Navy gingham off-centre button mini
digital review passed · not sewnA straight navy gingham mini with short sleeves and seven buttons down one princess seam. After eight review rounds the full printable package is ready.
The dress
Navy and white gingham with a very wide, high boat neck and short set-in sleeves. Princess seams run from the neckline to the hem on both sides, there is no waist seam, and the skirt falls straight. Seven white 22 mm buttons run down your left princess seam instead of the centre front. The neck and sleeve hems are finished with bias tape turned fully to the inside.
What was wrong
The source image shows the dress in a photo next to a drawn pattern sheet. The drawing has no scale, so the pattern follows the photographed dress only, read by hand. Reviews then found three problems at the opening: the overlapping front made a 27 mm step at the neckline; nothing held the opening closed at the bust, where the bust shaping sits in the unsewn line; and the guide's order for the left neck and shoulder could not be followed.
What changed
The repairs went into the shared pattern engine, the shared pattern sheets and the sewing guide, not into one drawing. The overlapping front now carries the neckline of the layer beneath it, so the neck edge runs on without a step. A hidden 10 mm snap closes the opening at the bust between the second and third buttons, keeping the seven evenly spaced buttons of the photo. Where a princess seam meets the neckline, both pieces now leave it at a right angle, so the sewn neckline has no corner. The guide now keeps the left facing's shoulder edge free until the neck is finished.
Checked
The pattern passed a digital review on 7 October. Later shared engine fixes were checked against it on 10 October: the side seams below the waist moved out by at most 0.4 mm and two grainline arrows were adjusted to stay inside their pieces. The accepted measurements still hold. On 10 October the same pattern was also generated in the browser in sizes EU34 to EU44, and the engine's sewability check reported no errors.
Download
Size EU36 sample. Body measurements: bust 84 cm, waist 66 cm, hip 90 cm. Finished length 74.3 cm at the centre front; the hem sits 19.1 cm above the knee. Other sizes are not offered as downloads yet.
What you need
- Fabric: 2.47 m of 115 cm wide or 1.78 m of 150 cm wide cloth, plus about 0.5 m to match the checks.
- 7 buttons, 22 mm, and one 10 mm sew-on snap.
- Single-fold bias tape, 12 mm wide: 467 mm for the neck and 2 × 341 mm for the sleeve hems.
- Lightweight fusible interfacing for the two opening facings, about 80 × 825 mm and 125 × 820 mm.
Before you cut
A digital sample made from a hand-corrected reading of the photo; the drawing beside it was not used. The back is not visible in the photo: it is the plainest sewable version, with the front princess seams carried round and the centre back cut on the fold. The top of the right princess seam is hidden in the photo and is assumed to match the left. The skirt length was estimated from the photo, and the fabric's stretch and drape were not measured, so the ease is the pattern's default.
This dress has not been sewn or fitted yet. Sew a toile in inexpensive fabric before cutting your final fabric. On the toile, check how the sleeves hang: the front armhole and sleeve cap come out about 9 mm longer than the back, where the back is usually the longer one. In the sewing guide, the section on the opening (3b) is printed after the main sewing order, but its first steps come first: read it before you start. On the A0 and A4 sheets, the names of both opening facings overlap their cutting notes; the guide's cutting list gives them (#7, #8).
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