Sis Boom Carolina Mae with Polka Dots

I'm addicted to making Sis Boom / Scientific Seamstress dresses - like this one!

The Carolina Mae was originally meant to be made with an empire/high-ish waist with a gathered skirt, but being the troublemaker that I am, I just had to make some adjustments.

1. The ruched bodice stays, because the poofiness makes it extra comfortable and acceptable to wear sans brassiere. The only changes to the pattern were that the shoulder and side seams were taken in 0.5" each to accommodate my ridiculously narrow torso. There is still a little bit of gaping, so I might take tanother 0.5" at the shoulders and hope that the gape disappears.

2. Empire lines aren't the most flattering and make me look like I'm 5 years old. This was a simple fix though. I have used the midriff from the Jenny dress, but I could also have just lengthened it so it just hits my waist.

3. Changed the gathered skirt into a full circle. It's been a while since I'd made a full circle skirt since I'm such a stingy tightwad and circle skirts are just about the most fabric-consuming style. Fortunately because I'm practically a hobbit at 5'0", I was able to just barely squeeze out an 18" length skirt from a standard 45" width fabric.

This is the most genius thing ever! No more wonky freehand drawing of circle skirt pattern pieces! It's a downloadable pdf of circle templates.

Should have worn better shoes :/

This happy print you see here has large irregular chirpy polka dots on a navy background, in a feather light cotton lawn. The lining is also a white lawn and together, it makes the dress virtually weightless and the perfect thing to wear when it is 35 degrees Celsius (= 95 degrees Fahrenheit) and 90% humidity. I kid you not, this is Singapore weather for you.

And the best thing about circle skirts? TWIRLING!!

I think my hair looks gorgeous here

Twirling!!!

More twirling!!! 0.5 seconds before I lost my balance

4. Oh and one more thing. The zipper is hand-picked instead of attached by machine. This is my favourite way of attaching zippers because the effect is a virtually invisible stitch on the outside. Also because hand-sewing can be especially therapeutic and nerve-calming (my *sshole chinchilla escaped barely 15 minutes of putting him in a larger new cage ... he was romping around in my sewing room and attempting to chew up my precious vintage patterns).

Can you see the pick-stitches? Can you pretend not to see the pick-stitches?

I will most likely sew up another CM with the shortened shoulder seams and maybe a different skirt. I think it will look really sleek with a fitting straight/pencil shape!