sewing: tried and true shirt/dress tutorial

Awhile ago I was searching for a good women's top pattern and ran across this tutorial by The Sewing Rabbit. I've used her resources before and loved them, so I decided to give this one a try. And then I actually ended up making it three more times, in different variations! Her instructions are clear and the concept is simple, so there's lots of room for creativity and modifying.

I made three shirts and a dress using her tutorial. One of my shirts didn't really turn out which is why you're not seeing pictures of it here. I even tried to redeem it, and it still just needs to go in the garbage. It's still sitting on my sewing cabinet for now, hopefully if I give it a little time, throwing it away won't be so painful. :)

Jess's tutorial is a crop top but I added length for both of my shirts and it worked really well. I'll maybe try to post some pics of me wearing them at some point in the future, but for now here's this:

Fabric Sources:
chambray polka-dot fabric is from a shop in Zamora, Michoacan, Mexico. They also have it in a darker wash!

floral fabric is the English Garden collection by Liberty of London. It's currently very difficult to find, and out of stock most places, but I got mine earlier in the season at Missouri Star Quilt Co.

After doing the shirts and loving how they fit, I decided to apply the same steps to make a dress top. Her crop top length measurements actually would be perfect for the top of a dress like this one (below). When I was originally cutting I lengthened it as if for a shirt and shouldn't have; it was too long and I had to cut some off. I cut two separate pieces for the back and added some width so that I could make room for buttons to get the dress on and off, and then used two rectangles for the skirt in the length I wanted and gathered them. The fabric I used for my dress is Telio striped linen which is definitely not cheap - so I tried to be extremely careful not to make any mistakes! It occasionally goes on sale at Fabric.com though, and I think when I bought it it was less than $13 a yard.

It is always hard for me to get good photos of me wearing clothes I make... no big surprise when you're a mom of three! But my cousin Shelby snapped a few for me on our vacation last week - I appreciated that so much!






I recommended the tutorial to my younger sister-in-law and a few of her friends, and they each made shirts on one of their summer sewing days together. Each of their creations was so unique, and so cute! The tutorial makes it easy for seamstresses of all ages to follow the instructions and end up with something fun to wear.

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