Still being finicky to tweak my dress shirt pattern for the ideal fit and look I want, I am not sure at which point I would have that ideal final pattern. Any given dress shirt draft could end up being the one, and it would be a waste of time to throw out because I had made it from crappy fabric in my stash. But at the same time, I didn’t want to dig much into my good stash, with most of it having been bought in New York or Los Angeles because interesting fabric I’d wear is really hard to come by in Halifax. As a result, I produced this aptly named dress shirt where I used old curtains I had while living in Vancouver in the late 1990s!
dress
The ILLUSION Dress Shirt
This is what became of the dress shirt I cannibalized, about which I wrote the last week. It was one of my funner design dress shirts rather one of the more regal looking ones you’ll see after this, but I still like it a lot.
The MISSIE Dress
I belong to the Atlantic Sewing Guild. Last year, they had a mentoring program where members were matched between mentor and student pending on who wanted to learn certain things, and who could and would be willing to teach it. One thing I knew I needed to learn was how to bust fit garments for women. I didn’t want to be limited to making dresses only of pattern sizing, or be helpless when even that doesn’t work well. Mary Baxter of the Guild was very kind to step up to teach me and here is the result!
The Cannibalized Dress Shirt
After having made 15 fit garments for my dress shirt, I felt good enough to make the 16th a “real” one with the few minor adjustments I felt I had left to get it to the stage I wanted. The real one meant it had to be lined, and that I would give the collar and cuffs a first try. The lining was required because the dress shirt style is worn untucked like a tunic, and I do not want the bad side of some fabrics to be exposed since it would be rather obvious. Think of pajama flannel that is drastically faded, or even white, on the opposite side of intense colours. I line those areas with the right side of the fabric, and the rest of the garment with incredibly smooth shirting. Yes, multi-piece lining!
My Metallic Flintstones Scrubs Pyjama Tops (from Simplicity 4101 Pattern)
From my New York fabric shopping trip, I got a metallic print with the Flintstones on it. It’s probably been in that store since 1993 when the copyright on the fabric said it was printed. Here’s what I did with it!
Digital Citizen 