New Look 6587 in Kelly Rosebud

Top of the mornin' to ya! This green shirtwaist dress was the perfect sew for St. Patty's Day. I hope you all enjoyed drinking green beer and general merriment yesterday.  The pattern is New Look 6587 view E, and the fabric Juliana Horner's Rosebud Kelly.

 I've actually sewn this pattern twice before (view A and view D), and I wanted to take another crack at it because I felt I never got the fit quite right. My first version was too big, and the second a little too snug at the bust. I wear those dresses all the time, and it seemed worth it to invest in getting the fit right on a new version.

I went back to my sloper, although in a roundabout way. I had a princess-seam bodice I liked the fit of from my Elisalex dress, and on my last version of the Emery dress, I had finally perfected the back bodice piece. Both of those I had made using my sloper as a starting point. So I used those pattern pieces, adjusting the neckline to match New Look 6587, and adding width to the bodice to make it a buttondown.

Normally I would have done a muslin first, with all that cobbling together of different patterns and adjustments on top of that to match the style lines, but I was out of muslin, and feeling like it had been awhile since I lived life on the edge. So I plunged forward, and went straight from pattern adjustments to the finished garment. It worked like a dream! I should fly by the seat of my pants more often.

The only thing that could make this dress more perfect is if it had pockets. Alas, I am determined to sew from my stash more this year, and I just couldn't squeeze out pockets from the yardage I had. In the end, I even had to seam together 2 pieces for my skirt facing to get it all to work. It was so worth it though. This dress is just lovely, inside and out!