New Hawaiian Shirt Dress

 For the summer, Friday's at work are now Hawaiian Shirt days!   The problem:  I don't have a Hawaiian Shirt.  Eek!    

The solution:  I happened to have a lovely Hawaiian print cotton I planned to make into a dress anyway.  

With Sew Magazine, I fairly recently received a copy of New Look 6449.

I only had 3 yards of the cotton print and that's all the shirt dress calls for.  Easy!

I think it came out pretty cute.  I did place the shirt pocket a bit too high.  Mea Culpa.  The back yoke ended up being a bit tricky.  The collar wouldn't fit unless I pleated and stitched down the center back of the yoke.  The problem is when I did that, I didn't cut down the neckline itself to force the new lines of the yoke to fit better in the back.  The shoulder "scrunch up" a bit because of that but it's not a huge issue.   

I do like the deep pockets on the dress and the overall fit is good.  I also added a bit more at the skirt (maybe an extra 4" on either side of the front and back pieces) because I wanted a bit more of an a-line look going on.  I wore the dress today with leggings from April Cornell.  It ended up being very comfortable and I'm definitely going to wear the dress again.  

Probably should point out that my favorite aspect of the dress is really the sleeves.  Those little tabs are amazing.  :-)