Lemonade Stand Shirt Dress (Simplicity 8014)

This past week has felt like a month as a vicious stomach flu has ravaged our family, giving me a day between kids to do the laundry and change sheets before a new one would wake up crying in the middle of the night in a mess. Yuck! Mike and I were the last to fall and I am just now starting to feel normal again, but with that week of being stuck at home under quarantine I worked on this lovely lemon shirt dress off and on and then waited a few days to make sure I was recovered enough to wear it. And today is that day!

I was inspired by this lovely lemon shirt dress from GalMeetsGlam. I love her aesthetic, her whole wardrobe!, and her world travel experiences.

I used Simplicity 8014, which was so many great reviews and iterations online, and now I know why! It’s a perfect little pattern, with wonderful touches you can add or change. I think I’ll use it several times to make different variations. I cut and sewed the size 10 with no alternations and it fits perfectly. That’s happy!

I used this wonderful lemon cotton fabric by Art Gallery Fabrics from Fabric.com. Its feels so nice. Since it has a light background, I used some off-white lining fabric from Grandma’s Stash and lined the bodice and skirt. I wanted it to be lightweight but not worry about see-through legs! It feels wonderful to wear.

I had several different ideas for the sleeves before the final product. I originally planned to add the tab, but I only had 12 of these buttons and I used them all down the dress (I put the buttons 3″ apart rather than using the button guide, and I used 12 instead of 11, even if I always keep the bottom one and top two unbuttoned). So I didn’t have enough buttons to use one on each tab. Then I played around with the cuff on the sleeves before I finally did it this way and top-stitched it twice to keep it from folding down.

I also cut and and prepared the bodice pockets and pinned them on to the bodice while it was on Louise, but I didn’t like the way they lay with the bust dart or the way they disrupted the pattern of the fabric, and I knew I would never actually put anything in them anyway.

So the sleeve tabs became belt loops, which I placed at each of the 4 pleats on the waistline.

The shirt even has a back yoke, which I like a lot.

I had several options for buttons and I was going to ask my IG friends which one I should use, but I just really liked these the best so I just went ahead and used them without asking anyone! They are from my Grandma’s Stash, vintage emerald green buttons made in Italy, and I love how little they are and how well the color matches the touches of green on the lemons.