Valentino Inspired ~ Butterick 5821

Every time I visit the Mood NYC store, I stroll by the ponte aisle and lately I haven't been disappointed.  I always find something new and unusual there. When I found this fabric, which I'm calling a laminated ponte, I knew immediately that I wanted to make a dress with it using Butterick 5821.

Now the pattern envelope isn't that inviting but the line drawings highlight a dress with so much potential.   I knew the laminated ponte and a stud trim that I picked up from Mood's trim department would yield an amazing dress.  All of my musings on how I was inspired to make this dress can be found in this post.

Some stats:
Fabric ~
Laminated Ponte from Mood Fabrics NYC Store

Notions ~
22" brown invisible zipper
black bemberg lining
Stud & Pleather trim also from Mood Fabrics NYC Store
1" black lace 

Construction Details ~
As usual there were quite a few pattern alterations done to the pattern to make it fit me. I started with my TNT dress pattern, making a pattern sandwich with it, the pattern pieces from Butterick 5821 and some tracing paper.

New pattern pieces were made insuring that the most important things from my TNT dress pattern, like making sure the bust dart was in the right place and that the pattern was wide enough for my body were copied to the new pieces.

After pattern alterations were done, I moved onto cutting out the fabric.  I knew I wanted to highlight both the "right" and "wrong" sides of the fabric on the front of the dress, sort of like a checkerboard.  So I used a single layout to cut the dress front pattern pieces to achieve that look.

Applying the Trim ~
My first step was to add some Steam-A-Seam2 to the back of the trim, then hand press it down to the dress front to hold the trim in place while I applied it to the dress front.  Then I added a few pins in strategic places to further insure that the trim didn't move on the dress front while it was being applied.  I did try to apply the pleather/stud trim to the front of the dress by using my zipper foot to stitch it down...but the zipper foot kept hitting the larger studs so that was a no go.

Handstitching ended up being the only way to get the trim added to the front of the garment in an unobtrusive way...but how? Slipstitch the edges or use small stitches down the front? I went with handstitching it down using very, very small stitches on the front and longer ones on the back.  This was perfect.  The pics above are close ups of the application.  The good thing is that it works and isn't very obvious unless you're very close to me.  I can live with it!

Working with the fabric ~
I'm calling this a laminated ponte...I don't know if that's it's real name but that's what it seems like to me...because the fabric has a shiny front and a dull back. It's just like working with regular ponte. I didn't do anything differently except for lowering the temp on my iron, otherwise it sewed just like any other ponte I've worked with. I used a straight stitch length of 2.9 on my Janome 6600P, a size 80 Universal needle and serge finished all of the pieces prior to construction.

Additional Construction Details ~
Besides the checkerboard application on the front of the dress, the rest of the dress' construction was pretty straightforward. I did end up omitting the sleeves. I made them and even started to put them into the dress but they weren't working. So since I'm always hot anyway I will wear a cardigan with this dress, sleeveless works.

I did have to use the zipper foot to stitch the lining to the dress and to edgestitch the lining into the dress to avoid the first stud on the trim ~ it's a bigun.  

I also added lace to the hem of the lining.  It just seemed like the perfect complement to the rocker chic front of the dress.  Y'know hard and soft! 

The Finished Dress ~
I was really pleased with how the fabric and trim made this dress shine.  It's a little edgy but not too edgy for my very corporate work atmosphere...though I won't be wearing this dress on the days that we have important clients and meetings going on in the office!

A few more views...

This was actually my first finished garment of 2012 but since it was my Mood garment for January, I'm just now sharing it here.  With this dress' reveal that brings my sewcation total to four pieces...not as much as in sewcations past but except for the last dress...they were all very involved projects.  I had a great wallow in my creativeness and am thrilled with my final pieces.  I'll have a wrap up post next and I promise I will answer all of the questions you left!

...as always more later!