Blue Purple Plaid Shirt Dress

Quite some time ago I found a fantastic turquoise and purple plaid gauze material and used it to make this summer top.  This is by far my favourite summer piece of clothing and is worn constantly when the weather is fine.  However I don't actually like the top - huh! how does that work?.  I love the fabric and I love the comfort factor, but I don't really love the pattern that I made it into it, its just a bit too shapeless.

I always wanted to go back and try again on this top but the fabric was no longer in stock.  Fast forward a year or two and guess what I found in my favourite discount fabric store - my favourite fabric. Of course I had to buy more.  I bought 4 yards of it this time, thinking that would be enough, but now I'm thinking about going back and buying the rest of the bolt.

The fabric sat in my stash over winter waiting for some fine weather.  A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was finally time.

I decided that this time I wanted to make a dress with the same basic style as my original shirt - in other words a shirt dress with mandarin collar.

 I reached for the pattern that I've been using over winter to make flannel shirts as I'm finally pretty happy with the fit of this pattern using the french dart so I figured I just needed to extend the length into a dress.  It came together pretty easily, the only issue I had was with the collar.  I went back and redrafted the collar for the V neckline, but I forgot to add on the width of the button bands so the collar ended up too short.  I decided that I quite liked that and finished the top of the button bands at and angle and stopped the collar at the end of the button band so it creates a notch.

I added a small pocket on the front, cut on the bias, but I had to cut my button bands with the grain as I was running out of fabric.  There was no pattern matching done as I just didn't have the fabric to do it!

I finished the bottom of the dress with the sides curving up at the seams and the back slightly longer than the front.

I added a bias cut yoke at the back  with a seam up the middle as I loved that detail of my original shirt.

And I cut the sleeves off into little cap sleeves based on the pattern that I used for my original shirt.

I then made a self fabric belt out of the last of my material.

The problem was I couldn't figure out where to wear the belt.  It I wear it up at my natural waist it's pretty much right under my boobs. down lower and it creates all sorts of muffin rolls. and either way it s quite uncomfortable and really doesn't look that great.

Unfortunately with the french darts only it was just a touch too shapeless to wear without the belt.  So after it's first outing I went back and added fish eye darts under the bust for more shaping.  So I can now wear it without the belt and it's much more comfortable.

 I still don't like the way the darts ruin the line of the plaid - which is why I went for the french dart in the first place, but I like the shape better so I stick with it!.

It's still not the most flattering of dresses, but its comfortable and I still love the material so its getting plenty of wear!