My finished Sew Over It Vintage Shirt Dress!

This is my first time trying a Sew Over It pattern and it didn't disappoint! I love SOI's branding & their online store is fab. So when I spotted the vintage dress pattern bundle, I knew I had to make it mine and cheekily requested it from my boyfriend for my birthday in May.

I thought I'd start with the Vintage Shirt Dress. It's a classic retro pattern I love, you can see my previous shirt dress make here. And after sewing a few true vintage & reproduction patterns recently I was looking forward to trying something with fresh and modern instructions.

Here's a peek at the pattern:

How lovely are the illustrations?!

The pattern comes in beautiful packing, with all the sizing info you need clearly laid out. The instructions themselves come in a super handy booklet, much like Tilly and the Buttons patterns which I love as they are so easy to keep next to you while you're sewing. The booklet features illustrations rather than photographs, but they were really clear and very well done.



I chose to make the three quarter length sleeve version in a poly cotton fabric. Everything about this make was really straight forward. There was nothing too fussy or over complicated and I made no changes to the pattern and I love the original length. It sits just on my knee which is perfect for me.



Even though it is a rather straight forward pattern, I still can't seem to sew a collar perfectly. The point where you have to sew and pivot and then turn the collar back out to the right side, I can just never seem to get a really clean look. It might be that I'm not cutting the fabric as precisely as I need to be, or simply just my sewing. But next time I will nail this collar!

How sweet are my self covered anchor buttons?

I knew as soon as I picked up this anchor print fabric that it would be fabulous for self covered buttons! I absolutely love the look of them. Although I can't take the credit for making them, as I enlisted my very handy boyfriend to make them whilst I sewed the button holes. He did a far better job than I can, there is zero fabric folds or creases in them!