This dress had been moving between sewing table and bedroom for several months now, waiting for the inspiration for perfect breast pockets and perfect buttons to strike, and last night I decided I was simply going to put buttonholes on the dress without even testing the settings first- just so it was done!
It went surprisingly well.
This dress is a Lobethal Dress add-on to the Muna and Broad Lobethal Shirt. The add-on was the September pattern bonus for M&B Patreon and it uses the same lovely hem finish of the Shoalhaven Shacket– lovely curved facings for a very neat finish.
Insider & Maker level supporters of the Muna and Broad Patreon get access to all the previous monthly pattern bonuses- see them all here.
The Lobethal Shirt has great side-panel pockets which are topstitched to the front of the shirt to create the pockets- these remain in exactly the same spot for the dress view and I love that they don’t flap around inside your dress. Because the pockets are supported by the front of the dress (rather than hanging entirely off the side seam), they also seem to distort the shape of the dress less when you load your pockets up- always a nice bonus.
On our weekly Patreon chat today Leila and I talked about how the Lobethal has become a bit of a surprise winner in our wardrobes and that we both reach for our Lobethal Shirts when we want something that feels a bit fancy and a bit like ‘yes, I made this style choice’. It’s a pretty un-apologetically BIG shirt and the dress is no different. I was initially a bit skeptical about the finished garment, but I was equally skeptical about my Lobethal Shirts, which I now love.
This striped fabric I got from The Fabric Store during their 40% off sale earlier in the year. It’s not-quite-opaque, so I had toyed with the idea of lining it with a light-coloured cotton (like a RTW dress that I like a lot). I didn’t end up adding a lining because I decided that the dress would have such a relaxed fit that there wouldn’t be much opportunity for the colour of my undies to shine through. I did use a stable cream cotton for the facings and pockets to stop the pattern of the fabric shining through the not-quite-opaque striped fabric.
Fabric consumption: I had 3m of this 147cm wide fabric, I cut out self bias tape for the neck finishing but didn’t cut out the facings and pockets. I suspect I would have been able to with some planning.
I cut 1 piece of bias tape for the collar facing and ironed it into a curve, just like how Leila did in the YouTube sewalong of the Lobethal Shirt. Generally I had bias finished necklines but this one looks quite good- that ironed in curve really is the key for me to avoid struggling.
In terms of sewing, the Lobethal Shirt is a speedy sew and the Lobethal Dress is basically the same with slightly longer sideseams, and some extra work around the facings on the hem. This was just an afternoon of work, followed by a month of procrastinating and rushed buttonholes. There’ll be more of these in the future!
Broad in the seams 