Kalle Kalikimaka

When winter gives me a bad case of the gray-sky glums, it helps me to just make something a little frivolous and fun. It also helps to get away.

I've been wanting to make a Kalle shirtdress since before it even had that name, back when Heather of Closet Case Patterns made it a year and a half ago. I could never find quite the right fabric or look that I wanted, so I just held off on it.

I was at Porco, our local tiki bar, and everyone was wearing Hawaiian shirts, even the imbibers, and there I sat stewing with jealousy in my flannel shirt. The very next day I started this Kalle. It's very important to have the right outfit for occasions like these.

This Liberty print is part of their new Spring / Summer collection, which we ordered in late fall and came at just the right time. Even though I am not a pink girl, I really love this hot coral color, which I would definitely describe as pink.

This is View A of the Kalle, which is a cropped button-up shirt. The only change I made was to lengthen the front by 4" to make it roughly the same length as the back, but I think it ended up a little longer than the back. Oh, and I finished the hem with bias tape rather than a facing. A facing would have been too much structure for the hem, I think.

In keeping with the tropical vibes, the buttons are coconut husk with blue resin. You can really splurge on buttons with this shirt -- I only needed four.

Making a muslin would have been a good idea. When I first tried this on, I wasn't too keen on the volume or the length or the dramatically curved hem. It is quite voluminous. But the more I wore it, the more the style started growing on me, and now I love it. It's a little out of my comfort zone, as it's definitely a statement shirt, but it's so fun to wear.

One thing I have trouble with is wearing it in cold weather. This type of sleeve doesn't wear well under a cardigan, and since this print already straddles the line between tropical and old lady, I think this will have to be a summer shirt.

This is totally a Closet Case outfit. Based on how tight my pants are, you might think these are the skinny Ginger Jeans, but in fact they are the Morgan Jeans. I wrote about the here. I made them in a medium-weight linen that relaxes by the end of the day and I have to pull them up, but at first they're nice and tight and I surprisingly don't find them uncomfortable at all. And my shorts in the first photo are also the Morgan Jeans, but short, obviously.