Summertime… and the sewin’ is easy! Take a bold print knit and a tried’n’true pattern, and a few hours later, you too could have a sassy sundress!
For this project, I used 2 yards of the Blue Watercolor Bohemian Stripe Liverpool knit – the colour jumped out at me and I just had to have it! Liverpool is a stable polyester knit, so it’s perfect in slim dresses if you don’t want it to be clingy. It is a man-made fabric though, so it might not be ideal if you live in really hot humid weather. (I used Liverpool for two other Cali projects this year, which you can see here and here!)
This is a Closet Case Patterns Nettie dress, which was released in 2014. Like many Closet Case Patterns, this one has grown on me over the years, and now it feels perfect for my wardrobe. For this sundress, I used the scoop neck in front, and the mid-scoop in the back. There’s also a high back version and a full backless version, but this is the happy medium when you want to have bra coverage!
The pattern is designed to have sleeves, so I like to trim away 1/2″ from the outer shoulder edge when I make it sleeveless. I wanted to bold print to stand out, so I skipped doing bands to finish the neckline and armscyes, and finished it all with a facing instead. (If you don’t know how to do this, I suggest this tutorial from Melly Sews, which has photos and a video! It’s such a great technique to add to your arsenal!)
Here’s my facing, with the dress shown inside out – it’s actually a shelf bra with elastic at the hem, so I can be free and easy on hot summer days!
I wanted to play with the directionality of the stripes for some extra interest, so I shortened the dress and added on a split hem instead. To do this, I cut wide folded bands to the width of the front and back of the skirt, finished the short ends, and attached them to the hem of the skirt. You can probably see how I did it most clearly in the photo above!
And here is how it looks from the right side out! Split hems are really popular right now, and I gave this little high-low action as well. The overall length is a little longer than knee length, which balances out the lower neckline nicely!
I hope your summer is off to a good start – here in Canada our schools run until the end of June, but I know some (many?) American schools have been on holiday for a while! And then of course, we might have Southern Hemisphere readers who are shivering and cold right now – I’ll try to send you some of my summer sunshine!