Butterick 5600 - Pattern Alterations

Once I decided to use my TNT dress pattern as the basis for my pattern alterations, fit became a non-issue in getting the dress started.  It was so easy once that step was added...so even though I will show you the pattern alteration pictures...I think the thing that should be taken away from this exercise is that everyone should have a TNT pattern or sloper that they can use to make alterations to their patterns.  If you have alot of alterations to make, using a sloper/TNT pattern definitely makes the job alot easier.

Pattern Alterations:
That being said...I made a pattern sandwich for the dress front - my TNT dress pattern, the Butterick 5600 dress front piece and a piece of my lovely Dick Blick tracing paper.  (I love that stuff, btw!)  Once you lay the three pieces together its so easy to see where to trace to get the necessary width for the dress. 

The only tricky part is to remember to add the front yoke piece so you have an accurate reading of how the dress lands.  I did change the dart on the dress based upon my TNT dress pattern...it's a little lower on the Butterick piece.  So I added width, length and altered the dart for the front piece.

Since the back has a yoke, I laid the TNT dress back pattern, the back yoke and the back lower piece and then the tracing paper to form my pattern sandwich.  Again, adding the necessary width was a breeze with the TNT pattern beneath the Butterick pattern.

I also adjusted the short sleeve pattern for my bodacious biceps.  I'm using View C with the tabbed sleeves for my rendition.

Cutting:
Cutting out was interesting because I had to make sure that the front and back pieces ended at the exact same spot. To insure that I had a continuous border print, the front and back pieces were laid side by side...I even measured from the selvedge to make sure they were equal.  Then how to use the darker areas of the border print to highlight the fabric was another choice to be made...but it's all cut out as evidenced below:

And that's where I left it last night when I went to bed...this morning though I woke up thinking that this dress needs a lining.  My linen is a little lightweight and you know I hate see-through...and I think I dreamed how to add a lining to the construction process...

Anyway, I'm off to sew for a few hours...

...more later!