Basics Pinafore Dress and Tunic

February 27, 2025 1 Comment

A few weeks ago we were offered some fabric from Fabric Wholesale Direct, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to make a couple of simple garments I wanted to have for myself this spring and summer, and show them off to you.  

Fabric Wholesale Direct is sponsoring this post, and they specialize in discounted wholesale fabric for designers, event planners, fabric retailers, and more.  They have a variety of fabrics from linen, to silk, to upholstery.  They also have a referral program, so if your friends also want to shop there, you can get store credit.

First I made the Pinafore Dress from their cotton/poly blend that looks very much like linen (it comes in several colors).  This dress is so simple and this fabric is great for a summer -- lightweight and easy to care for.  I've made this dress before in a stripe like this and I love the look.  You can check out my post about how to make the extended back hack, or you can make it just like the pattern, as I did with this one.  I made a size small because there is plenty of ease in the hips (where I go to size Medium in our grade rule).  It fits well, and I like that I put the buttonholes a few inches up from the end of the straps -- this helps it fit a little closer on the chest.  The fabric stripes are fun because you can play with their direction.  I changed the pocket and strap stripe directions for some fun contrast.  This fabric is wide enough that I could cut the dress with vertical stripes.  I really like this dress (and I love the color), and I'll be wearing it a lot this summer on hot days, at the beach, and over tanks or T-shirts, but also this spring with a long sleeve (as below, last photos).

Fabric Wholesale Direct has a nice selection of silk charmeuse, which I find to be a difficult fabric to source online.  The weight of this charmeuse is perfect for tops and dresses, and there were lots of colors to choose from.  I thought of our Basics Tunic as a great pattern to show off a nice silk charmeuse.  Not to mention, I have been wanting a simple silk top to wear with jeans or leggings.  The Basics Tunic is a very wide pattern and requires 60" fabric to be able to cut the pattern, for all sizes.  However, the silk is only 44" wide.  I always find yardages to be more of suggestions, and that with some thought and creativity, I can often work around yardage and cutting layout challenges.  First, if you want to make the Basic Tunic and don't have 60" wide fabric, you can cut the fabric with a center front and back seam.  Just add 1/2" seam allowance to the center, and cut at the fold line (with the 1/2" seam allowance added).  Or you can do what I did and make the sleeves shorter.  To do this, you just adjust the length of the sleeve by making a parallel line to the current cut edge, but as short as you want the sleeve to go.  Or you can fold out the amount you want to shorten.  Just be sure to keep the width of the pattern piece so the sleeve is not too tight (it was almost too tight for me). 

You can see that the sleeve is too long for the width of the fabric.

This is how short the sleeve needs to be.  You could cut at the red line, or fold out the extra pattern.  

Here the extra pattern is folded out.  If you do this, be sure to widen the sleeve end to the original width so that the sleeve won't be too tight.

I also made a size Small for this pattern.  And another pro-tip for making this Tunic is to make a thread eye for the hook in the back, if you are going for a hook-and-eye closure.  And check out our sewing tutorial for this pattern here.  

And if you find silk charmeuse to be a tricky fabric to sew with (and I'm not sure who doesn't ), check out our sewing tips for sheer and slinky fabrics here.  

This is an easy and quick pattern to make and this silk makes it feel luxurious to wear!

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