Crazy fabric shirt dress

Wow! What a change the first 3 months of 2018 brought along! The company where I worked shut down my segment and I got laid off, I opened my online fabric store and I've been thinking big time about what I want to do next. Managing to open my store 1st of March required a lot of work! And I mean A LOT! By mid March I realized I haven't sewn anything since December 😲



I have by then started slowly working on this dress that is part of my 2018 Make Nine list. Just a little bit...just on weekends...there was (well, still is) a lot to do at Cotton Candy which is up and running in Norwegian now, and hopefully will get an English translation too in May/June and open up to the rest of the world.

And also until the thigh high snow on my deck in the back garden melts, it's my warehouse door you'll be seeing as backdrop to my new makes 😂

But hey! Let's talk dress 😃. This dress came out in Burda Style magazine in December 2015 and I liked it ever since. I considered making it before with a piece of fabric I loved and ruined into a blouse that I kinda hate. And yes, I regretted it, this dress would've looked much better.

I got the fabric from a Minerva Crafts sale back when I discovered Minerva exists, it was super cheap and I got intrigued by the mix of different size stripes and polka dots so I bought 2m but had zero plans for it. When it arrived I realized the scale of the print was quite a bit bigger than I expected, inspiration didn't hit so it went into the stash. Until a few months ago when I finally made that connection in my brain between this fabric and this pattern. Given the crazy print, it wasn't that easy to decide how and where to place the pattern pieces, and a serious mistake in cutting would've been disastrous (been there, done that, got that blouse I hate that I mentioned above 😒).

The fabric is a thin polyester satin, and I've had bad experiences with satin and chiffon before, it just snatched all the time! Then I learned that I needed a sharp needle as well as thin, and that i can keep the needle sharp if I stop sewing over my pins!...(doh!), so the sewing of this one went fantastically well, not totally snatch free, but once that bad needle was changed, it went flawlessly.

As this was both a shirt and a dress I went for a straight size 40 to accommodate my shoulders and hips, and since it had a belt and a loose silhouette otherwise, I didn't bother grading down to 38 for bust and waist. I didn't do any alterations to the design either, but I did make a couple of mistakes...I managed to move this flimsy fabric when pinning/cutting the front left piece, so my horizontal stripes ended up not being very horizontal...thankfully, this is disguised quite well by the breast fake pocket flap and the use of the belt (phew!). The second thing was the selection of buttons for the hidden button band, they were too big and are a pain to get into the buttonholes as the band is a bit too tight for them. Luckily I can get into the dress easily without opening the buttons, so they're there, but they'll never ever be used 😂.

But on the positive side I'm quite happy with my choice of gold buttons for the lapels and gold buckle for the belt. I really like how gold looks with navy blue. I'm also really happy with the placement of the thin white stripes around the hip area, cuffs, belt and bottom of the yoke. It's not that noticeable but I know it's there and I like it.

In the meantime I also managed to finish another item for my 2018 Make Nine, and started filming a sew-along of a blouse using fabric from my store. I also just received fabric from Minerva to review, I'm planning to participate in #alittlelawnparty and #sewtogetherforsummer, I want to make a little gift for a new family member and I will be making a 2018 Make Nine list for Cotton Candy as well. So there's LOADS of sewing to come!

Pattern: Burda Style 12/2015 #121B
Fabric: 100% Polyester satin from Minerva Crafts
Photos taken in front of my warehouse in Asker, Norway.