Retro-Style Shirt-Collar Dress Pattern Design for Little Girls

Looking for a Retro-Style Shirt-Collar Dress Pattern for you little girl? Our tutorial shows you how to remake a basic pattern into a lay-open collar pattern.

My niece sews the most darling dresses for her little girls. Lately, I saw she had changed a basic blouse pattern without a collar into an open neck design with a tiny pointy collar. It was the cutest retro style for a little girl.

We talked about how she had done it, and why. She says you can’t buy that style of pattern for little girls right now. And also, she knew the basic pattern she had fit her daughter, and she didn’t want to have to spend time fitting a new pattern.

Are there more of you who want a retro-look collared dress for your girls?

I happen to have a lot of old patterns from the days my MIL sewed. When Kim was born she gave them all to me, and I could not throw such treasures away. So now I dug into the stash and found one I could use to show you how to hack your basic pattern into a shirt-collar style.

How to Redesign a Basic Round-Neck Bodice Pattern into a Retro-Style Shirt-Collar Dress

Here’s a step by step tutorial to transform a regular round neck front bodice without a collar into a front bodice with a retro-style collar that lays open like a shirt collar:

Supply List:

• Your basic round neck pattern with set in sleeves. You will re-style the blouse front.
• Pattern design paper such as alpha-numeric marked by the inch paper or sew-able and drape-able Swedish paper.
• Scissors, pins, measuring tape or ruler, pen/pencil, pattern weights.

Step 1: Redesign the basic blouse front pattern

1. You only need to change the blouse front if you are using a pattern for knits and the finished garment pulls over the head like a tee.
2. Place the pattern on your pattern making paper, center front 5/8th inch from the edge. You are adding a seam to make it look like a button front blouse. Mark the center front and neck seam with a dotted line. Cut out the pattern.

Step 2: Design the retro shirt style collar

1. For this step you need the front and back blouse pieces of your original pattern.
2. Place the pieces on the table, lining up the seam lines of the shoulder seams.
3. Measure all around the neck at the seam line from the center back to the center front seam line.
4. This measurement is the length of the collar. On a rectangle piece of paper, mark the length of the collar on one straight edge of the paper. Mark one end the center back, and the other the center front. Add a seam to the center front. The center back will be cut on a fold.
5. Make the rectangle twice the width you want the collar to be, plus 2 seams. If you want a 1.5″ wide collar, you will cut the rectangle 4.25″ inches wide, allowing for a 5/8th inch seam. Look at number 6 in the second image below. Notice we cut a curve on the neck seam from the front to the center back. The collar center front will be 1.5″ wide (plus seam) and the center back will be 1.25″ (plus seam).
6. Place the center back of the rectangle on a fold of fabric, and cut around the edges.
7. Fold the fabric in half the long way, inside out. Sew a seam on each end, and turn right side out. If the seam is bulky. trim some of it off. Press the seams and the fold.
8. Your collar is ready to fit onto the neck seam of your garment’s blouse.

Now you have your Retro-Style Shirt Collar Pattern.

If you have any questions, be sure to comment below.

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