The older I get, the pickier I get. Or perhaps more charitably, the better I know my own likes and dislikes.

I’ve been trying to buy new everyday summer dresses for several years, but can’t find anything that’s to my liking. All I want is simple sleeveless knee-length dresses in cotton jersey, with a minimum of fuss. No ruffles, gathers, drapes, panels, cutouts or anything. When the weather is hot and I’m all sweaty, I want no extra seams touching me. But the current fashion is all about fussy details, and besides, jersey dresses currently tend to either be mini-short or maxi-long.

I’ve got two comfy home dresses that I actually like, both about 10 years old. In desperation I’ve bought two others – because it’s hard to get through a hot summer with just two – but they’ve both got scratchy “stuff” so I only end up wearing them in emergencies.

As usual, necessity is the mother of crafting. I bought several bolts of nice jersey fabric at the crafts fair in February, as well as some basic dress patterns.

I haven’t really sewn much clothing before. Plenty of curtains, sofa cushions, dress-up costumes etc, but nothing that actually needs to fit. One can get away with all sorts of hacks and shortcuts when sewing a wizard hat in polar fleece – but not with a dress.

The pattern looked like the clothing patterns I remember my mum tracing from Burda Moden magazines in the 1980s. Except the Burda pattern sheets had tens of items all on the same sheet, so you had to trace the ones you wanted, whereas these modern ones are apparently meant for single use. I couldn’t make myself cut up my pattern, though – because what if I want a different size or something – so I traced it onto some old plastic shopping bags.

The scary thing about sewing, as compared to knitting for example, is that once you cut, you can’t undo it. With knitting you can just rip it up and reuse the yarn, but that doesn’t really work with fabric. I like my undo buttons.

To properly sew in jersey you’re supposed to use an overlocker, rather than an ordinary sewing machine, but I’m not going to spend thousands of kronor on a sewing machine when what we have works perfectly fine. I just zig-zagged everything. The seams don’t look as professional as overlocked ones, but they’re stretchy enough to be functional, and nobody is going to inspect my seams up close.

Getting a basic dress cut out and assembled – two short shoulder seams, two long side seams – took a couple of hours. And then all the hemming and finishing took the same again. The pattern even had neckline banding. The whole thing came out looking pretty smart.

I couldn’t think of a good way to photograph the finished thing, so I’ll have to take a selfie of me wearing it when it’s warm enough.

PS: The blog archives remind me that I have actually sewn two skirts.