The Picnic Dress

I have always loved red gingham. Maybe because of my sweet childhood memories or children's books illustrations of fun picnics with a red gingham towel laying in the green grass...

Oh, and I love picnics! I have sweet memories of day-long picnics and barbecues with all my extended familiy - this was an yearly event that we loved dearly. You all grew up, some people passed away, and we ended up not doing it anymore...
Recently me and my DH decided to start our own picnic tradition with our kids (and our parents). Now my kids love (love!) picnics! They just spent all winter asking when we could have a picnic in the woods or at the beach... Well, it was a long winter (it is still raining a lot around here...) and we are longing for sunny Spring days and Spring break (starting this weekend) to go on a road trip and enjoy a couple of picnics on the way!

So, March's pattern for the Flip This Pattern series at Frances Suzanne is the Beachy Boatneck top by Blank Slate Patterns. The concept behind this series is that you have to change the original pattern the way you want. I always try to keep the main design lines so the original pattern can still be recognized once it's flipped (see November's flip and February's flip). So I knew I had to keep the boat neck design.

By the time I started to make drawings (I will spare you from seeing them...) and planning this FTP I saw that PR&P season 9 w1 theme was "Spring break" and I found a few sewing series based on the Mad Men TV series wardrobe designs (one for women dresses and the other is the Take One Dress series at As It Seams). I got so excited (I do love a character themed sewing series!) that I searched for images of Mad Men's women wardrobe and I found a couple of dresses and tops with a boat neck design! 

These were the ones were I got my inspiration from:

So this post is about how I flipped the Beachy Boatneck inspired by Mad Men's women wardrobe! And turned it into a picnic dress! (Yay for Spring and picnics!)

I made a sleeveless top (the original pattern has short or medium sleeves) and have joined it to a gingham gathered skirt to make a Beachy Boatneck dress! Or - as I named it - the Picnic dress!

I hemmed the armscyes with a striped bias tape and used the same bias tape to embelish the front top piece with a straight line and a bow. I added vintage red buttons from the 1950s - the Mad Men era! The idea was to make it look a bit like Miss Holloway's dress!

I just couldn't do a pencil skirt piece for my Princess - she loves to dance and twirl! So I had to do a gathered skirt piece for this dress...

The skirt piece was made from a changed version of the lovely Betty Skirt pattern from the Shaffer Sisters. I got this pattern as soon as it was released (on late February) and have been planning to sew it right then but things got busy with a few deadlines of patterns testing and so I haven't yet had the chance to make a Betty skirt... 
I removed the yoke piece, raised the length of the skirt and have add a big sash to the waistband (sewn on both sides)!
I have been keeping this red gingham fabric for a special project, but as soon as I started to work on this one I immediately knew it had to be it.

PR&P season 9 W1 challenge is "Spring Break" - and as I said before, Spring break means road trips and picnics!

BTW, next month's Flip This Pattern is the modern looking Colorblock dress from Heidi & Finn, which is a slim "A" line dress. Will you join the fun? I already have some ideas on how to flip it!

And, keep following PR&P season 9! I love to see all the beautiful creations that are being made! There so many talented people around there... Amazing!
Project linked to: