McCall's 4769 - Liberty Highway Shirt Dress

 

Summer is shirt dress season in Lindnerland, and I love this particular Liberty Tana Lawn design - it reminds me of highways.  Even a sleeved dress worn on a sunburn-inducing sunny day feels incredibly cool in this fabric.   Perfect fourth of July dress!

It's made with McCall's 4769 - even though I love a good shirt dress with deep pockets, which this provides, I'm not a huge fan of this pattern.  I never feel like I can get the collar right - the instructions for that part of the construction are maddeningly vague.  I have some other shirt dress patterns I need to try (and a pal just gave me a few yards of super-cute fabric) - I'll keep you posted! 

Any shirt dress pattern recs?  Do tell!   

Sencha by Colette, Two Ways

 

I bought Colette's Sencha blouse pattern on a trip to Portland - local company=ace sewing souvenir.

I liked the pattern booklet and instructions (though the multiple explanations of staystitching could have been replaced by something more complicated and apropos - a flat-felled seam, for example.)

Problem is, when I put it on - it looked and felt like a tightly fit hospital gown.

So I flipped it around, added some bias binding, and wore it as a button-down.

 

Next up, a floral number in some recycled fabric.  

 

I decided to give it another try, the way many have online - by altering the neck.

Here's a glimpse at the facing piece and the resulting v-neck.

Much more comfortable!  

Next up - some Sencha pajamas.  Seriously!  

Sewing Green Wrap Skirt

  

New for summer: a reversible wrap skirt.  Recently I got a lot of fabric out of my UK storage unit and seeing these great threads again after so long made me want to use them pretty much immediately.  

I didn't have enough of this great Thirties-inspired bird print to make a dress or shirt, so I hit on the idea of using it in alternating panels in a wrap skirt.  Very summery!

The pattern came from Betz White's super cool Sewing Green.  I made two changes: I used large snaps instead of D-rings and ribbon for the closure, and I added belt loops to the back of each side, threading a sash in the neutral fabric through the appropriate loop when I switch sides. 

 

I also wanted to use some more of the repurposed Italian bedsheet fabric I used for my last project, a men's shirt.

Here's that fabric again, in full effect:

The black fabric was a gift from one of Stephen's aunts, who lives in South India.  I don't usually wear a lot of black, but I am a sucker for block-printed Indian cottons.  It's an amazing textile tradition, and one that appeals to me as an illustrator.  

 

My shirt is a five year old Anthropologie purchase, part of the same storage rescue operation that liberated the yellow birdy fabric.

I love when old stuff starts to seem new again....to whit, my next post will detail my attempts to use fabric that has been in my stash for over eight years.

A brand-new, never-before-tried pattern, and a fabric I've never been able to figure out a use for - this should be fun, right?  

Right?

Stephen's Birthday Shirt - Vogue 8800

 

This is the third shirt I've made from Vogue 8800, a men's yoked shirt pattern.  It's marked 'easy' and truly is.  The fabric?  A mad Italian bedsheet from the eighties (I presume) scored on Etsy.  This time I drafted a pocket, doing my best - in classic Hawaiian shirt style - to match the pocket's pattern to the shirt beneath.  I have some extra and made myself a wrap skirt - I'll take a photo once the weather's nicer!