This year I binge watched Mad Men series. This dress is a Betty Draper style dress – work in progress. My luck Screen Rant rated the original Betty dress as ‘meh’. Not in my eyes it’s not.
This calico has a floral stripe on it so I used Simplicity 2215 as my dress basis. The dress has a sort of fitted bodice and a pleated skirt and pockets. Must have pockets in everything.

I may have gone ‘mad’ sewing the pleats on the front and back of this dress but it worked for me.
The stripes are evenly printed on this fabric so creating the pleats on the bodice and shorter pleats on the skirt was easy enough to do. I must say, this calico holds its own and makes the home sewn pleating process very accurate.

My sewing nerd mind was in 5th gear as I also made sure the prints in each pleat matched. This would have been a harder task to do if the fabric was softer and drapey.

On the Betty Draper dress, there are only bodice 3 stripes/pleats.
It’s currently hot and humid now in Sydney and I love wearing this dress. The calico breathes well and the style is very forgiving on me.

You’ll definitely find this post and more on my Minerva Brand Ambassador page. I love sewing for Minerva and sharing my makes with you.