Diary of a shirt dress: Day 3

Yaay! It's the weekend and I can finally continue working on my dress!
I have most of the design details figured out now, so I'll just start cutting.

The natural place to start was of course the skirt. This will be where most of the fabric goes and where the print really comes to life. I spent some minutes first tying to lay the fabric as straight as possible. Now I've already figured out earlier (on day 2 😄) that the skirt will be made of two triangles 75cm wide x ~105cm long. Technically this is not very true as the front will be split in 2 because of the button closure.

But starting with the back of the skirt, and taking into account 2cm for the hem, I marked a rectangle 110cm long (105 + 2 for hem + 3 as error margin) by 75cm wide, and cut it taking into account seam allowances on sides and top edges.

For the front, I divided the 75cm into two, that's 37.5, measured the front bands width to be 2.5 cm, which means 1.25cm on each side, which means each of my front pieces should be 36.25cm...let's say 36.5 for simplicity's sake 😉. So I marked and cut two rectangles 110cm long x 36.5cm wide again not forgetting seam allowances. And after all the care (I thought) I've taken to make the print on the two pieces a mirror image, I managed to cut them exactly the same! Well done me 😠

Well, a couple of deep breaths later, I moved on (what else could I do? No one will notice this mistake anyway 😋). Let's lay out the bodice pieces now, and think twice and double-check before cutting...So I folded the remaining bit almost in half, this time so two halves of the fold are indeed mirror images of each other, and even made sure pattern bits matches on top and bottom by pinning things in place.

I decided to incorporate this bit of the pattern into the back yoke, the front panel and the waistband.

And cut out two back yokes, one front panel, one waistband, two collar stands, four pocket pieces.

It looks like I have enough fabric to do facings or bias binding pieces for the armholes, but not enough for the second front panel and inner waistband. And that's where my "hamstering" skills came useful! I had a bit of cotton sateen that wasn't enough for anything but I couldn't throw out that matches the greenish colors on the fabric nicely and was just enough. Maybe I even use it for armhole facing...We'll see when I get that far! For the time being I need to wait until my Otto decides to move 😄

But now I could start sewing!
I decided to start with the skirt part. I overlocked what will be the side seams, and also the pocket pieces. To position the pockets correctly I tried to find out where the waist will actually be, i.e. determine the correct length. It looked like the 110cm were correct or at least very close, so my earlier marked lines still applied.

I then made a mark 10cm down from the waist on each side seam, this is where the top of the pockets will go. And based on the pocket pattern piece, marked the bottom of the pockets, then sewed the side seams leaving the pocket openings open.

But that's enough for today, more sewing tomorrow.

Note: This post was written yesterday (Saturday)