Hello! I’m here to very belatedly share the one maternity item I made during my pregnancy (despite having ambitious plans to make an entire vintage-inspired maternity wardrobe). I made this dress to wear to my baby shower and since I ended up with two showers I wore it twice! Might as well get some extra mileage out of it, right?

I didn’t want to spend a lot of time messing with the fit, especially since I had no idea how much bigger my belly was going to get in the last few weeks of my pregnancy, so I decided to go with an unstructured dress that would accommodate any size. The Popover dress from Gertie Sews Jiffy Dresses was the perfect candidate for this since it’s essentially a tent dress. (I made another version of this pattern just a few months ago which you can see here.) I’m also hoping this dress will look good to wear postpartum as well- I might just need to adjust the hem in case it hangs down too much in the front once the bump is gone.

I found this woven striped fabric at Superbuzzy in Ventura when I took a trip down there with my mom back in February. It ticked all of my boxes- it was a soft lightweight cotton, it had a textured chambray look, it was striped, and it looked like it could be a genuine fifties or sixties-era fabric. I also really liked the color combo of teal, chartruese, gray, and tan and I knew I wanted to make something special with it.

I notice that I find myself gravitating toward vintage pieces where the construction technique combines with the fabric to create an cool effect, so I really wanted to try to use the stripes of this fabric in an interesting way. I decided to create a chevron look by cutting the fabric on the bias and having each color stripe match up perfectly down the center seam. I also decided to mirror that look with the pockets and top it off with some covered buttons placed to highlight the contrast of each color. I spent a really long time figuring out how to cut out each piece and make sure they fit on my fabric and drew lines on my pattern piece so I could make sure that the stripes lined up exactly where they were supposed to.

I ran into an issue I have often found with voluminous skirts- my pattern piece was just a teensy bit too wide for my fabric, no matter how I laid out my pattern pieces. To overcome this, I decided to piece in a little extra patch. It was actually very easy and when the garment is finished it really isn’t noticeable at all. Here are some photos so you can see how I did it (in case you ever need to do the same):

Another issue I ran into when constructing the dress is that the fabric which creates the neckline facing doesn’t lay flat at the shoulders when sewn as indicated in the instructions. I figured out that I needed to angle my seam as shown below:

You can see that the facing ends up laying much flatter when turned (you can see in the photo below the difference from the original seam):

I did a similar chevron effect on the pockets, but had the stripe angling up instead of down and created a little fold-over section resembling an envelope:

I added some covered buttons on the pockets as well as the bodice front to finish off the look and placed them so they would contrast. I noticed that the shiny metal of the button was showing through a little more than I liked, so on the subsequent ones I put a little bit of interfacing underneath the fabric and it eliminated that issue. The photo below shows the comparison but I’m not sure if you can really tell the difference (the top button had the metal shining through a bit). Anyway that’s a tip in case anyone else runs into that problem (especially with thin fabrics).

Here’s a photo of me at my second baby shower with my grandma.

Pattern: The Popover Dress from Gertie Sews Jiffy Dresses

Fabrics: Fiesta Wovens Wide Stripe Aqua (no longer available)

Trims/Notions: Bias tape for armhole trim and hem, covered button kit

Size: 10

Skill Level: Beginner/Intermediate