Red gingham button-front mini
digital review passed · not sewnA sleeveless A-line mini with eight buttons down the front. After nine review rounds the full printable package is ready.
The dress
Red and white gingham, sleeveless, with a high, wide boat neck. Princess seams run from the armholes to the hem, there is no waist seam, and the skirt flares into a short A-line. Eight 22 mm buttons close the centre front, and each front princess seam stays open for 42 mm at the hem as a small slit. The neck and armholes are finished with bias tape turned fully to the inside.
What was wrong
The first automatic reading of the photo described another dress: a U-neck, a slanted button row and an hourglass shape, with no princess seams and no slits. The reading was corrected by hand against the photo. A review then found the bust shaping in the wrong place: the princess seam passed 6 cm outside the bust point.
From photo to pattern: every step of this dress, with the drawing and the PDF pages →
The shared fix
Every repair went into the shared pattern engine, not into this one dress. The princess seam now runs close to the bust point and carries the bust shaping. The hem meets every seam at a right angle and the flare is shared evenly between the seams, so the hem is one smooth curve. The cut-on front facing follows the neckline, and the sewing guide tells you where one side of a curved seam is a few millimetres longer and has to be eased in.
Checked
The pattern passed a digital review on 4 October. Later shared engine fixes were checked against it on 10 October: the largest change is 1.7 mm, where the top of the lap and facing now follows the neckline, and the side seams below the waist moved out by at most 0.55 mm. 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 81.4 cm at the centre front; the hem sits 12 cm above the knee. Other sizes are not offered as downloads yet.
What you need
- Fabric: 1.69 m of 115 cm wide or 1.68 m of 150 cm wide cloth, plus about 0.5 m to match the checks.
- 8 buttons, 22 mm.
- Single-fold bias tape, 12 mm wide: 438 mm for the neck and 2 × 391 mm for the armholes.
- Lightweight fusible interfacing for the two front facings, each 69 × 821 mm.
Before you cut
A digital sample made from a hand-corrected reading of the photo. 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 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. A belt seen in the photo is not part of this pattern, and the sewing guide is text only, without drawings.
This dress has not been sewn or fitted yet. Sew a toile in inexpensive fabric before cutting your final fabric, and check there how the armhole sits and how the hip shaping is shared between front and back: that split is an engine default not yet tested on a body.
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