Hello internet friends!

Today I’m sharing a make that was completed for our Japan honeymoon but that I didn’t get around to blogging about at the time. This is my Denim Sanibel Dress, by Hey June Handmade! A lovely shirtdress with an elasticated waist and long sleeves!

This pattern comes in two views, a romper and shirtdress, I went for a shirtdress for this iteration although I would love to try out a romper version at some point. (I did attempt to make a romper version previously but cut out the bottoms wrong and ran out of fabric so it became a UFO that was eventually recycled). I wanted a simple but stylish dress to wear while we were in Japan and thought that this style of dress with an elasticated waist band would also make it easy to #EatAllTheThings while we traveling.

I used some light weight cotton denim shirting from blackbird fabrics from my stash, and while it makes for a lovely dress with good drape it does crinkle quite badly when it’s packed so I didn’t end up wearing it that much on our travels as we didn’t always have access to an iron.

I’ve been wearing it more since we’ve been back since I can give it a quick iron to get rid of any wrinkles. I really like how it’s a simple dress to just pop on and putter around town in :) One of my favourite features (aside from POCKETS!) are the fox buttons that I put on the cuffs from Arrow Mountain. The inner yoke and collar band is made out of a fox print pattern (which I totally forgot to take pictures of, #bloggerfail!) so it was nice to continue this hidden motif on the outside with the use of buttons! The shirt buttons are also from Arrow Mountain, they are mirror buttons which also add a little pop of something, something to the dress :D

In terms of fit I think it looks really great from the front but for my next iteration I think I’ll have to make some changes to the back. Since this pattern has more of a dropped waist (which looks really good at the front) it does look weird at the back since the waist band kinda looks like it’s in a weird spot (in my opinion anyway). I feel like the pattern was originally drafted to cover the back waist band a bit through the use of extra volume at the back but I find that the volume is wayyy too much, so I think I will take some of that out through some side shaping in my next iteration.

What do you guys think about the volume of this dress at the back? Let me know in the comments!