Last month, I finally tried my hand at shirring to make myself a skirt.  After finishing with the skirt, I decided to try my hand at a summer dress.  I found this tutorial video that I followed with some minor modifications (made shoulder ties instead of the halter tie), and ended up making 3 dresses!

Here are the three dresses, with some lessons learned from making them.

The three finished dresses!

This was the first dress.  I used about 1 1/2 yards of cotton fabric and black elastic thread.  Lesson learned from cotton fabric:  cotton, after shirring, will kind of poof under the shirred area.  For this dress, that poofing looks fine, but others might not like the slight bubble appearance.

Next lesson learned:  don’t fret when after about 5 rows of shirring, it isn’t already shrinking as expected.  This dress didn’t shrink down from the shirring until a good couple of inches were done.

Next lesson learned (and this was actually learned from the last dress I made, making me go back to the first two and fix them):  the shoulder ties need to be more securely stitched into place than just one line of stitching long the hemline.  The ties in the long dress ended up nearly tearing out entirely, so I went back with white thread and sewed back and forth all along where the tie and the dress met up.

Thing I love most about this dress:  the way the flower pattern looked after shirring!

Cool flowers after shirring!

The ties need to be secured better – see how it’s already kind of pulling on the fabric?  Not great.

The second dress was made using a knit fabric rather than cotton.  You can see in the photo that the fabric drapes a bit nicer than the cotton did.

Lesson learned from this dress:  I used only 1 yard of fabric for this, folding in half and cutting for the two panels (I used 1 1/2 yards in the first dress, using the same approach of folding in half and cutting).  The shirring is definitely more snug as a result.  Next time, I’ll be using 1 1/2 yards of fabric for a more comfy fit (thinking in terms of maternity clothing, I won’t be able to wear this too comfortably during my next pregnancy).  (No, I’m not pregnant.  I just like the idea of not having to completely change wardrobes during pregnancy.)

The pink, white, black dress.

The whole dress is narrower than the purple dress, but the shirring especially.

Last is the maxi-length dress.  This is the dress that taught me to be sure to secure the shoulder ties well.  I already did that, and you can see how it isn’t pulling on the body of the dress as much as the ties on the purple dress.  I’m just glad I was able to save this before the ties completely tore out!

Another lesson learned:  this knit fabric was not as great quality as the white, black, and pink.  I could feel the difference in quality when I bought the fabric, but it was very apparent while sewing.  I had to unpick some stitching from this, and it left holes in the fabric!  It was overall more difficult to work with.  BUT I did buy the fabric on mega clearance ($6 for 1 1/2 yards!), so I’m not going to complain too much about it.  The pattern also isn’t my favorite, but, again, I wanted a longer dress, and it was $6, and it’s definitely cute and brighter for summer (or those grey days when I wish I were sunny).