the long waist darts I started stitching from the middle to either end, reducing stitch length towards the tip as recommended in this article by Threads Magazine.
Overlocking
For overlocking the edges prior to sewing it together, I found it easier to sew with the right side of the fabric facing up, even if sewing against the direction of the nap. It needed a firm left hand to stop it from wandering as I guided it through, but I still found this more consistent than with the right side facing down.
I overlocked the back seam of the silk overlay as this would be a raw edge exposed otherwise. I was nervous of this because this edge was cut on the bias and I was worried about it stretching. However, as long as both edges were the same length, I wasn't too concerned as it would drape loosely.
When feeding it into the overlocker, the silk had a tendency to drift away from the needle and so I fed it in at an angle with the knife disengaged.
Once done, I compared the two edges against the original pattern piece. One was about the right length, the other was horribly stretched.
I steamed it which helped. I also stretched the shorter edge a little and made a note to ensure they were level where sewn onto the centre back seam, since it was not the raw edge that needed to be the same, but the seam line which was 2cm inside.
I originally was going to attach the silk overlay to the centre back seam at this point and then sew the zip and the rest of the garment as normal but there was plenty of room for discrepancies elsewhere in the garment, particularly around the neckline. I therefore decided that I would attach it to the centre back seam after the collar had been sewn.
Pinning
When starting to sew the centre back seam, there was a fair amount of creep of the velvet fabric and at one point, I was nearly 1cm out. I had only pinned the fabric but my feeling was still that hand basting wouldn't be enough. After unpicking, I pinned again both horizontally and vertically.
As I slowly fed it through the machine I kept readjusting so the raw edges were level on the right side. This required readjustment after every few stitches, lifting the presser foot up and down and sometimes needing to overdo it as it would often drift by the time it reached the needle.
Zip
Having encountered the difficulty of sewing accurately with velvet, I decided to use Wonder Tape (a kind of double sided fabric tape) to secure the zip whilst sewing. I have used this before when hand basting wasn't quite enough to keep things from moving at all, e.g. the patch pockets on my Sienna Maker Jacket. Here is how it looked after applying and then peeling the backing tape off.
I was pleased with the result, particularly as I had accidentally sewn one side with the regular zip foot instead of the invisible one. It was then that I realised that I had made this error on my first cheongsam, hence that one not being quite as invisible as I'd hoped.
After sewing the zip in place, I removed the wonder tape.
Collar
The collar pattern piece needed some adjusting as it was designed to have bias binding along the outer edge. This meant there was no seam allowance here, so I added it for 1cm so I could turn it inside out instead. For speed and convenience, I would normally have used the double tracing wheel to mark this. However there tends to be a little bit of play in the wheels which can cause some inaccuracies which I wanted to avoid on the small collar pieces. I used a ruler instead to mark the seam allowance.
I decided to use velvet also for the collar lining as I didn't have anything in my stash that was similar in colour and I didn't want a different lining to show. I layered the collar pieces with the right sides together, with the interfacing on the bottom so that it would be attached to the velvet lining rather than the outside collar piece. The piece shown in the photo below is the left collar piece. I basted round the edges to hold the pieces together, using clips inside the seam allowance so the marks wouldn't show.
I used a separate piece of thread on each seam so that it was easier to pull this out once that seam was sewn. This was a tip I picked up on a workshop with Claire Tyler.
As I had done with my first dress, I lay the collar pattern piece over the top to re-trim the pieces as there were some discrepancies with all the layers.
Once both collar pieces were sewn and pressed, I laid them on top of each other and again trimmed the raw edges to make sure they were the same shape.
I hand basted the overlay to the neckline of the bodice and pinned one collar in place with right sides together. I was about to position this under the presser foot when I started to have doubts about how neatly I could achieve this. Given this late stage of the game (two days before the event) I decided to hand sew the collar in place to give me more control. Even so, I found it very tricky.
The first collar went in OK, the second would take more care as it had to be matched up with the first at the centre front and centre back. I started at the back and worked my way round to the front, but as I approached the centre front, I was beginning to get some tucks in the silk overlay. I managed to ease this in, but with hindsight I should have done a section at the back, then a section at the front to match these up, and then left the easing for the section over the shoulder.
It didn't look the neatest inside, but as long as it looked decent on the outside this was acceptable. It's no surprise that the two garments I've made that have the messiest innards are both in velvet.
Silk overlay
I sewed a rolled hem along the edge of the silk overlay before attaching it between the bodice and collar. I used the rolled hem foot which is a favourite of mine, I describe the technique I use here.
I was nervous of sewing this long edge because of the likelihood of twisting and stretching due to the curve. However I told myself that if it was a mess, I would simply cut it shorter and have another go. Thankfully it turned out pretty well with no major disasters. There was definitely twisting and stretching, but I hoped a good steam would help.
Here is how it looked immediately after sewing.
And after a steam press. It looked a lot better, but I didn't manage to eliminate all the waviness.
After attaching it to the collar, it was looking messy around the back and needed a lot of tidying up. With only 90 mins left to complete the dress, I was getting nervous of how to disguise the misshapen overlay.
I pinned it to each side to the zip and tried it on. It looked OK and so I just had to go with it. I started to hand sew it but it wasn’t going well due to the uneven and curved edge, and I thought that if it was going to be untidy, I may as well machine sew it for speed.
Using the regular zip foot, I sewed the overlay down on either side of the zip.
A fair amount of easing was required to get the two edges level at the bottom. It wasn't the neatest result but after a good press it looked OK from afar and the zip still worked, what a relief.
Armholes
I pinned the side seams before sewing to check the fit and was happy with it. The armholes were overlocked and I had planned to fold the raw edge under 1cm but time was short and no one would see them underneath the silk overlay and so I left them as is.
Back slit
Once the side seams were sewn, I could see that the back slit was high enough to walk around in. I hand sewed a bartack to reinforce the top of the split, pressed the 2 cm centre back seam allowance and then secured this with a catchstitch.
Hem
With 1 hour left, I only had the hem left to do. Having extended the length of the dress by 35cm, I reduced this by 8 cm and then hemmed it up by another 4 cm. I overlocked the hem and secured it with a catchstitch. With a final press, I was ready to go.
My beaming smile that day clearly showed my pride, some for my dress, a lot for my niece :)
Summary
Having already fitted the dress, the challenge of this project was to copy an inspiration photo and try to reverse engineer the pattern and construction - it is this aspect I enjoyed the most. I had sworn off sewing velvet after the Zadie Jumpsuit, but I can't deny that it is absolutely sumptuous and so luxurious to wear.
What I love
The puzzle-solving required in copying an inspiration photo.
The mixture of textures of velvet and silk, oh and did I mention the velvet feels amazing?!
The mixture of colours, I just love that deep navy together with the blue and silver.
The modern twist on a traditional dress.
What the dress symbolises to me: it was made to honour my niece's huge achievement, and carries cultural significance of the Qipao dress.
What I would change
I would try to neaten up the attachment of the overlay to the centre back seam. My main issue was this edge stretching out as it was cut on the bias. Perhaps applying forming tape interfacing right after cutting might have reduced this. Another option would have been to stay stitch but there is a good chance I may stretch it in the process of sewing this.
The same applies for the hem of the overlay.
What I discovered
This is probably the most I have hacked a pattern so far, and it was incredibly rewarding.
Inspiration played a huge role in this project, a reminder that it's OK to trawl the internet in the name of sewing research sometimes!
I am used to following patterns closely, collecting a huge database of ones that I really like, but this was a great reminder that a pattern can just be used as a starting point for any design.
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This is beautiful. Your attention to detail is something to live up to. Thank you for taking the time to share all your tips. And congratulations to both your nieces!