Prince Bayezid’s splendid saz-patterned court kaftan is one of the centerpieces of Topkapi Palace’s collection. It’s also a lesson in how much you can get away with when you know where you can afford to goof. Take a long look at the photo, then check the diagrams and see how many seams you missed in the skirt.
The center panels are cut with no added pieces, even down the diagonally sloped front, where lesser kaftans have front gores. The sleeves, too, are cut as whole pieces, even though the long, tapered shapes are so fabric-intensive that they practically beg to be pieced together with underarm wedges. But the skirts–the skirts, my friends, are a mess. There’s only one whole-cut gore in the entire skirt. The other three gores aren’t just pieced together, every single gore is pieced together differently.
But you don’t notice.
Part of the secret is the chaotic pattern–but only part. The other part of the secret is that the sides of the skirt fall into folds, breaking the pattern naturally, so whatever you do there, however many scraps you have to jigsaw together, no one will notice.