McCalls Shirtwaist Dress

I have been wanting to add a shirt dress to my wardrobe for a while now, i actually can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get around to making one.  To me they are the ultimate 1950s dress and I love how iconicly vintage they are, conjuring up images of the poster girl fifties housewife.

I chose this particular pattern because I loved the shape of the bodice with the dropped shoulders rather than set in sleeves and the I really liked the pleated skirt. I chose to make it up in a gingham as I wanted it in something classic and I had found this lovely quality fine poplin on a recent trip to Fabrics Galore on Lavender Hill.

I began, as I always do, by making up a toile of the dress in calico. I was expecting to have to make a lot of modifications to this pattern as I had images of it drowning me and being a little on the dowdy side but I was keen to use a vintage pattern rather than draft my own out of historical interest. As it turned out, however, the pattern was pretty much a perfect fit. I had to raise the hemline a little as I am quite petite and I removed 2cm from the drop shoulders / sleeves as they stuck out a little further than I wanted but that was all.

Working with the gingham presented the usual challenges of lining up the print and making sure the repeat flowed correctly even across seam lines. Gingham is one of my favourite fabrics so I never begrudge the extra time involved with working with it, but if you are a beginner to sewing or are making a garment with restricted time then I would recommend avoiding it. It took a little figuring out to get the centre front of the bodice (which has the button stand) and the centre front of the skirt (which has the pleats) to align but it came off okay in the end. One thing that I always like with vintage patterns are the details and the added complexity that dressmakers were obviously used to. This one involved bound buttonholes which you can see more about here and which I personally far prefer to machine buttonholes, a self covered belt which I chose to make in a bright contrasting pink and both a lapped zip and snaps/ poppers. Of course the belt was optional and you could always just do machine buttonholes if you prefer.

Overall I am really thrilled with this dress and I would definitely make up this pattern again- I have already worn it a few times and found it really comfortable and fun to wear. I think next time I would go with a liberty print, maybe in pinks. I would also like to try some different shape shirt dresses, Betty Draper wears several in the earlier seasons of madmen that I would love to recreate.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever made a vintage shirt dress? What were your experiences?

Tagged as: 1950s, sewing pattern, shirt dress, vintage sewing