Plaid Pinafore

Like so many seamstresses, I was very impressed by the styling and fashion choices in The Queen's Gambit and I've decided that I need more 60s vibe feminine clothes in my wardrobe. Not that I have many places to dress up for - today's dress up, apart from the photo session, was for the weekly shopping in the local Lidl :))) But if I worked in an office, I would definitely wear that pinafore dress to work.

The pattern is from Shkatulka, a sleeveless dress pattern in Russian, which comes free for my size 42 (the smallest available). The dress features semi-full skirt, princess seams and wrap top. The pattern includes facing pieces for the lapels and the collar, but once I cut the fabric, I realized that my wool plaid was too coarse and itchy, so I drafted additional lining pieces for the top and the skirt and made the pinafore fully lined.

Pattern: Sleeveless dress wd090919 by Shkatulka

Size: 42, shortened in height by 1 cm (top) and 7 cm (skirt)

Fabric: plaid, 100% wool; black cotton voile, 100% cotton (for the lining)

Thread: polyester, black and brown

Time to make: one week

The dress closes with a 30 cm side zipper. Because of the lined wrap top, I was very hezitant to install an invisible zipper - there was no possibility to insert the zipper between the outer and the lining, as they were sewn together because of the wrap. So I opted for an exposed zipper - I think it's OK, though I'm a big fan of invisible zippers.

I had only 1.2 m of this wool plaid, which I bought decades ago and I had to squeeze a semi-full skirt and a wrap top with lapels and facings, so some compromises had to be made with the pattern matching and especially the symmetry at the back. But I knew that from the very start and I made a deal with my perfectionist self to deal with it and not think about it twice. I managed to match the horizontal lines of all those princess seams, so that should be good enough :))

I am especially proud of the lapels - my first ever! The Shkatulka instructions were very sketchy and I was not quite sure I liked the proposed order of constructing the top, so I googled Youtube. I highly recommend Diane Deziel's tutorial - as always she's the best and made the daunting lapels fairly easy to make!

Another problem I had to deal with was the construction of the lining - the facing of the lapels was only partially equal to the outer front lapels, so to avoid constructing the facing of the fronts out of partial front lapel plus the side front part, I drew a new side panel, which incorporated both parts and I think it worked! I'm still curious how was I supposed to add the side zipper, given that in order to add the skirt to the top I had to fix the wrap, as a result of which the lining and the outer of the top became inseparable. I'd be curious to know how this is done in the industry, I'm sure there are some professional tricks, but I couldn't find a Youtube tutorial, though I searched extensively.

All in all, I'm quite pleased with my 60s style plaid pinafore. If I ever decide to repeat the pattern, I'll have to figure out how to make it a bit more fitted at the bust, but otherwise the fit is acceptable and I was happy to walk the aisles of Lidl today dressed prettily :)