The first pattern I ever discovered from Fibre Mood was the Fibre Mood Susan Shirt Dress. And, from that moment, I wanted a bold striped one, akin to the version that adorned the front cover of edition no. 3, way back in 2019.

Weren’t those different days for many of us!

Well, after a couple of years, I’ve finally gotten around to creating it!

When I saw this viscose georgette from The Fabric Store – which is basically made up of all my favourite colours (if only the red was pale pink, it would have been absolute perfection!), I knew it was the one!

And here is what I have to show for it all – the striped shirt dress of my dreams! I love this one, guys!

My Fibre Mood Susan

My Fibre Mood Susan is a size XL. The measurement charts actually had me at an L alnost everywhere, but I saw that this would have given me only 2cm ease on the upper arm, which is not enough for me to feel comfortable – let my upper arms be free!

So I sized up to a size XL and feel like it is a pretty good fit, especially for such a light and fluid fabric. It is very comfortable to wear.

Now, this sewing experience was a one of those times where I kind of let artificially imposed sewing deadlines take over the process somewhat.

I had put this Fibre Mood Susan on my “to sew” dress for February and I was therefore determined to finish it in February!. Even if that meant a few silly shortcuts!

For example, I didn’t muddle through the burrito method but just visibly overlocked my shoulder seam. I also made a cheat’s sleeve packet using the fold-over technique from The Assembly Line Oversized Shirt.

The striped fabric was somewhat transparent so I needed to line it. Again, in the interests of being fast, rather than devising a proper lining, I simply underlined the front and back pieces. Because the only thing more of a pain than sewing with a piece of shifty stretchy-out viscose is sewing with two of them together!

I didn’t really look at the instructions much. I have to say that I had some issues sewing this Susan Dress. The neckline was way to big for the collar (I had to re-cut a new collar) and my sleeve pieces were too big for the armhole. But I am completely willing to attribute these to the fact that I was working very fast with the kind of fabric that grows and distorts the moment you even look at it!

Style choices

As designed, the Fibre Mood Susan is genuinely maxi maxi-length on me. I could almost step on it at the heels (I’m 168 cm tall).

I cut three inches off the length and then included a very wide hem in order to get my version to its current length.

By way of other modifications, I also added in-seam pockets (which are slightly too low!). Sewing pattern designers, this is why you should always just add optional pockets to all your designs!! There are sewists out there like me who have a magical ability to always put pockets either too low or too high when placing them myself.

And, even if your design includes breast pockets, I think we all need to acknowledge that this is form of pocket that is for aesthetics and not functionality. I have a couple of Olya Shirt Dresses where I skipped adding in-seam pockets as I thought the breast pockets would suffice and I am basically constantly picking up my phone from the floor when it falls out of my breast pocket while bending.

Lesson learned!

I ultimately decided to skip the breast pockets for my Fibe Mood Susan Dress – although I quite like the look of them in the pattern design. When I placed them on my dress, it just looked a bit too much! Thanks to a quick insta poll, I also saw that 75% of you agreed that I should skip the pockets – there’s nothing quite like imbuing a bit of democracy into your own personal wardrobe.

So I decided to keep it minimalist and skip the breast pockets.

Hah! Minimalist, says the woman wearing the clown-coloured dress!

The other choice I tried to make was that I wanted to make a self-tie belt which was much wider than the one included in the pattern. To my dismay, I did not have enough fabric to do so. Further, I could only barely piece together the narrower belt included in the pattern!

However, once I tried on my Fibre Mood Susan on with this belt from my collection (“collection” – that’s me trying to come up with a fancy name for my messy top drawer filled with random accessories), I knew that there was no need for the fabric belt. This belt is, for me, perfection with this Susan Dress – I will never wear it with anything else.

(For the record, this Fibre Mood Susan also looks pretty horrid unbelted on me but I can get away with it worn open as a crazy outer layer)

And so that is the story of my long-awaited Fibre Mood Susan Dress. I’ve worn it a couple of times so far and have had comments each time. Which is pretty extraordinary since, in times of COVID-19 and social distancing, making causal comments about other’s outfits actually requires some effort!

If you want to see more of my sewing adventures, you can find me on Instagram here.