What I Wore Sunday: A Few Tweaks

Okay, so remember the New England dress?  The first one?  I wore it for Pascha, but after wearing it, I decided that inset short sleeves and a high neckline like that are the short road to Frumpsville for me, and I wanted to fix it somehow.  After making my Tossed Flowers New England dress into a skirt, I decided that the red dress should have the same treatment, and carefully separated the bodice from the skirt, added darts to the back to bring the waist in, and finished with double bias binding, as with the first one.  I also shortened it a few inches, as I felt the original length was too long.  I wore it with a solid navy shirt, and felt pretty pleased with it.  Until I was baby wearing, and I realized that the waist strap went right over the buttons, and was a bit uncomfortable, in addition to placing a lot of stress on the buttons.   So I removed the buttons on both skirts, and then decided to make a matching blouse out of my left over red fabric.  After fiddling with the Simplicity 1590 ad nauseum, I've decided that I'm just not happy with the way the pattern fits, and I am super happy with the way Gertie's Portrait blouse pattern fits.  But I don't want a lot of pullovers right now, so I decided to see if I could modify it into a button-down.

And it worked!  I'm pretty pleased, as I now have two separates that work great together and look like a dress, but also look pretty great on their own.  Win-win.  I plan to make a Tossed Flowers blouse to match the other skirt when I get a moment, as this blouse sewed up in 2 hours, plus maybe 30 minutes cutting time.  I did make a tiny mistake on the facing width at the button band (I made it too narrow), so I will fix that on the next go-round.

My only complaint about the blouse is my own dumb fault.  Because the facing on the button placket ended up being quite narrow, I had to work the buttonholes vertically and place them quite close to the edge, which means that there is a small amount of gape between buttons #3 and #4.  I think if I add a small snap to the space in between, that will fix it.  I might also move all five buttons out slightly to bring the blouse fit in a bit.

The vintage buttons I picked for the button-down came on a card with a matching buckle that is wider than my original belt, and the original belt buckle is just a little bit off color wise to the new buttons, so I'm going to remake the belt eventually.  I just didn't have time yesterday.  But the navy blue belt works well too!  It is nice to have several options.  The belt issue was one reason I took the buttons off the blue version of this skirt--it just didn't look right with the fabric self-belt, but when I took the buttons off, it looked fine.  I like my belts, so having three options for that skirt was worth the loss of button detail.

Wearing it with my maracas pin!  I probably should have chosen something a little more bright, but the colors matched so nicely.

I wore it to church today, and felt good in my clothes (I don't always, as I've said before) , which is always a bonus.

Linking up with FLAP, like we do