By Tringa Osmani 
I’m a fan of striped clothes but not all of the dresses or tops look good on me, so that’s why I rarely wear them. When I saw this fabric on a store in Skopje, I decided to take the risk of buying it as I imagined the dress exactly as the one I’m wearing on the pictures.
Since I only had 1 meter of fabric, I constructed the dress based on a shirt I had refashioned before. I tried it out for adjustments many times and in the end it looked great and it matched my style. If you aren’t into using a pattern to sew a dress, then I encourage you to try this tutorial.
For the tutorial you’ll need:
- Your choice of fabric
- Shirt
- Cotton thread
- Sewing machine
- Pins
- Scissors
- Iron
Start by folding your fabric in half.
Find a shirt or a dress to serve as your pattern. Put the shirt at the top of the fabric. Mark the shoulder distance, armholes space and the neckline with a chalk. As for the bottom of the dress, choose if you want a shift, trapeze or another type.
Cut through the both layers of the fabric and leave 1 cm seam allowance. Now you have the front and the back panel of the dress.
After cutting the panels, continue by working on the neckline. Fold the edge of the fabric twice, sew all along the neckline and finish pressing the seams. Repeat for the other panel.
Place your front and back panels right sides together and sew the shoulders. Here’s a look of the top of the dress after sewing them.
Sewing the arm openings. Lay out open the dress on the wrong side. Determine from where to where your arm openings are. Next fold the edges twice, pin and finish sewing them.
Put the two panels together, pin and finish sewing on both sides from the armhole to the bottom of the dress.
Shorten the dress if necessary and finish hemming the bottom.
On the pictures, I wore the dress with a band. I used some leftover fabric to sew it. Instead of a band, you can add elastic waist to the dress. After wearing the dress for some time I added the elastic and it looks much better than with the band. I will post a picture of it, soon.
Have a lovely day and enjoy sewing!
Tringa
