My toxic trait is seeing a piece of clothing for sale and thinking, “I can make that!” but never actually doing it.
Well over a year ago, I saw an advert for a Zimmerman dress which Navy with white polka dots and I just fell in love, until I saw the price. Over $3000 for a summer dress! No thanks – I’ll need to sell a kidney and one of mine is already acting up. Nothing haunts us like the clothing we don’t buy and although this dress is long gone in sales, I still think about it. Although one day I’ll make my Zimmerman dress, today I wanted to be simply inspired by it and use some fabric from my stash.

Way back in 2022, I made a cute floral halter neck dress using the pattern Butterick 5209 which is a vintage reproduction of a 1947 pattern. This pattern has stuck around the back of my mind and I’ve been wanting to sew it up again and to draw inspiration to the original Zimmerman dress, the halter neck finish would be a great tie in. This pattern, if I properly did some fabric draping, could be an incredible dupe, or at least a basis to such a dress, so I think it was a good point. Butterick 5209 has a halter neck front with a pointed midriff piece. The skirt I will be adding to the pattern is a circle skirt around 27 long with of course, pockets. For todays make, I will be using the size 12 as this is what fit me the best going from my last recreation of this pattern. As this pattern has two dress styles, I will be making style A as I don’t want my back covered with this particular make.

As mentioned above, the original Zimmerman dress was from Navy fabric with white spots. Whilst in Kuala Lumpur doing some fabric shopping, at a large discount store I found some gorgeous Navy with white shamrock shirt fabric (fabric designed for men’s evening shirts) at a super cheap price (around $2.70AUD) and I had 4 meters of it. This would be more than enough for my dress, the lining for the dress and a big circle skirt.

Sew, let’s get started. I started by carefully cutting out my pattern pieces making sure that the one-directional pattern of floating white shamrocks was upright. Alas, when I went about sewing some of the midriff pieces I realised that I had goofed something and my shamrocks were going sideways. Luckily, there was enough fabric to cut out more pieces but that’s part of the joys of sewing. Putting the bodice together was quite easy; the only challenge was making sure the centre gather point where the bodice pieces meet the front midriff pieces was done really well. I sewed into this point from multiple angles and really took my time marking out where I needed to get my needle. It was a bit fiddly but I’m quite happy with my efforts; I’d like to keep trying patterns such as this so my skills get better over time.

One difference I made to the original pattern, and I also did this in my previous creation of this pattern as well, was to move the zip from a side zip to a centred back zip. I have so much trauma when it comes to side zips, especially vintage zips, that if I can find a way to avoid them, I will. Moving the zip in this pattern was super straightforward; sew the sides together and leave the back open. Easy.

Whilst cutting out the pieces for my circle skirt, I knew that on some parts of my skirt, the pattern would be sideways due to the pattern placement. I did contemplate the option of just a rectangle gathered skirt but it was the softness and flow of the fabric that ultimately resulted in me just making a circle skirt and ignoring the directions of the pattern. I used a template for my circle skirt and although I thought I followed it correctly, when it came time to attaching the skirt to the dress bodice, I realised I had cut something super wrong resulting in my skirt waist being way too big and I couldn’t do anything about it. To rectify this issue, I added a front waist box pleat and this sorted out my problem. I actually really like this detail now looking at the dress complete; it was a happy accident.

Of course I added pockets but this particular pattern doesn’t have the best pockets so I will use a different pattern for next time. With my skirt attached to my bodice, the final thing I had to do was hem my skirt and give her a final press before she was declared finished.

I loved the simplicity of this dress. I’ve noticed that a lot of the fabric I buy and use is quite loud with bold prints which is sometimes a lot of fun, but other times it’s a bit much. I sometimes worry about using plain fabrics as they can look a bit boring but I think that this kind of scattered ditsy pattern was a nice way to ease into sewing with plain fabrics. I really loved using this shirting material as it cut well, didn’t fray a lot and sewed like an absolute dream. There was a lovely sturdiness to the fabric and it laid lovely over the body.

One thing I forgot about this pattern and should have been in my notes was that I couldn’t wear a bra with this top as the back was very low. I kind of wish I could have worn a bra as the halter had this odd gape on the side if not fully filled out with bosom. This wasn’t a huge problem but I did become conscious of it once I saw photos. I don’t have any of those sticky boob bra things so I might get those for the next time I wear this dress.

I ended up wearing this dress out to a cocktail bar and it was really comfortable to wear the whole time. I wish the pockets were a little deeper as I was conscious of my phone possibly falling out but overall, I felt really great in this dress. Between my first version of this pattern and this current make, I actually started to make another version of this pattern but with the fully covered back option. This dress is still in pieces but maybe one day I’ll create it. I really enjoyed making this version of Butterick 5209 and have it be inspired by Zimmerman. Sewing this dress has made me even more excited to one day create my Zimmerman dream.

Outfit details:
Earrings from Oh Hey Lovely
Shoes from Melissa

Note: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions and thoughts expressed are solely my own and not influenced in any way. There are no affiliate links and I do not benefit from any link clicks or purchases made.