Hello, here is number three in my list for February, the Sew over it Vintage Shirt Dress, the pattern is lovely and very easy to put together, however I was sort of led astray by the gumph in the little booklet and should have gone with my initial thoughts to do a size smaller.

The pattern does give you the finished sizes for bust waist and hips, it also says that the dress had less ease than the big four patterns, looking at them I should have gone with the smaller size, however I am very conscious of ‘design’ ease.

As you can see I changed my mind about the fabric, and you can also see it is a little bit shapeless and that is with taking a extra inch out of the waist.

luckily though before I did my usual 1inch out of the bodice I checked the internet, and discovered that the top piece was quite short anyway, after measuring it I came to the conclusion that it didn’t need to be any shorter.

The instruction booklet was very straight forward and the set in sleeves were some the the easiest I’ve installed. One of the changes I should have made though is a full bicep adjustment, although I can get the dress on I can’t move my arm. The two choices I have is to either make it no/short sleeves or see how much I can get back from the seam.

If I make it again I will make the smaller size do a SBA and widen the sleeves. I’m not sure if the fabric is just a little stiff for this pattern as it makes me think of a coat dress rather than a shirt dress.

At the moment I am toying with taking it apart and making the smaller size. I don’t think that I’ll wear it as is.

next up challenge for March