I couldn't do a spring blog tour without a great floral fabric, so today on

Today's spring inspired outfit is the Stitch Upon A Time Shirtzie.

I put off buying the Shirtzie for a LONG time. You see, I felt like the selling feature of this dress was that it could be worn braless. I have to admit, the idea of not having to wear a bra was SO appealing. But also, I was smart enough to know that there comes a cup size at which braless is simply not an option. I suspect that cup size is somewhere in the scope of a letter D, DD or DDD. I'm a GG and have the great privilege of being affected by gravity.

I wish I was here to tell you that I was wrong. But nope, unless you're going to use compression fabric, this isn't going to give much support in the larger sizes. Many people don't care about that.  I definitely don't care about stuff like that for dresses worn to lounge around the house or those clothes you wear when it is so blazing hot in the summer that you think you might die (just sayin').

You're probably looking at this dress and thinking you don't see the "Shirtzie." I will say, I made quite a few adjustments. I started out with the cross front Shirtzie.

According to the size chart, I fit solidly into the Medium Top and Size 3 skirt. I used my usual hack of making the back for the C cup and the front DD cutting line and stretching the side seam to fit.

I did my usual length adjustments (1/2" above the bust and into the armhole) and I removed 4" from the skirt length to get the "knee" length to hit my knees.

I shortened the underbust band by just 1/2". I felt the full sized band was a tiny bit too long. Removing 1/2" helped it sit more firmly at my underbust. Also, it is easy to miss the underbust band when you use all one fabric. You can definitely use that to your advantage.

The Shirtzie short sleeve has a curved hem that scoops down toward the elbow, rather than up to make a cap sleeve. I knew that the sleeve would hit at the middle of the bust and make it look wider, so I created the opposite curve and created a cap sleeve.

I also found that the armscye was just a tiny bit too wide for my body (especially in a super stretchy rayon spandex. So I brought the armscye in about 1/2" to get a better shoulder fit. Please note, I have large deltoids (the muscle on the outside of the shoulder). So, while it doesn't look like it, the shoulder seam hits exactly on my shoulder joint. The Shirtzie sleeve has about 1" of ease built into the sleeve cap. At first I thought to remove that ease, but I found that the ease fit nicely into the armscye AND more importantly, it accommodated my deltoid.

Finally, the adjustment that changed the look of this dress. I don't like gathered skirts on my body. But I LOVE that the Shirtzie skirt is actually an a-line, not just a big rectangle. So I removed 6" from the center front of the skirt. This made the skirt just 5" larger than my underbust. Because the band has a lot of negative ease, I was worried I would have to gather the skirt to fit, but it actually eased in just fine without the gathering stitches. The skirt has a nice skimming drape over my hips and butt and does a great job of completely bypassing my "I ate too much cake at my daughter's birthday party" bloating.

I'm sure it would come as no surprise that I've already made 2 more of these dresses. The Simply By Ti rayon spandex is light and breezy while still being opaque. That means it is perfect for summer and spring dresses.



Be sure to follow along to be inspired!

April 1st: Sewing By Ti- INTRO

Monday, April 3rd Sewing By Ti
April 4th Crafty Like a Rox
April 5th The Socially Awkward Seamstress
April 6th The Socially Awkward Seamstress
April 7th Robynne and the Bobbin

Sunday April 9th Sew Like a Sloth
April 10th That's Sew Lily
April 11th Hazelnut Handmade
April 12th Doodle Number 5
April 13th Crafty Like a Rox
April 14th Sewing By Ti, Ma Moose

Monday April 17th Anne Mari Sews, Robynne and the Bobbin
April 18th Rebel and Malice
April 19th Very Blissful
April 20th The Fairy Dust Bin
April 21st Sewing By Ti *** YOU are here 😉

Sunday April 23rd On Wednesdays We Sew
April 24th Tenille's Thread
April 25th Ma Moose
April 26th Margarita on the Ross
April 27th The Socially Awkward Seamstress
April 28th Sewing By Ti