Hi, I’m back with a roundup of Gerties Shirtwaist dress, although this dress was a complete nightmare stitch from beginning to end I would make it again, and here are the reasons why mainly it is amazingly comfortable and partly because half of the problems I had would have been avoidable had I spent more on copying the pattern and the publisher had proofed the pattern sheets more effectively.

A complete novice probably couldn’t have put the dress together on their own but a novice with an experienced dressmaker on hand for advice would be able to create this dress.

case in point, Denise has made a couple of garments but not one from a book where you need to trace out the pattern, don’t get me wrong Denise is totally capable of working it out for herself but it is easier if she has someone to ask.

Do you want to see some pictures? of course you do.

as you can see, the dress is a little tight across the top of the bust but that might be a follow on for the sleeves being too tight across the top of my arm. Otherwise it is quite a nice fit.

though in this picture you can see the front seam raises towards the front, that could be the weird way I’m standing , not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at. If I was to make it again I might make a straight size instead of grading between two sizes

yes the collar is doing something wafty but neither of us noticed when we took the photos, again I not sure if I’m standing funny or it would probably hang better if I didn’t have my jeans on under it. you can see how tight it is across the sleeves. I do like that there isn’t too much blouseyness going on across the back. We both used self covered buttons me mainly because I couldn’t find any other buttons that worked.

If Denise was to make this dress again I think she would agree with me that we can lose some length from the bodice and may be some width from the shoulders.

the sleeves are nice and lose, and you can clearly see the extra puffyness I was complaining about on a previous post, but Denise likes that so that is alright.
here is Denise’s finished dress you can just see the buttons, we were a bit concerned that the front wouldn’t be quite wide enough over the bust, but that appears to be all right. we forgot you give you a hands in pocket shot, but the pockets are nice and roomy mine could probably have been slightly higher, but it does mean I won’t be continuously putting my hands in them.

The next dress that we are looking at doing is the seersucker dress, what I’ve said to Denise is that we will take more measurements first before cutting out the fabric.