In the spirit of being able to make what I want to wear, this cerise pink fabric has allowed me to be Barbie. Barbie the movie is everywhere.

I’m not a spring chicken anymore but Barbie has been reinvented to be any person you want her to be.

In my case Barbie is a mature sewist who can make and wear what she wants.

End of rant.

I’ve used Vogue 8906 a few times now and more specifically as a dress.

Vogue developed this pattern for tops with 3 versions.

For the life of me I have made this top into a dress a few times now.

There are these interesting inverted pleats at the front and back waist for a hint of waist definition.

This poplin fabric is a lovely weight to develop a brilliant shirt from. In my case I decided to use this fabric for a dress.

I know our Summer to come will be as hot as it is right now in the northern hemisphere so a dress like this will help.

As you can see, there’s not much to making this top.

In my case I increased the hip width to give me lots of wiggle room.

Initially I added 40 cm to the hem for a dress. Well I do think I’m quite tall but I’m not.

When I eventually hemmed this dress I removed a good 8cm off the hem. Maths is not my strong point but removing the length from a dress hem takes patience.

I initially removed 5 cm off the hem. I wore the shoes that I wanted to wear this dress with while I was checking the dress hem.

There were many pins on the floor by the ironing board.

At the second hemming try I removed another 3 cm from the hem. Small increments off the hem length meant I could really figure out would work for my height. My advice is take hemming at a pace that doesn’t stress you out.

The inverted pleats need tweaking to suit your individual curves. In my case I added the front curves once I sewed up the dress, before hemming the dress.

Once I was happy with the front pleats, I increased the height of the back inverted pleats.

I didn’t have a cerise invisible zipper so I used a white invisible zipper. The zipper wasn’t quite long enough I sewed the zipper 6cm below the neckline so there’s a small gap at the back neckline.

That’s my quick workaround when I can’t find a zipper in my stash that quite fits the required notions of a pattern. It works quite well.

The long sleeve length was a bit tricky. I ended up shortening them to ‘bracelet’ length for a bit of balance.

So there we have it.

I am Barbie. So can you!