By Hand London Sarah Shirt – By Thimble Bee!

Hi there fellow sewers!

I am Maddie, but also known to the sewing world as Thimble Bee.

I don’t know about you but when I think of Sewisfaction I think prints and this seriously makes me happy. In fact, it should probably make me less happy as my wardrobe is starting to be a print party with a serious lack solids that I can match all my lovely items with. But regardless of this, I still chose a print for this blog post as I’m just my own worst enemy, but who cares as long as its pretty, right?

I chose this Lightening Lily Lawn, and seriously guys, on the website it looked pretty, but in real life… WOW. It was so pretty and as soon as I opened the parcel I knew I had made the right decision to add this print to my ever-growing handmade wardrobe.

So the next question was what pattern to make, and for me the decision was easy, a By Hand London Sarah Shirt but I was going to lengthen it into a dress so I could pair it with sandals in the summer, and tights and jumpers in the winter. The inspiration for this hack was from the lovely Elisalex herself she did a tutorial on this that can be found here (https://byhandlondon.com/blogs/by-hand-london/simple-sarah-or-the-lazy-sewists-guide-to-shirtmaking). Elisalex opted out of the collar and chose to finish with bias binding, but I chose to keep it as I thought it would be cute poking out from a jumper during the winter. Anyway, I got to work and was soon very pleased with the results.

This is the finished result and even though there are a few minor mistakes I am so happy with the final look. The fabric was so beautiful to handle, it cut and sewed together like an absolute dream. And to top all of this joyousness off, I think I might be able to squeeze another top out of the scraps, which is always a bonus.

I just love the swing feel of this dress, I can already tell that it’s going to get a lot of use!

Now, I have to hold my hands up here, I completely skipped out doing buttonholes, all I did was make the plackets and then hold the two layers together and literally sew the button on, obviously I made sure that I had enough room to get my head through at the top, but other than that, no buttonholes here! This decision was influenced by Elisalex as she skips them out too, but the decision was mainly made because my sewing machine is very old and basic and just simply cannot handle the buttonhole (trust me, I’ve tried).

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