Red Floral Saraste Shirt Dress

This is my first version of the Saraste shirt dress from the Breaking the Pattern book by Named Clothing and it will not be the last. After a few recent makes with some tricksy fabrics, this was an absolute dream to sew.

I'm always a bit nervous when I first sew a pattern as I wanted an easy well fitting garment. This week has produced both an unwearable pair of trousers (which I won't go into here) and this stunning dress, which I love.

I compared my measurements to the size guide and finished measurements and based on these I cut a straight size 3. The pattern calls for just over 2m of 150cm wide fabric. Unfortunately I only had 2m of the fabric and it was narrower than 150cm wide too, which meant I had to shorten the skirt portion of the dress considerably and cut the inner yoke, inner collar stand and under collar in a contrasting fabric, which I also used to make bias binding for the armscye as there was not enough fabric for sleeves. I quite like the contrast effect if I'm honest.

I'm not normally a huge fan of floral fabric, but there was just something about the colour combination of this fabric that I really like. I didn't buy it myself and I'm not sure where it's from, but it has a really nice feel and a slight stretch. My sister-in-law gave it to me as a Christmas gift and I've been looking for a project to use it on since then. The contrast fabric was also a Christmas gift. My sister had bought me some yardage from Simply Fabrics in Brixton and had also spotted some remnants. This was one of those remnants - there was about 1/3m of this one.

Once I'd managed pattern Tetris to make all the pieces fit. I started on the construction. I followed this exactly as directed in the book. The bodice back and side front are constructed and stitched together at the side seams, then the gathered skirt is added before the centre front pieces are added and yoke are joined at the shoulder.

I can see why it's constructed in this way, but it doesn't leave many options for alterations. I really like the fit and won't be making any changes to this one, but I would normally have a closer fitting waist, so taking a bit off the side seams and back darts would help with this. If you think you might need to make similar alterations I would construct the back and front separately before joining at the shoulders and side seams.

The drafting is excellent on this and all the pieces matched perfectly. I left off the frill at the edge of the collar and used the grainline archer sew-a-long for the construction of the collar as it gives a great finish. The Saraste instructions are similar here, but the sew-a-long just gives a bit more detail.

I finished all inside seams with the overlocker. The hem was also overlocked and a narrow hem sewn in order to keep as much length as possible. The armscye is finished with contrast bias binding.

This dress is just completely my style. I will get a lot of wear out of it and I think there will be more of these.