Hacking the Ogden cami into a tiered maxi dress for summer

The Ogden cami by True Bias is a fantastic woven top pattern.  Simple but effective with clean lines and clever details, you can see why it is a true indie pattern classic.  In this blog post I share all the details of how I hacked the Ogden cami to turn it into a floaty, tiered maxi dress perfect for summer.

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The pattern

The Ogden cami is a simple camisole top designed for woven fabrics.  It has a deep v-neck at the front and back.  The neckline and armholes are finished with a partial lining to provide a really nice quality finish. 

There are no fastenings as the cami is designed to be pulled on over your head.  There are two size ranges available on this pattern:  US size 0-18 and 14-30.  There are some slight variations in the pattern for the two size ranges.  The size 0-18 range has no darts and fine spaghetti straps.  The size 14-30 range has bust darts and a wider ¾ inch strap for bra coverage.

Overall the cami has a very clean, simple silhouette and therefore has loads of hacking potential.  I had made two versions of the cami when I was fairly new to sewing and thought it was about time to try my own Ogden hack.

The fabric

True Bias suggests lightweight woven fabrics for the Ogden cami, including silk, crepe, rayon, cotton lawn, cotton voile and lightweight linen.  I made my first two versions of the plain cami in lovely lightweight viscose challis, which works really well for this pattern.

For my Ogden cami dress hack, I had in mind a floaty, swishy maxi dress. I found the perfect fabric at 1^st for Fabrics.  It was a 100% tencel fabric and really good value.  It was available in two colour ways of denim/ivory.  It really reminded me of the Atelier Brunette ‘Shade’ viscose challis range. 

The tencel was really lightweight and fluid, so perfect for a lightweight summery maxi dress. I decided to buy 2m of each of the colour ways and make a colour-blocked maxi dress. 

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My pattern hack

I have included below details of how I made my tiered maxi dress version of the Ogden cami.

The bodice

My measurements are 32-26-26 inches.  To make the bodice of the maxi dress, I traced the size 0 of the pattern based on my bust measurement.  I then cropped the bodice to 1 inch below the lengthen/shorten line on the pattern, to give the length I wanted for the bodice of the dress.  For reference I should note that I am 5’6 and I have a fairly long torso.

I wanted to make the bodice fully lined as I thought this would be a neater way of attaching it to the skirt.  So instead of cutting a front and back main bodice pattern piece and a front and back facing pattern piece, I cut two front pattern pieces and two back pattern pieces.  I then followed the pattern instructions as if I was attaching the facing.

The only other adaptation I made to the bodice was to insert waist ties into the main bodice side seams when sewing up, so that I could cinch in the dress around my waist.

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Tiered skirt

I decided to make a three-tiered gathered skirt for my maxi dress, so that I could use each colour way of the tencel fabric two times (including the bodice).  I didn’t want the dress to be too full so I decided to make each tier approx 1.3-1.4 times wider than the previous tier. 

Tier 1: I cut two pieces of fabric (front and back skirt pieces) 65cm wide* x 42cm long

Tier 2: I cut two pieces of fabric 90cm wide x 35cm long

Tier 3: I cut two pieces of fabric 125cm wide x 35cm long

* The initial 65cm width of the top tier was based on the width of the bodice pattern piece x 1.35

Note: I ended up shortening tier 3 by approx. 3 inches so that the dress fell to a little above the floor!

Finishing

The tencel fabric I used for this dress was quite lightweight and delicate so I made sure to spend time on finishing the garment to make sure it will last well:

Bodice – I sewed tier 1 of the skirt to only the external bodice.  I then turned under the bottom of the bodice lining and slip stitched the lining in place to enclose the seam attaching the bodice to skirt tier 1.

Skirt side seams – For the side seams of the skirt, I used French seams.

Gathered seams joining skirt tiers 1&2 and skirt tiers 2&3 – I made double fold bias binding to enclose each of these seams.

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My final dress

I am really happy with my final dress.  It is relaxed and swishy and I love how the colour blocking has turned out.

I found the Ogden cami a really easy pattern to hack.  I enjoyed planning how I wanted my dress to look and creating the pattern pieces to turn my vision into reality.

This definitely won’t be my last hack of the Ogden cami, so watch this space for more hacks coming your way in the future!  And if you want more inspiration for Ogden cami hacks, do check out the True Bias blog.  There you will find lots of posts with inspiration for different hacks of this fab pattern.