Black Gold (or, the perfect shirt dress part deux)

I’ve been searching high and low (read, through all the pattern mags I already own) for the perfect shirt dress pattern. Comfortable, classy, formal enough to wear to work, casual enough for a night out.

Right now, this one’s ticking all the boxes (except the buttons that put the ‘shirt’ in shirt dress. That is a plus in my book though) and the stand-collar makes it ‘shirt’ enough to look dressy so.. onwards and upwards. (• ◡•)

The embroidery around the neckline and down the ends of the self-tie belt is one of the in-built stitch options on my brother ns20. I filled in the little leaves by hand sewing filler stitches with the same gold thread but that isn’t obvious here (I need a camera with a better sensor (ಥ﹏ಥ).

The nice new photo area is courtesy of the fine Victorian gentleman I’m seeing. This is the back porch of his family home. Great for barbecues and blog photos. I sewed an adjustable linen apron for him and I’m planning on making him a Liberty shirt for his birthday so you’ll probably see him here soon. (ᵔᴥᵔ)

Here’s the overall silhouette without the belt, great for camouflaging lunch babies and the like. BTW if you’re wondering about the perfect shirt dress part un, here it is. This one trumps that one in its buttonless-ness though. Please post links to any cool shirtdress patterns you’d like to recommend in the comments!

On a completely different note, I’m going through one of my cyclic periods of poverty and have put up a whole bunch of sewing stuff on ebay. More listings over the weekend-think of it as a donation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. On another completely different note, here’s a nice tribute to Leonard Nimoy on FashionItSo (a very cool tumblr that focuses on the clothing in the Star Trek the Next Generation series) and another on NPR.

Check out this awesome chica. Lounging on the 15,000 dollar real Italian leather couch in her sea-side bungalow (say it like you mean it) waiting for her shirtless 25 year old boy toy to bring her some ~~ice tea~~ 17 year old single malt Japanese scotch. I didn’t even have to look at the line diagram to post-it this one as the ‘next make’ (then I put the mag away, forgot all about it and rediscovered the line diagram while searching through my pattern summary pdfs for a shirtdress ;).

Pattern: Knipmode, April 2011, Pullover dress 15 (with self fabric tie belt).

Fabric: Super light, black viscose rayon with accents in gold raw silk and gold silk embroidery.

Modifications:

shortened 2 cm at the waistline, 4 cm at the hem and pinched out 0.5 cm vertically (from the shoulder down; I should have reduced 1-1.5 cm vertically.)
omitted interfacing the collar and collar stand
omitted the cuff tabs and the curved hem facing
shortened the sleeves due to fabric length limitations
finished the curved hem with a narrow hem using a rolled hem foot

Disclaimer: All non-self-generated images remain copyright of their original owners and are used here for purposes of illustration, discussion and review.