I feel like I’ve been waiting to post about this pattern for far too long!

I was lucky enough to be one of the testers for the Stevie dress, one of the two new Tilly and the Buttons patterns that have been released this week. I’ve been sitting on it for about 3 months!

The Stevie dress and tunic is the epitome of simple style and perfect for beginners. It’s a dartless t-shirt dress for woven fabrics with grown on sleeves. It has a keyhole opening in the back with options for either a tie or button closure.

Basically it avoids any difficult techniques which makes sewing this an absolute breeze.

It’s an easy enough make that I reckon even a beginner could whip it up in half a day.

I chose to make the dress for my tester version and used a funky neon striped fabric for it and used the button closure at the back.

I found the sleeve opening slightly tight on me. Well not tight. That’s probably a bad way to describe it. More like it doesn’t have as much ease as I would like to fit my chubby arms through… 😂.

I do believe this has been changed in the final draft of this pattern though and he armholes have been lowered slightly.

(On the other hand, I also need to do a similar adjustment when I make the Bettine dress so this might be very much a “me” problem rather than the pattern by the way.)

I decided to make the dress again (in the most beautiful cotton print I got from Sew Me Sunshine) where I sized up and lowered the armholes. I wanted a loose fit minidress suitable for summer holidays! I used the ribbon closure on the back for this one!

Look at those octopi! (This dress doesn’t have to be this short by the way. I shortened it to a length that worked with my short legs! 🤣).

This pattern is great for when you’ve got a fabric that you love and you don’t want to have to have lots of seams running through it. I feel like you really have the opportunity to show off the fabric to it’s best and in this case it was a pattern and fabric match made in heaven.

I have a feeling this pattern will be a crowd pleaser!