Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you’ve probably seen all the hype around the shirred dress trend this summer.
By Hand London did a fabulous tutorial on drafting your own which is on their Instagram and I’ve been wanting to give it a try for a few months now.
As soon as we got this beautiful olive floral viscose in stock I knew it would make a gorgeous Autumn dress and thought I would give the shirred dress a go. It does not disappoint! It’s so easy as there are no real fit issues, this dress will fit any shape or size and can expand while your wearing it which is always a plus in my book!
As I always do when planning a make, I stalk the hashtag first! #bhlshirreddress has plenty of inspiration but I also had a look on Pinterest to see if there were any other good ideas for styling, length and sleeve details and found the following inspiring images…
I’ve made plenty of midi dresses this year so wanted to add a short dress that I can wear with boots and tights into the winter.
This is the gorgeous fabric below which actually has more of a green base than ochre…it’s beautiful!
There are a few others in stock if this is not your colour which would work fabulously for this project.
The fabric I used is a lovely drapey viscose but you can use lightweight cotton (like this gingham) too which would give the sleeves a lot more drama and structure.
You will need:
2m- 3m of fabric (depending on how long you want your dress to be)
Elastic for your sleeve head approx 12mm
Sewing kit
I started by measuring my bust and adding half again to get the measurement for the top of the dress…this was not far off the full with of the fabric 150cm so I simply used the width of the fabric and the length of 31″
Then I cut 2 rectangles for the sleeves measuring approx 20″ long by 24″ wide.
You will need a few bobbins hand-wound with shirring elastic, there are plenty of good tutorials on You Tube if you have trouble getting the shirring to work but I found it worked no problem with a stitch setting of 3 or 3.5.
Make a tube with your main body of fabric and finish the seams. Hem the top of the dress and then you can start shirring the bodice ( I started about 3cm down from the top of the hemmed dress). The By Hand London tutorial gets you shirring the dress flat and then joining the side seams after but I found going round and round in one go in a spiral with a gap of 1cm per row was quicker and easier. I had to change the bobbin about 4 times so keep an eye on your bobbin…nothing worse than stitching nothing!!
I did about 9″ of shirring to get a babydoll dress effect but you could lengthen this depending on how you want your dress to sit.
To make the sleeves I stitched the edges together, finished the seams, and hemmed the top leaving a gap for the elastic. Measure two pieces of 1cm elastic to fit snuggly around your underarm and shoulder and then thread this through the channel in the sleeve. Sew the ends of the elastic closed and sew the gap in the hem closed.
I decided to do 6 rows of shirring on the cuff, in the same way, I shirred the bodice.
To attach the sleeves, pop the dress on (or on a dressmakers dummy ) and pin the sleeves to the underarms with the right sides of the top of the sleeves and the top of the dress facing. Stitch in place with a straight stitch. I stitched the sleeves on with approx 5″ of stitching.
Hem your dress and make yourself a matching mask…because have you even sewn a dress this year if you haven’t made a matching mask?!
I love how this turned out and already have another two planned! The fabric was a dream to work with and the colour is beautiful, not something I would normally go for but I was surprised how it suited my skin tone, I think because the cool pink and blue flowers are warmed up by the olive background.
Have you made a shirred dress or top…would you give this trend a go?
Debbie x
