Page Dress + Top Hack

Page Dress by Elbe Textiles

The Page Dress is a sleeveless style with subtle cutaway armholes and a high neckline. The pattern includes a number of options which you can mix and match, including in-seam pockets, button stands, tucks and side splits or it can be left as a classic shift dress.

We picked View A, the calf-length button-up dress featuring tucks running down the front and back bodice and made up a size B (B cup) for Frankie. This used 2.1 metres of our Vintage Finish Linen - Acorn and 3.25m of matching Bias Binding. The fit turned out to be perfect for Frankie and no alterations were required! Elbe Textiles recommend this pattern for intermediate level sewists, which we would agree with. The tucks require careful attention and we suggest reading through the instructions in full before you begin. We found it was easier to mark each new tuck line out after sewing the previous row, to stop the chalk rubbing off across the whole panel as you sew. There is also a handy tutorial on the Elbe Textiles website for sewing tucks here.

We also decided to hack this pattern into a top; how cute does it look?! Annelise is also wearing a size B and we followed View B, the option with no tucks. We hemmed our top at 22cm below the waist tie casing with a 2cm double fold and this length took 1.3m of our Vintage Finish Linen in Denim.

The Page Dress is available as a PDF download pattern from the Elbe Textiles website here.

Vintage Finish Linen in Denim and Acorn

Elbe recommend using any natural woven fabrics such as cotton, lightweight/ midweight linen and cotton voile. If you choose to make up View A, be careful not to pick a slippery fabric like rayon, as it may prove difficult when sewing the tucks. Check out our suggestions below, from top to bottom, Liberty Tana Lawn - Laura / C, Stretch Cotton Shirting - Ochre, Cotton Chambray - Classic Blue and Lightweight Printed Stripe Linen - Navy.