Ice Cream Social Shirt

I’ve really wanted to sew a button down skirt after reading about Rochelle’s shirts on Lucky Lucille.

I’ve been leery of making a button shirt, because I felt they had to be precise and then there are all those buttons and buttonholes.

I felt like I didn’t have the skills to really pull off a button down shirt. Then I remembered my Sew For Victory dress is basically a button down shirt with an attached skirt.

Akram's Ideas: Sew for Victory Dress — Sew for Victory Dress 2014

I am absolutely in love with how my Sew For Victory dress came out. So, with that said, I was determined to make my first button down shirt.

I decided to use Simplicity pattern 2215, for two reasons. One using a modern pattern meant I didn’t have to grade a vintage one. Grading is something I feel I haven’t fully mastered yet.

Second it didn’t have sleeves. I find most store-bought button down shirts don’t fit me in the sleeves. In fact I even recently removed the sleeves from a secondhand Ralph Loren shirt, so it would fit properly. I blame my country girl arms.

So, with the pattern picked out I needed fabric. I went through my stash and found I had just enough of a sheer ice cream print fabric for a shirt.

Sheer ice cream print fabric in neon colors

Now this sheer fabric isn’t exactly the fabric one would choose for their first button down shirt. Obviously I had a lot of Colton fabrics in my stash I could have used.

However, I knew that our student organization would be hosting an ice cream social, in a few days. Thus, when I came across the ice cream fabric,I was like yes, I want to wear this for the ice cream social.

The constriction was very straightforward and I used my favorite method of sewing seams, French seams, which is the best method when working with sheer fabrics such as this one.

French seams with contrast neon green thred — French seams with contrast neon green thread

For the armhole and hem finishing I used Lucky Lucille’s Bias Tape technique.

The bias tape method worked perfectly. I even decided to add a bit of contrast by using neon green bias tape.

Speaking of contrast I finished the shirt using the left over pink buttons from my Sew For Victory dress.

The final results were amazing. This is the first button down shirt that I felt was made for me, oh, it was. Seriously it fit great.

It even looks great with the first button undone

Since the shirt was sheer I wore it with a white tank underneath it and paired it with my neon pink skirt. It was a fun colorful addition to the ice cream social.