Blue Knit T-Shirt Dress. Something For Me. Again.

The idea for this dress started out with the idea of making a T-shirt. I was mentally going through my stash, matching up leftover stretch fabrics with patterns I made for tops a couple of years ago. I knew I had a blue stretch fabric that would go really well as a this gathered neck shirt (below).

The original shirt

When I pulled it out to use though, I had more than enough for a dress, so rather than have leftover scraps, I re-drafted my pattern with a few centimetres of additional ease and some pockets, just because I could, and cut out a dress instead. I figured if I didn't like how it turned out I could just cut off the bottom and turn it into the shirt it was going to be at the start.

This dress was my second go at using my coverstitch machine, and thank goodness it behaved better than my first effort - I have a perfect hem with no skipped stitches! Yay!

First effort with coverstitch machine, complete with skipped stitches

No skipped stitches here!

The pockets probably weren't a good idea in this knit fabric. You can't put anything in them heavier than a tissue, as the pockets just drag down, and the pockets make lumpy patches at the sides. I like the idea of having somewhere to put my hands if I want to though, and if I decide later that I don't want them, I'll just chop them off and sew up the gap. The extra ease that I put in meant that the armholes turned out a little gapey, but not so much that I feel exposed at all. I like that I have a bit of room to move.

This has become one of my go-to dresses for late summer (Ok, so technically summer is over, but you try telling the sun that). It's so comfortable, and I'm rather keen to make more T-shirt style or knit dresses now. I do have one in the planning stage, but by the time I get around to it I'm sure the sun will have realised that summer has gone!

As I was rummaging through my stash afterwards, I realised that this fabric wasn't even the one that I had intended to make the shirt from at all. I have another piece of blue fabric that I was going to use. I have so much blue fabric in my stash! It's a good thing that I picked the wrong one up though, or this dress wouldn't have come into being! Now I just need to work out what to use the piece of blue stretch fabric for.