Diary of a shirt dress: Day 2

Oh! I just so hope I don't mess this project up! It's be a shame.

By now it's clear that the day count doesn't correspond to actual days. Some days I don't sew. Today I won't actually sew either, I'm going out soon. Friday night!

But I did do some preparation work:

I decided to start with the easy part which is the skirt. I do have a store bought rectangular skirt that I like the shape of and can use its length to get the length I want. So I took it out and measured the width of it and the length of it.

I want my skirt to be 2-3 cm longer and maybe a little bit narrower, this one is about 85 cm (per side), I think I want to go 75.

Then I measured my fabric width...Nope, the idea of cutting out a full length (shoulder to hem) from it would not work, not enough for the style in mind. That's the shirred elastic waist idea discarded as well 😕. I think I'll go with a waistband.

The last and scariest is the bodice. I mentioned in my last post that I don't want the shoulders and armholes to be this wide. So I marked the shoulder width I want, then used Burda Style 9/2016 #101 (below) for the armholes.

To maintain the width at the waist and allow for gathering, I drew a straight line from where the new armhole ends to the original waist. I also moved the pleat at the back towards center back. I do want to keep the pleat detail. It's probably not very easy to see, but the wider shoulder in the picture below is the original, the narrower is the new.

I'll have to test this out before cutting to make sure there's enough ease around the bust, but that will happen another day.

Until then, have a good weekend and good sewing if you're planning any 😊.