It's hard to find good chambray; all too often it's not 100% cotton and is blended with poly to make the fabric have that nice drape that good chambray does. So when I saw some 100% cotton chambray in a lovely grey at 60% off, I snapped it up for use in a summer-weight shirt dress version of the winter dress I made from McCalls M4769. Which is out of print.
(Side note: when you don't have your pattern with you, err on the side of four and a half yards. I got four and just barely eked out the dress. Zero to spare.)
I looked long and hard for a good shirtdress pattern; many have too full of a skirt or have no defined waist. And when I got this one, a fair amount of fiddling was required. McCalls patterns are massively huge in the shoulders; I had to cut down a size in the whole bodice.
And the skirt (four gores) was cut with the center seam, front and back, on the grain line. This is stupid. It saves fabric and minimizes layout difficulty, but it means that the sides of the skirt fall on the bias but the centers don't. As you can see here, it looks fine, but the fabric doesn't really flow. I hauled out a 1947 dress pattern I sewed way back, and sure 'nuf, the skirt pieces are cut with the grain line running down the center of the piece, perpendicular to the center of the hem so the seams are all on the bias. Brilliant! They the seam lines flow and the skirt doesn't look so wide but hugs the hips a bit better. So that's how I sewed my first run at the dress this past winter and it worked beautifully. (And yes, you can make a dress out of actual flannel.)
I like plain colors; I'm not a big patterns person, so I've had issues with dresses looking too "Amish" before. To prevent that, I'm planning a white oxford contrast for the collar and white menswear inspired cuffs at the arms. I found some pearl-ish menswear-style shirt buttons. Hopefully the little bows print on the grey will keep it from looking too severe and the white accents will keep it from looking too plain.
But I'm sewing sooooooo slowly. In two days of early morning sewing, this is all I have done. The darts. And that's not even counting the half-day it took me to cut it out.
Maybe it's just been so long since I could really do serious sewing for myself that my rhythm is off... I am definitely enjoying the freedom to take my time with it and get it right.
I'm excited, though. I love, love love a classic shirt dress. I like sewing my own dresses because I can put pockets in them, which you NEED if you're going to wear a dress in Real Life. I got SO many compliments on the flannel version of this dress; really looking forward to a summery version.
PS: another photo of the dress with the flat skirt cut the way the pattern tells you to. Do it the 40's way, people. It's better. Turn that skirt gore piece! Embrace the drape!
I like your fabric! Looking forward to seeing how it turns out! I think mine doesn't flow as much mainly because of my fabric choice.
Posted by: D | 14 August 2015 at 04:50 AM