Tuesday, 23 August 2016

Vintage Shirt Dress

It has been really hot today, even in our air conditioned office so even I couldn't out on jeans the morning. Instead I wore my Sew Over It Vintage Wrap dress.

I made this dress a few months ago now and it hasn't had a lot of wear despite how well it turned out.

The reason this dress came about was due to a colleague of mine bringing back about 2 meters of this gorgeous paisley print fabric when he went home to visit his parents in India. It's so soft and feels and sews amazingly. Anyway it took me a while to find the perfect pattern for the fabric but I decided that it's weight would make a good shirt dress.

The dress is made in a lot of pieces so it took a couple of days to complete. Especially as I wanted to be really careful to do a good job with the lovely fabric! I even made my own covered buttons to match.



The pattern was not to difficult but there were definitely some fiddly bits - like fitting the collar and the facing and then trying to persuade them to lie flat. That took a lot of pressing.  This is not the first sew over it pattern I have tried and I really like them they have good clear instructions and there are lots of possibilities to make it your own. I never agree with finishing the edges of the material first though - I trimmed and "overlocked" after I was happy with the fit. I also ignored the button placement guide and went with what I felt looked best and  to avoid any weird pulling. I did add a snap faster at the point wear the bodice joins the skirt to prevent any unwanted gaping that is quite common with shirt dresses. I also didn't interface all the way down the front - partly because I didn't have enough and partly because the ,material was already quite stiff I just put small squares of it where the buttons and button holes are.

 Although it hasn't had a lot of wear I do like how this dress finished up and it works with long sleeved t-shirts underneath as well as sleeveless on hot hot days like today. I think I'm just not a dress person most of the time!

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