Shelby Dress – Indiesew Blogger Team

Hi friends

I am so happy to be sharing the Shelby dress as part of my Indiesew blogger contribution post today. I had been meaning to make this dress for a while now and seeing that we’re soon approaching holiday season, it seemed appropriate to make a dressy dress that will get lots of wear in the coming months.

My first instinct was to make the long dress version, it’s such a beautiful and dreamy silhouette. But the temperatures are already in the 40’s and dropping here so the short dress paired with tights and boots seemed more practical and fun me so that’s what I went with it. I really love how it turned out!

Shelby dress by True Bias Patterns is a princess seamed dress or romper which comes in two lengths – a shorter mid-thigh length and a longer almost-ankle length. It has waist ties in the back for shaping and two sleeve options. For this version, I chose the short dress option with cap sleeves.

I made very few adjustments to the pattern and I am really happy with how this dress fits me. Based on my measurements (32″ bust and 27″ waist), I picked a size 0 in the bust blending out to a size 2 at the waist and hips. I raised the neckline by about 3/4″ and performed a 3/4″ bicep adjustment to the cap sleeve. After I sewed up the front and side seams, I took in the princess seams by about 1/4″ in the bust area. And that is all the adjustments I made 🙂

This pattern is beautifully drafted, I love how it gently flares out from the waist. Even without the ties, the princess seams help create a very figure flattering shape. One little thing that I absolutely loved about this pattern is that there’s a pattern piece for marking buttons and buttonhole AFTER the garment is constructed. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve struggled with buttonhole placement trying to match up the markings on the placket pattern piece with my finished garment and adjusting to account for the seam allowances. So this was a nice surprise 🙂

This is probably the shortest time I took deciding what buttons I wanted to use. These little gold buttons are from my stash, they were purchased from Fine Fabrics warehouse in Atlanta a few years ago.

The fabric I picked is a rayon challis from my stash, it’s another one from my summer trip purchases from India. It is buttery soft with lots of drape and every bit as difficult as rayon generally tends to be. I am not sure of this color palette on me, just that I love this print, bold red brush strokes splattered with gold in between. The gold which is incredibly hard to capture is muted rather than sparkly. It really is a gorgeous piece of fabric that I tried really hard to capture in the photos, so hopefully you see what I mean 🙂