Every year around this time I get obsessed with making caftans again….I have made them every summer because they are so easy and so comfortable to wear in the hot summer months. But this year I decided to use some lightweight gauze and use the 3 seam caftan tutorial for a swim cover up for my girlie and I absolutely adore it. I can’t wait to make one for myself too! It’s next on my sewing list 😉
I used a white lightweight gauze for the fabric and the medium orange pom poms are from Riley Blake Designs. They have such fun colors to choose from! (I got some lime green for my cover up 😉 The gauze can be found in most fabric stores and is a great price for making these caftan-type dresses. The only changes to the original tutorial were to bind the neck with some gauze cut into bias strips (because woven fabrics will fray you need to bind off the neckline). The other change was to serge around the whole perimeter of the caftan so those edges wouldn’t fray and then I stitched the pom poms directly to the serged lines.
The “make yourself a swim cover up in three steps”, you can find the FULL TUTORIAL HERE.
Happy caftan making!
~Elizabeth
P.S. Here is a pinnable image if you want to pin the project for later.
Beautiful cover up! I love it. May I add something? I promise that this isn’t pedantry, just sharing something rather curious! I moved to Morocco a few years ago and did a double take on what caftans are. What you’ve made here is actually much closer to another, lesser known, garment called a Gandora. There are zillions on google images. I’m not the Moroccan garment names police, I just think it’s fascinating and suspect you might too. It’s almost the easiest, simplest construction of a garment possible, and you can’t believe it’ll be flattering until you put it on, and yet it really really is. The reason it’s worth bringing up the naming thing, is that it gets you into Gandora construction. Basically, what you’ve done above, but instead of the elastic, you have a tape attached to the centre third of that same line, on the inside of the garment, which ties loosely around your chest at the back. It’s invisible from the outside, but adds shape. You can usually work out where they’ve placed it especially well when the front is embellished with trim. This trick also leaves a very loose and flowing back, which adds a totally new character. And seeing as I’m on a roll, caftans themselves are more like robes partially open over dresses, and held in place with decorative belts just under the bust. Very fancy, structured and heavily embellished. And Jellabas, are amazing A-line robes with long sleeves and triangular pointed hoods… your classic Jedi robe, in short. Also worth knowing about for summer, for kids’ cover ups, especially among little Star Wars fans.
Trying to make these for my three girls before we leave on vacation on Monday! But I just had two questions. It appears from the picture that you rounded the edges of your bottom hem, and that you did not sew all the way down to the hem? Is that correct? For lack of a better word it looks like there are slits on each side. How far up did you leave slit? Did you curve those outer edges?
Thanks! Love this cute easy cover-up!
Thank you, I learned something:)
I LOVE this! Thanks so much for sharing.
I just had one quick question—about how much of the trim did you use?
I just say Wow! This is the perfect cover up for summer time. I love to wear this. So beautiful.