Mad Men Challenge Shirt Dress

Is shirt dress one word or two? Perhaps you call them shirtwaist dresses. Regardless of what you call it, this style dress was popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and was prominently featured in at least the earlier seasons of Mad Men. My inspiration for this challenge could have been any number of the dresses featured, primarily on the wives of the "mad men". This one that Betty is wearing, is one of my favorites:

source

I really wanted to find a stripe, to really replicate the look, but couldn't find what I wanted. You had a sneak peek of my heron covered fabric last week... and here's the dress:

As mentioned last week, I used Simplicity 4003. The changes I made include:

• eliminated the side zipper
• did my own button placement
• the placket is backwards (oops), so the buttons/buttonholes are on the "wrong" sides
• shortened the skirt a lot
• added side seam pockets
• gathered the skirt around the entire waistband.

And darn... I should have posed like Betty, complete with glass of wine!

Parting shot with styled with cardigan...

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!