Pin It and Spin It - Maxi Shirt Dress

It's this year's labour of love!

Firstly - let me explain the faux flowers. There has been some complaint (Paula I'm looking at you) about the lack of vegetation on my trellis is the background of my pics. Voila. I hope this is satisfactory for now! (There are passion flowers and Jasmin growing now so hold on!)

To the sewing...

It appears to be some sort of unintentional annual tradition that I crack out the Winifred Aldrich pattern cutting bible and spend forever trying to realize some pipe dream idea.

This time around it was this picture that kicked it all off:

I had it on my Pinterest board for ages and just loved the casual vibes of what could actually be a fancy dress. And of course, it's just beautiful.

Merci to The Fabric Wrangler for some assistance with this, as I spent several weeks at sewing class drafting out the basic bodice, then altering everything to have button plackets, sleeves that actually go around my bicep and a lovely collar and stand.

I did want this to be a loose fitted dress, taken in with a belt however I do now feel it should be a touch more fitted. The original draft has small horizontal darts in the front and vertical darts in the back to shape it to my body a bit.

Unfortunately I added double seam allowance at the waist in a drafting error and so this fell very low. It bothered me for ages so I dismantled the whole thing in the quest for some satisfaction. Whilst I was at it I also added some extra vertical darts in the front although it's still very loose.

I am generally quite pleased with the outcome - but a mini gripe is that as I took up the waist level, this shortened the dress so a bit of an awkward mid-shin length rather than the intended flowy maxi I had envisaged swanning about some Italian piazza with wine in hand in. I also feel a bit 'wide' wearing it which is annoying. Basically what I'm saying is that it didn't magically turn me into that woman in the Pinterst pic haha.

Potentially I'm being rather harsh on myself as at the end of the day, I drafted a bloody shirt dress wooop!! The looseness is also rather handy for the heatwave so it's probably a good job its not any tighter.

Time to get it worn now!

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