Seamwork Skipper Dress

Today's project might be a bit outside of my usual style comfort zone, but it definitely isn't lacking in terms of comfort itself. In fact, this may be one of the comfiest, cosiest garments that I've ever sewn. Here's my Seamwork Skipper dress.

The Skipper pattern itself is a traditional, crew neck sweatshirt, but the version I've made here is using the Seamwork member exclusive version. It's the same basic sweatshirt shape extended to dress length, with added in-seam pockets and a hood. When a picture of the dress version popped up on my Instagram feed one chilly day earlier this month, it appealed to me because it looked so snuggly. As someone who works from home, for me it looked like perfect winter work wear.

I've got quite a few Seamwork credits waiting to be used (clearly I haven't been sewing enough!), so I wasted no time in downloading the pattern and having a little online hunt for some suitable sweatshirting fabric.

I considered various fun print options, but none of them were especially cheap and I wasn't 100% sure whether the dress would suit me so I didn't want to spend too much.

In the end, I opted for this plain pink sweatshirting from Fabworks. It's lovely quality, especially for the price. As the fabric is extra wide, I was also easily able to cut the dress out of 2m, instead of the 2.3m of 150cm fabric called for by the pattern. I'm not sure I would agree with the description of it being magenta, but it's a very pretty shade of pink so I'm not going to worry too much about what the colour's called.

The Skipper dress (and the original sweatshirt version I imagine) is a nice, simple pattern to sew. The instructions were all nice and clear, apart from one point about making the drawstring casing in the hood where I think the instructions are in the wrong order. They have you make the casing (which is just formed by folding the outer edge of the hood back on itself), and then sew a buttonhole to feed your drawstring through. It may just be me being weird, but I'm not sure how you'd sew a buttonhole with the casing already made without it going through both layers of the fabric, when you only want it to be going through one layer. Instead, I sewed the buttonhole first and then made the casing.

In terms of sizing, I blended between a medium at the bust and a large at the waist/hips, which are the sizes recommended for my measurements. The fit is quite forgiving on a garment like this - it's not meant to be figure-hugging after all - and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. The pattern description does say that the shoulders are slightly dropped, but they're possibly slightly too dropped on me and I might bring them in a bit if I make another version.

Other than that, if I make a second version I might do something quite against my usual preferences and omit the pockets. While I generally love pockets, I don't think the combination of pockets in a sweatshirting fabric and my proportionately large hips is particularly good here and they slightly spoil how the dress hangs (there's a reason why I've got my hands in the pockets in most of these photos - you can see in the photo below that the pockets are a bit lumpy).

Oddly excited by the hood and drawstring!

Overall, I think we can probably all agree that this isn't really the most "flattering" dress that I've ever sewn. But that's OK - it's not meant to be! It is, however, definitely very comfy and cosy and, let's be honest, isn't that just what those of us in the northern hemisphere want at the moment?!