It has been a LONG time coming, but I’ve finally revamped all my ePatterns as gridded sheets with tile numbers and match-up lines.

I’ve known Jennifer from Historical Sewing for over 20 years, and I was delighted when she asked me to be a guest on her wonderful sewing podcast this month.

Now that we’ve made it through the holidays and have had a chance to draw breath, I feel good about moving forward on several new projects.

I am absolutely delighted to announce that Sense & Sensibility Patterns will be a vendor at the Jane Austen Festival July 12-14 in Louisville, Kentucky.

In this post, I'm going to walk you through the steps I've taken so far to adjust my Girls' Classic 1950s Shirt Dress pattern to fit my measurements...and what I've had to un-do. As I mentioned in my first post, my goal with this project is to create a dress that is a fairly close reproduction of the 1957 original but without having to draft a totally new pattern.

In early 2010, while hunting for retro-style dresses that I could wear while nursing my baby daughter, I found a deadstock 1950s shirt dress for sale on eBay. Incredibly, I snagged it for only $25, and it was a perfect fit. I really loved the style with its curved collar, self-cuffed sleeves, and pleated skirt. I'd been telling myself for a couple of years that it was time to branch into 1950s patterns, but I hadn't been struck with inspiration for a new design until I got and wore that dress.

There are some days that opening my in-box leaves me with an especially huge smile on my face. I always love to hear from my customers, but I have a special place in my heart for the youngsters--the ones who discovered their love of sewing early on while using my patterns or while reading through helpful posts on the Message Forum, encouraged by fellow sewists all the way.