I stayed up for the third or so night in a row to work on my dress. Friday, I'd had the bodice and skirt together and Saturday I ran out of thread! I dabbled on the girls' Resurrection celebration dresses, then decided to just finish mine with brown thread. Who is really going to notice? And, will that opinion sway me from wearing it? The brown hardly shows, so it doesn't bother me.
My hope was to finish the dress enough to wear it to church this morning. At 3AM, I had only left the hem, buttonholes and buttons. I reckoned it should only take about an hour to do those, and I went to bed!
Cow was nice enough to get me up about 7:30AM. I fed her and handed her off to my stirring husband, telling him that I only needed about an hour and was at the machine by 8:15AM. Super Dad got the three older children ready (including bathing the 2 girls) while I sewed.
Doing the hem (turning, pinning) took the longest, followed closely by measuring and deciding on the distance for the buttonholes. I flipped through the buttonholes pretty quick, then amazed Ben with how easy it is to sew buttons on with the machine. I only broke 2 needles in my rush. I'd only purchased 12 buttons, though, and had inadvertently chosen the spacing for 21!
We had to get to church, so I grabbed my diaper pins and embroidery scissors, put on the dress and jumped in the van. On the way to church, I opened the 12 holes and snipped threads from the buttons. As we were parking, I was buttoning the dress closed. I quickly pinned the space for the needed buttons, tied on my sash, locked the car, and jogged to catch up with Ben and the children.
After church, we had a pleasant lunch then stopped by the fabric store for more buttons.
I'm very happy with this dress. It's the first
fitted dress I've made since my brother's wedding in 2001 (help me out Bri, I don't think I had AJ yet, that was Cindy's wedding in 2003?). I can see why shirt dresses have been so popular in decades past. I can just open up and feed her easily. I'm sure that making my own versions could easily be done with, perhaps, any front opening shirt pattern by connecting it to a skirt pattern (making sure that the waist fits each other, the skirt patterns in stores are often dropped waist, so one would have to be sure to match by measuring, perhaps going up or down a size).
I do like to keep the top covered a bit more, so the next one that I make will be based on
Common Sense Patterns #446B (last pattern, very bottom of page) -
Women's Shirtwaist Nursing Dress. The back of the blouse is darted and stitched to the skirt as usual, but the front has
shirttails that tuck into the waistband. I've been pondering this dress for a while. The shirttails do appear to be curved, perhaps so that they're easier to tuck in. If you want to try this, but are unsure of your ability to merge patterns -like me- you could easily purchase the pattern, give it a go, then adapt your new found knowledge to other patterns. (note: I'm all for supporting our economy and am not affiliated with this company, except as a consumer. Also, looks like it should take 2-3 weeks minimum to receive the pattern, mine arrived in 4 weeks) I believe that I've given no more info thus far than is on their website, so this shouldn't be infringing on any intellectual property.
I'm liking the idea of making more shirt dresses so much that I'm thinking of making up a tutorial on how to make them (not the nursing type, I don't know if it would be copyright infringement to make a tutorial on this idea).
Anyway, a little wordy today. I'm going to take a nap, sew some buttons, maybe even finish flatfelling some seams! Then, I'll get a picture up of my new dress!
Labels: Sewing
