When I posted about the Kitty tunic shirt I mentioned that I had some great buttons, too many to use on a top and therefore planned to make a button thru’ dress. Well ‘fast’ is the word and ‘quick’ is the action. On Saturday a trip to Salisbury and visit to Fabricland resulted in returning with 5 metres of the vintage bird print cotton fabric and lace for trimming the underwear set.

I have already posted details of the first set of underwear – but did not go on with the second set as I was too excited about making the dress!

I used the bodice from the previous Kitty dress as this had already been adapted for button front and a waistline seam. This time I planned to make a midi-length gathered skirt with buttons and buttonholes through both bodice and skirt. However, as the construction developed I decided to reduce the length of the skirt. I am only 5’4” tall and by using a vintage print and the longer length it looked like I was wearing my Nana’s dress! In the end the skirt was finished at 26 inches long with a 3 inch hem.

There were no problems with the construction, just the fact that there are several detailed processes, this dress has taken quite a long time to complete. The collar and facing together with the front edges of the skirt have been interfaced with Vilene ® 22o fusible to provide plenty of support for all the buttonholes. The sleeves are lined with plain White polyester cotton. I used my standard pocket pattern which includes the facility to stitch the top of the pocket into the waistline seam and thus prevent them from ‘flapping’ about inside the skirt. Having cut two panels for the skirt, I arranged for the joining seam to be at centre back. I then used another TNT method to ‘insert’ short side seams into which the pockets were added. This method has the advantage of adding a little shaping to the skirt so that the top measurement is slightly less than the width at the hem.

All seams have been overlocked and there are 11 buttons and buttonholes. Fortunately the one-step buttonhole setting combined with the buttonhole foot on my Brother 4000D machine make very light work of buttonholes. Again I used my new button attaching foot for the buttons.

The buttons, thread and interfacing were all in my stash and the dress took just 3 metres of 114cms wide fabric which cost a total of £13.77.

I am very pleased with the end result. I recall that I have some Sage Green twill fabric in my stash -I wonder if there is enough to make a little jacket to go with the dress?