9.6.18

Chambray shirt-dress





I made a shirt-dress for the PR contest, starting with the Closet Case Patterns Kalle, out of a stashed chambray fabric I bought from a fabric shop that no longer exists.  Here is the guts of my PR review:

Recently I realised that cut on sleeves in wovens don't really work for me. I end up just ripping the armholes as I am getting about my daily business. I modified this pattern to make it sleeveless. I raised the armholes and took the armhole shaping from one of my self-drafted patterns and added a bust dart. 

I have a pear shaped figure, and decided that a flared dress would be more flattering than a straight one, so I flared the side seams from size 10 to size 18. The armhole I used was from a flared top. Because of the flared shape, I thought the curves of the hemline were a bit too severe, so I made them more gentle. (I actually love the original hem curves, which were the reason I bought the pattern, and I have copied them onto another pattern, but this time around I thought more gentle curves were better suited to the garment.

I made a muslin of the dress bodice to test my armhole and bust dart, and although I didn't sew a collar into the muslin, I could see that the neckline was not sitting well. Mostly the front neck was too high. Rather than correct it and play around with another muslin, I used a neckline from the Stylearc Angela woven blouse. Then instead of trying to measure and workout which of the Kalle collar bands and collar fit my new neckline, I just used the band and collar from the Angela as well. The Kalle has the shoulder seam at the top of the shoulder, which is unusual in a yoked shirt. Typically, the yoke extends to the front a bit, I think because this is a high wear section of the shirt. I move the shoulder seam forward, to match the Angela blouse, which made it easier to use the notches on the collar band.

I added an extra button to the placket because I decided to use multi-coloured buttons and wanted to fit one extra colour on the placket.

I like the idea for using a bias binding to finish the hem, and I have used this on other dresses, but when I was looking up the collar instructions on Craftsy, I found the section on sewing a curved hem, and so followed Janet Pray's directions for that too. It helped that my hem curves were more gentle than the original pattern.

In summary
Kalle - starting bodice, placket and pockets
Stylearc Angela - yoke, collar band, collar
Self drafted - armhole, bust dart, hem

6 comments:

Faye Lewis said...

I love your dress. It's perfect for the summer!

Sue said...

My kind of shirt dress. Lovely natural fabric and so cool and breezy. All the changes you made has made for a lovely finished dress.

Georgia said...

That s a really cute one! Love it! It looks great on you!

Summer Flies said...

Great dress! What great photos too. I love the coloured buttons especially. I laughed at Faye's comment re summer dress... or winter here!

G said...

Looks a lot like the Alder shirtdress now! :) Looks nice!

Georgia said...

Just had to stop by again to tell you how much I like following your sewing journey and being inspired by what you make! I have nominated you for the Mystery Blogger Award - http://georgiasew.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-mystery-blogger-award.html