Tutorial: 1960s pillowcase style shift dress
This vintage 1960s pamphlet from Coats and Clark shows how you can make a shift dress. It’s made like a pillowcase dress, but in adult sizes and with a narrower fit than a typical child’s pillowcase dress. The Pattern Patter blog shares it as a free download, courtesy of Etsy seller Retro Monkeys. The pamphlet shows how to make the dress and gives ideas for embellishing with ric rac appliques. The appliques would also be cute on little kids clothes or on vintage-inspired kitchen linens. They suggest making it from a terry cloth as a swimsuit cover up, but this would also be nice out of a knit fabric or even a lightweight woven cotton.
Click the link to view the pamphlet:
Free pattern – Shift for yourself, available at Pattern Patter blog
[photo credit Coats & Clark via Pattern Patter blog]
Looking for more Swimsuit sewing patterns? Check out these patterns for swimmers, bikinis, board shorts and swimsuits. Wanting a hard copy style pattern? Check out these Swimsuit sewing patterns
we found on Amazon.
Looking for swimsuit cover-up patterns and styles? Check out these sewing patterns on Etsy.
Don’t forget to come and join our very own Facebook Sewing group with over 70K members sharing patterns, tips, and advice.
Oh I had one of these dresses in Terry cloth! Blue and white striped and another in a pink floral terry cloth! Bath towel turned into dresses!
Yes, this would be great in a knit! Thanks for sharing.
Adorable–great for a beginning seamstress!
I have the perfect vintage terrycloth for this! Thanks!
Pinned & Tweeted 🙂
Nothing better to me than a pretty little dress that’s easy to whip up! This is a cutie!
Thanks!
Shoo, I think this is great for a 40+ years of sewing seamstress! Thanks!
Pillow case dresses a perfect for little girls. They are so cute when you can find vintage print pillow cases too.
Wonderful little dress. So easy to make and comfortable to wear.