How To Copy a Caftan - What An Australian Sewing Circle Taught Me

I have many caftans.


My Australian circle taught me to copy a caftan. A Malay style caftan with a V-neck.

Place your old one on top and draw around it. Or place the old one underneath and mark where you cut or seam with a clothes peg (called clothes pin in the USA)

The two seams run up the side, several inches in. One way round, the seam set a few inches in created a double flap of fabric at both sides.

Turn it inside out. Your flapping edge has disappeared. Less room to move.

V-neck
The V-neck is at the front. It is edged with a strip. The trick is to get one end to fold inside the other. You may have to jiggle this around or try it out with bits of newspaper strip on a v shape cut out of newspaper. It seems impossible. Then suddenly you get it.

Mark a and b, and c and d, or front and outside and inside. Or make or draw v shapes and match up the notches.

How long does it take?
It takes only five to ten minutes to sew along one shoulder at the top of the dress. (Plus another five minutes if you count laying out the garments, finding matching thread and needle and needle threader, cutting thread, threading needle, tying knot in end of thread.)

Allow a second five minutes for sewing the other shoulder.

How long it takes to hem up the long side depends on your fabric and decisions. I leave an armhole at the top, of course. I also leave a gap below the knee so I can run up stairs and sit with my feet apart under a desk without risking pulling apart the seam.

I talked about this recently at a Braddell Heights Advanced toastmasters International meeting online.
At Toastmasters International meetings we usually include table topics which are impromptu speeches which were sometimes selected from the table in in-house meetings. My table topic was: Describe something you did for the first time this year.

I have done many things for the first time, but I had to find one which was different and original and visual. I chose to describe making a dress by using a large scarf to copy an old caftan and create a new one.

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• About the Author
  Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
  I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a travel writer and photographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.
  
  Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a language evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.
  
  I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app learncool.sg
  Or quicker to type and easier to remember:  tinyurl.com/BHACOOL
  
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  https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogs
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