Flirty Shirt Dress

I absolutely love it when a "hmmmm" turns into an investigation which in turn becomes a fabulously fun project and ends in the creation of something I will actually love to wear! My last post was a love affair with the shirt from VogueV8747, adorable and with a twist at the neckline that gave it some feminine softness. I planned on making another one and then I wondered "how would that shirt look lengthened and turned into a shirt dress?" I've never been drawn to shirt dresses because there is something so tailored about them and that is so not me. So I wondered, with the cute neckline on V8747, what else could I add to a shirt dress that would kick it up and notch and make it a little more girly? I already knew I needed to extend the princess lines of the blouse to create a dress so I went to my pattern stash to see what I might have on hand that would simplify that process. And then I found McCall's5523. How cute would it be for the back of the shirt dress to have one of these little flounces! Look how the lines of these 2 patterns fit together:

 It looked like the lines of both would coincide and, in fact, they did, with amazing precision:

In order to assure that the sections would all be the same length I measured the sections of the pattern that overlapped and made each overlapping section the same length. There may be more precise methods but this worked really well for me.

I added the collar to this shirt dress and felt like it still needed a little something extra so I put some flap pockets on the front:

This was a fun project and relatively simple. I look forward to getting some sun on my legs and weather a little warmer to wear my flirty shirt dress!