Summer Seren-ade
I just love sundresses, don’t you? The Tilly and the Buttons Seren Dress is the quintessential summer dress – I just had to make two. The pattern is easy enough for a beginner and sews up quickly, and even though it’s by no means perfect, I would still recommend it to sewists of all levels for a good quality, classic dress.
The Pattern
Pattern Description
Tilly describes this dress as a “flirty button-down dress…perfect for picnics in the park or cocktails under the stars”, and it is – it’s easy to wear and perfect for hot days. It comes in two lengths – at the knee or midi – and options for a neckline flounce or tie-front bodice. I made both of my Serens knee-length, since I found the midi-length overwhelmed my frame.
Sizing
Seren runs from a size 30” bust to 44” bust, so it’s a pretty narrow size range with more options at the bottom of the range. Sizes run from 1 to 8, which roughly correspond to a UK 6 to UK 20. I started with a size 3.
Pattern Adjustments
Boy did I need to adjust this pattern! The block used for the Seren dress was so different from my body, that I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but it turned out there was one adjustment that was key to unlocking the right fit.
Because of the separate waistband and lack of bust, waist and hip markers, I would highly recommend doing a muslin of the dress bodice – it’s just too hard to get a good fit otherwise. My first muslin was all sorts of wrong, but the biggest problem stemmed from the length of the bodice, which is designed for someone much longer waisted than I am. After shortening the bodice by 1 ¾ inches (if I need to shorten a bodice, I usually shorten it by ½” to ¾” of an inch), the fit was a million times better and I was able to diagnose the remaining fit issues. To get the right fit, I lowered, extended and deepened the darts.
Design Modifications
I didn’t make any design modifications, but I did need to add a tiny snap to the top of the dress with the neckline flounce; otherwise, the weight of the flounce made the neckline a little too floppy.
Construction Tips and Tricks
The instructions call for you to stitch the bottom waistband “in the ditch” rather than hand sewing it. Other than sewing buttonholes, nothing makes me sweat more than stitching in the ditch. I know perfection is not the goal, but boy is it hard to do neatly when the thread perfectly matches your fabric! I was really frustrated with my blue and white Seren (more on that below), so I didn’t want to take extra time to hand finish it, but slip stitching the bottom waistband would give a cleaner finish.
Remember to hang your dress for at least 24 hours before hemming. The skirt side seams are cut on the bias, so they are likely to stretch as they hang.
Pro tip: If you ever catch yourself serging your skirt seams after midnight, only to have some of the skirt fabric get caught under the blade of the serger, fret not! If you have a nice clean cut in your fabric you may be able to save it with a little fusible interfacing. My heart dropped when I realized that the skirt of my red Seren got sliced by my serger, but by fusing a little interfacing to the inside of the dress, I was able to invisibly mend the skirt and it held up well after washing. Crisis averted!
The Fabric and Haberdashery
I found the fabric recommendations for Seren to be very accurate. So accurate that I fell short by a bit and had to buy extra fabric for my flounce and couldn’t pattern match my stripes (although I did get lucky with perfect chevrons along the left side seam).
The red version is the aptly named Summer Dress Dreams Art Gallery Rayon Challis from Stonemountain and Daughter, and the blue version is a linen-rayon blend from Stonemountain that is sold out.
If you decide to make your Seren in stripes, remember that the pattern as drafted has a self-fold placket, so you will need to pattern match at the button line. From Tilly’s inspiration photos, I loved the idea of doing a contrasting directional button placket, and cut my fabric accordingly, only to realize that it’s not workable as-drafted. Oh well.
Keywords: Pattern Review, Tilly and the Buttons Seren Dress Pattern Review, Seren Dress Pattern Review