Herons and the Side Zipper

With the Mad Men Season 6 premiere airing last Sunday, that can only mean one thing! The Mad Men Challenge is nearing an end. My shirt dress is 95% finished... just needs buttonholes/buttons and a hem.

Great Blue Heron picture source

There we go... that's the heron portion of this post. The herons on the right? That's my fabric, from Cloud 9 Organics. The one on the left? Well, duh... that's a real heron.

And the side zipper? If you've sewn, or even looked at, any number of vintage patterns, you've probably noticed that they seem to have a love affair with the side zip. Even my shirtdress pattern, but I feel that buttoning up the front, and zipping up the side is a bit of overkill. I do know why my pattern, Simplicity 4003, uses the side zipper... the skirt design demands it.

My solution was to eliminate the side zipper, and make a placket extending into the skirt. I used another shirtdress pattern, Simplicity 3487, that has a placket, for the skirt pieces... mostly because I was feeling too lazy to figure it out on my own. {note... I'm finding that selling vintage patterns gives me a vast source of information that I can use for pattern tinkering... and if you're wondering why I didn't just use that pattern to start with... I didn't feel like grading up when S4003 is in my size}

My rough sketch from the instructions of S3487:

Basically... stitch along those long dart-like lines, slash to the point, encase the cut edges with bias tape. Easy, right?

How mine looks:

For the record... I think that second picture isn't folded correctly because you don't see the bias tape. And the next time you see these birds, I'll be wearing the dress!