Refashion: Men's Shirt to Shirtdress

Found this XXL Old Navy shirt at the thrift store for $3. I thought the bright coral of the shirt was a little weird for a guy's shirt. And I'm guessing so did the guy who received this as the original Old Navy tags were still attached! Never before wore! Anyways I had been on the lookout for men's shirt that could be easily transformed into a dress. And this was the first I found that had a nice color, was in good condition and was long enough!

I started by removing the sleeves. Then I pinched in the sides for the bodice, but let the skirt flare out beginning at the waist. I wasn't happy with how the dress was fitting so I tried to make a belt out of the remants gleaned from taking the sides in. But there simply wasn't enough fabric for that! I was about to figure out how to harvest a belt from the sleeves, until I remembered I had a bit of fabric left over from shortening the skirt on this refashion.

See this refashion  Here

The two corals matched almost perfectly and now I got to add a little floral punch to this dress. Coming from two lines of packrats has taught me to save your big scraps! They can be useful when you least expect it.

Alas even after trying on the dress with the belt I wasn't happy with the way the dress fit. I examined a shirtdress I already had, and noticed the use of banana darts. So I added two the the front, starting under the bosoms and ending a little below the waist, and two to the back. Then two horizontal darts, on the side of the bosom. Finally it fit the way I wanted it to!

Then it was pocket time. Any shirtdress I own should have pockets. I removed a pocket from the shirt. But this breast pocket wasn't big enough for comfy hand resting. So, using the removed pocket as a template I cut two new ones out that were about 1" wider and 1" taller from one of the removed sleeves. And I still had some of the coral floral fabric. So I trimmed the top 1" of the pockets with it. For figuring out placement I again refered to the Shirtdress I already had.
And finally I finished  off the armholes. For some reason I kept thinking the armholes were going to be terrifyingly difficult. Instead they were actually pretty easy once I figured em out.
Lastly I changed out the boring white buttons for some coral shank buttons. 

Pockets get button love, too!