Natalie wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to make up her mind. Should she choose a blond All-American type like her friend Valerie, or go for more of a dark, continental option? Maybe she should ask the waiter for the day’s specials.

(Today’s pattern comes from Etsy seller VintagePatterns2sew.)

Milly: I beseech thee, O All-Powerful Illustrator, from whom all accessories materialize; bestow upon me a pair of gloves and a hat, so that I may enter the confines of the place of sustenance with my compatriots!

Tilly: Milly, there is no such thing as the “all-powerful Illustrator”. You just forgot your hat and gloves again. Pay the dollar fine to the Women’s Club treasurer.

Milly: I beseech thee, O All-Powerful Illustrator, from whom all accessories materialize; bestow upon me a handbag, so that I can pay the sartorial tithe to the overseers of the assembly!

Tilly: Milly, they will just put it on your account. I’m starting to believe that you don’t even want to go to the annual flower show awards luncheon!

[Today’s pattern image from the Vintage Patterns Wiki.]

Cheryl: I don’t think I would have tried to defend my thesis topic at the department chair’s barbecue, but that’s just me.

Beryl: Poor Fred! I don’t think he’d know scholarship if it were in a package labeled “100% pure scholarship”, delivered by a boy wearing a “Scholarship Delivery Service” hat, singing “Here’s your hot fresh scholarship, sir!”

Cheryl: It’s the “great man theory” of history, not the “my great uncle theory” of history.

Beryl: To be fair, Fred’s great uncle was a looker. I’d have made history with him.

[Pattern on Etsy, from DeborahHarrysWhatNot.]

The dress, another iteration of the “Isca” pattern that McKean has been sewing all year, was made in a lightweight Liberty Tana lawn featuring a pattern of little fish. “I don’t remember I where I bought this fabric,” McKean admitted. “Or when. But I did a reverse-image search and the pattern is called ‘Glimmer’.”

Instead of the stand collar of the original pattern, McKean chose to make this iteration without the collar, finishing the neckline with bias binding. “More summery,” she said. “Although it would have been better if I’d remembered to lower the neckline by about a half-inch.”

McKean also replaced the original set-in full sleeves with self-lined cap sleeves, a consistent change for her versions of this pattern. “This time I changed the inner finishing to a slip-stitch, rather than bias-binding the seam.”

McKean is a vocal proponent of pockets, no matter the season. Her dress pockets can carry several pounds of her belongings, in a pinch. “Once, in an airport, I had a full-size insulated water bottle in one pocket and a sub sandwich in the other, plus all my normal stuff—wallet, notebook, phone, handkerchief, lip balm, pen …” The pocket facings are also piped. “I don’t remember the last time I didn’t add piping to a pocket facing.”

Although she had originally planned to sew a few more dresses during summer 2024, including several in fabrics that had originally been intended for the summers of 2017-2023, McKean said she was generally pleased with the amount and variety of sewing she had been able to accomplish over the last few months. “I made a multiple-gingham Isca, and a linen stripe Isca, and a checkerboard plaid Isca. And a couple more that I haven’t taken pictures of yet.”

When asked about her autumn sewing plans, McKean produced a scrap paper list on which the words ‘printed corduroy’ and ‘plaid brushed flannel’ were prominent. “I do plan to sew mostly from my stash between now and the end of the year,” she said. “But no promises.”

Turquoise: There’s only room for ONE Sundress Jacket gang in this town, see, and it ain’t you.

White: You know, you’re half right. Don’t worry, you can always go play with the romper kiddies at the beach. (ominous pause) After we’re done with you.

Green/Red (in chorus): Jackets off, girls! Take ’em down!

Another Isca, this time in a precious length of Liberty Lantana (the print is called Adriatic).

I’m very happy with the color of the buttons:

And, of course, the piped pockets (that’s a ruler in the pocket — although I am happy to see you):

I also finally, finally, made the Tilly and the Buttons Zadie dress that I bought yonks ago and cut out in … 2022? I like the color-blocking:

This is some heavy ponte knit that I bought in Belgium in 2020, and it’s very comfortable; my intention was for this to be a good “airplane dress” for my long flight, but I think I need to tweak the pattern a bit before it’s really airplane-worthy. The pockets need to be deeper, and it’s a little short through the torso for me. I also think the skirt might need to be a tinch longer, as well. It hits me right at the knee, and I think about two inches more would do it.

Sewing the ponte was easy … unsewing the ponte was NOT. When I make this again I’m going to be much more careful, especially with those soft pleats at the front. I got one of them slightly off and, well, let’s just say that it’s still slightly off, and will remain slightly off for the rest of time.

As long as I had my double needle setup handy (and still in need of an airplane dress, because I was still going on an airplane), I decided to make another Cashmerette Turner. (The nice thing about blogging is that I could re-read that last post and make the fixes that I thought I should.)

I admit, I could have taken more care in matching the print at the waistband (because I didn’t take any care, basically). As a reminder, I altered the Turner pattern to have a rounder neck and changed the skirt from a two-piece to a six-gore skirt, to make it easier to add these pockets:

This fabric is an incredibly soft, heavy jersey from PaaPii in Finland; I bought mine from an Etsy seller but it’s still available in another color on their website. This stuff cannot wrinkle—I had 20 hours of travel in this dress and it still looked pristine at the end (making the contrast with my travel-wearied body even more apparent). Very comfortable, too!

Here’s the neckband, if you like that sort of thing:

Three dresses in January seems like a lot but I didn’t sew a darn thing in February (two weeks of travel, then two weeks of recovering from travel). I did buy a reasonable amount (for me) of fabric on my trip, though, so let’s see what happens in March!

The biggest winner in the shirtdress sweepstakes (prize: Erin makes a lot of you) was the Isca dress from Marilla Walker, which I made a dozen times:

After those three, they kind of came in a rush:

Did I have time to sew anything else, you might ask? Well, yes. I also made two (and a half) of the Matilda shirtdresses:

I also made two of my favorite Farrow jumpers, one at the beginning of 2023 and one a few weeks ago, both in basically the same color.

I also made one (heavily modified) Simplicity 7512:

The most challenging thing I made this year was absolutely the Hove jacket from In The Folds:

The other thing I made in 2023 and use almost every day (and which gets the most comments of anything I wear, by far) is this project:

It’s not technically sewing, but 2023 is also the year I made my first pair of footwear! I splurged on the (totally worth it) Rachel Sees Snail Shoes sandalmaking workshop:

Absent on picture day: the Peppermint Pocket Skirt in black and white gingham seersucker (which I’ve actually not even worn yet); a complete failure of a shirtdress that will have to be broken down for parts (but might be tried again in a different fabric and/or size); an attempt at the Tilly and the Buttons Zadie dress in ponte (I made a mistake and ripping stitches in ponte is the ABSOLUTE WORST).

Which one do you like the most? (Pass over the ones you don’t like in silence.)

I’m excessively pleased with this new variation of the Isca shirtdress. This is my third iteration (see #1, #2). The biggest change from the last version is that I swapped out the sleeves for a band sleeve (following Gertie’s great instructions) and somehow it lightens the whole mood? I made the band sleeves about 3 inches wide at the top which takes them darn near to flutter-sleeve territory, but not quite.

The fabric is Nani Iro Grace, in a linen/cotton—I don’t think it’s available any longer, but you can still get a few colorways of the gauze, which I’ve sewn with as well.

Don’t get me wrong—just because I’ve made a lot of changes (collar, sleeves, pockets …) to this pattern doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a good pattern! It just means that I have very particular tastes. I like to think of these variations like a cover song. If it’s done right, it brings something to the original without taking anything essential away.

I’ve already picked out the fabric for the next round, it’s a rainbow stripe. I will probably change the armscye a bit to move it in at the top of the shoulder and up underneath the arm, but otherwise I’m pretty happy with my cover version!

This is Simplicity 7512, which I’ve probably bought three copies of in various sizes, and then never made any of them because I disliked the way the skirt was put together. But then I realized that I could just … change that, and so behold my preferred pockets:

Here’s the pocket with a big ol’ ruler in it, for scale:

Here’s the zipper view; I actually couldn’t remember the last time I put in an invisible zipper:

I was a bit distracted and completely forgot to do my usual collar adjustment (based on the Fashion Incubator method) but it turned out mostly okay. (Tana lawn forgives a lot.)

For some reason I thought I’d bought this Liberty from The Fabric Store but maybe not? I don’t see anything in my receipts folder. I’m convinced it’s Liberty, but a quick image search doesn’t turn up anything.

I haven’t worn this a full day yet, but I could barely bring myself to take it off after I did the final try-on … it’s just delightfully comfortable. I don’t remember similar versions I’ve made before being as comfortable?

The other thing I like about this dress is that I’ve loved this style for … oh, since about I knew it existed. I bought a similar dress (a “Villager” knockoff) at the old Maxwell Street flea market in Chicago, in what probably was the last year there even was a Maxwell Street market. It was hanging on a chain-link fence, between vendors selling (what I now realize were probably stolen) tools and packs and packs of white tube socks. I wore it nearly to death, despite it being absolutely not sufficiently warm for Chicago nine months of the year (and despite it having no pockets).

When I first started wearing this style there was at least a little irony involved—I was a young person, wearing an old person’s dress. Now I am an old(er) person, still wearing the same dress (albeit with larger dimensions all around), and the irony has … evaporated? Depleted? Perhaps irony has a half-life, like radioactivity? I am looking for other examples of “irony depletion”, if you have them; not the phenomenon in which someone pretends to be something and then becomes that thing, but examples where time bridges an ironic distance. Maybe when punk bands play a cover of some easy-listening 70s tune and now, whoops, it’s almost 50 years later and now it’s their well-loved classic? Stuff like that. Anyway, you know where the comments are, have at it.

I’m gonna make this dress a LOT, I can feel it. Brace yourselves!

I made it up in some nice brushed blue/black check shirting (no idea where this fabric came from, I feel like I’ve had it forever). The directions were excellent, especially given the unusual shoulder construction, and the fit was pretty good. The only alteration I made was to change the pointed collar to a rounded one.

The only problem was the pockets were too shallow. I kept losing things out of them when I sat down. Now, I don’t have very many requirements for pockets, but one hard and fast rule I do have is that things need to stay in them until I take them out.

Obviously I could just fix it in round two, but I really didn’t want to give up on the muslin, which had turned out more on the ‘wearable’ side than the ‘muslin’ side. But I didn’t have enough fabric to recut the front skirt (nor did I have enough ‘want to do it’ to recut the front skirt).

I did, however, have enough fabric to cut a few bias bands and enough ‘want to do it’ to undo just enough of the waist and side seams to shove them in:

The inner piping is where the original pocket edge ended; I sewed the new strip to the pocket edge (sewing in the ditch of the piping), then attached piping to the raw edge of the new strip. I used a strip of black hem facing tape to finish the inside of the bias strip (because I didn’t have enough of the check fabric to do so).

Here’s a closer view (the inner piping is fatter than the outer piping because, uh, things that are closer look bigger and also because I ran out of that size of piping cord):

And one with an iPad mini in it, for scale:

I also shortened the skirt by about three inches (did I unpick the original foldover hem and then redo it? Ha, no, I just folded it up and sewed it down, as my reserves of ‘want to do it’ were running quite low at this point).

The only other thing I wish I had enough fabric to change are the sleeves: I feel like that diagonal line of the bodice would be really cool if it extended to a little cap sleeve. I looked at a bunch of “draft a cap sleeve” instructions but … not enough fabric, and even my spiffy new LIGHT UP SEAM RIPPER didn’t inspire me to take off these (perfectly serviceable) set-in sleeves and see if I could recut them into caps.

I have some (lol “some” I have ENORMOUS QUANTITIES) of stripey fabric that I think will be good for the next round. There are a couple more projects in the queue before I will get there, but in the meantime, I can now wear this one!