Welcome back readers! Today we’re looking at a project I just finished, and while I’m incredibly satisfied with how it turned out, it took much more creative problem solving and finagling to get this done than I had expected. I had my heart set on making a tie-front, peekaboo sun dress this summer, and despite the many issues that came up along the way, I made it happen. Let’s jump right into the saga that were the problems with making this dress, and talk about the pattern.

There are patterns you use that are perfect as is, and don’t require a lot of fiddling or alteration when you use them. I recently raved about the pattern for my cargo jacket, and the fact that I didn’t need to alter it at all, or make adjustments to the fit. It’s really great when that happens, but this project was not one of those cases!

I love how it turned out, but the pattern I used for it is one that I altered quite extensively, partly by choice, and partly out of necessity. This project started with a search for tie front dress patterns, which didn’t result in many options to choose from, but did bring up this one from McCall’s. M7950 is still in print and readily available, so even though I could tell right away that I would want to make changes to it, I ordered it in the hopes that I could make it work.

I knew that I liked the look of the top, but I didn’t like the gathered skirt or button front closure. This would mean creating a new skirt pattern front and back, and making a place in the back center of the dress for an invisible zipper. I felt that this would be pretty straightforward to change, and wasn’t too worried about that part of the process.

I also knew that I wanted to make the top with built in support so that it didn’t require a bra, and make the tie detail fake so that it couldn’t actually come undone. I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to accomplish tackling all of these bust issues, but I thought it would be easier to figure that out once the front pieces were somewhat assembled and I could see how everything fit.

Considering everything I’d have to work out for this pattern, the fabric for this dress was a dream. It’s a medium weight linen/rayon blend in a light shade of rust that I found online. It has the texture and look of linen, but the softness of rayon, making it really lovely to wear and work with. It was also a really reasonable price, which is always a bonus!

This fabric is still available at fabric.com.

You’ll have to forgive me for a lack of pictures during the process of making this dress. I went back and forth on trying different things at different times SO much that it was difficult to capture, but I’ll tell you which steps ended up actually working to get this project done.

Ultimately, because I wanted a flat-front, A-line skirt that fit the top portion of the dress perfectly, I felt that it made the most sense for me to assemble the outer layer of the whole top of the dress first, then check it for alterations. Once that step was done, I knew exactly how wide to make the width of the skirt waist to match, and just cut a very simple A-line shape skirt for that measurement.

I then attached the bottom of the dress to the top, and added a lining to the top of the dress. I chose a cream colored linen for the lining to create a pop of contrast on the ties of the dress, bringing attention to that detail. I made sure to leave the lining unattached at the waist so that I could get between the dress layers to add my built in bra (still had no idea what exactly that was going to be at this point!).

I installed the invisible zipper in the back and attached the straps, so that while I was trying different techniques with the bust support and tie detail, I could see exactly how it would look finished.

Securing the tie-front in a way that made it look really tied, but allowed me to sew it in place, took the longest to figure out. I’m sure there are other ways to do this that would have been easier to execute, but with my self-taught skills this is how I managed it, and I’m happy with the results.

You can see in the pictures below, that I created darts in both of the ‘ties’, which I thought would help the front look gathered as if it were really tied. Then I sewed the two ties together down the middle front, leaving two gaps in my stitches - one right in the middle, and one right below the ties. I used the gap in the middle to pull one tie through to the front. Once the dress is turned right side out, the tie left in the back gets pulled over the neckline, to knot with the tie that is sticking out of the middle front.

And voila! Once the tie was finished and secured, adding the support to the bust ended up being easy. I put some leftover soft cup bust liners from an old sports bra (always keep those!) in between my two dress layers, and hand stitched them to the lining to keep them in place.

This turned out to be such a simple solution that now I want to do it with all my summer tops and dresses!

Overall the dress turned out exactly as I imagined when I started this project, which I couldn’t be happier about.

It’s comfortable and easier to wear, and could be dressed up with some strappy heels, or kept casual with flat sandals. I can even picture it in fall with a light cardigan and some oxfords or ankle boots.