Easy Shift Dress

By @velvetribbon_sews - May 12, 2016

Hello everyone,

Today I'd love to show you my new dress that I made last week. It is a lovely shift dress with pocket and easy to sew. The original pattern has triangle cutout in the front, but I skip it. Before I explain more about the detail, let's take a look of the final dress. I am wearing it today for MMMay'16 Day 12, the picture taken in one of the small streets in Old Taipa Village - Macau :)

For the fabric, I used 1.75 yards of light weight denim jersey knit and for the pattern, I used BurdaStyle Triangle Cutout Dress 08/2014#117 size 36. Beside skipping the triangle cutout, I added 1.5 cm in the shoulder at the neckline and drew a new line of the neckline. Also I added 2 cm at the waist, then drew a new line from the armhole down to the hemline. As I want the dress length right on my knee, I added 3 cm from the original pattern with 2 cm hem allowance and 1.5 cm seam allowance in all edges.

image source from BurdaStyle

I really enjoyed sewing this dress, it was an easy process because the dress came with three pattern pieces, front-back and pocket.

The process started by sew both shoulder right sides together followed by sew inseam pockets. Then I sew the dress sides very carefully so I don't sew the pockets.

After the pockets done, I sew the sleeves by folded to the wrong side 1.5 cm and topstitched around.

For the neckline, I folded the neckline fabric to the wrong side 1.5 cm and sew around with twin needle.

After all above done, I sew the hemline with twin needle as well. In this case I used 2 cm hem allowance.

The dress finished! But after I tried it, I felt something was missing. Honestly, the dress doesn't have a shape, it looks like I am wearing a potato bag :)

Then I decided to sew two pieces of tape 60 cm long x 2.5 cm wide with pointy end. I inserted the tape 16 cm in the top of the pocket and sew it. After that, I tied them in the back, as shown in the picture below.

Well, the result is great! It does add the volume in the dress :)

After all, I really love this dress! It is very comfortable and perfect to wear in summer. Beside this dress, I already made three tops based on this pattern with a little change in each top. I will show you in the future post.

Okay, here are more pictures of the finished dress. Front, back, side, the closer look of the neckline and pocket :)