Butterick 5600 Done

This dress has been done for awhile...actually before my two week blogging hiatus.  It has been hanging waiting for all of the meetings at my job to be finished so that it can be worn...because it definitely does not fit into the "professional" look necessary for those meetings.

I am busting out all of my floral dresses this week as an antidote to all the black, black/white, navy and gray that I've worn for the last month.  This will be one of the first ones I wear.  However, even tho' I have a completed dress, I would call this pattern a fail and I'm not sure that it's the pattern's fault.  Let's tell the truth here...I must of been delusional when I thought I would be able to make the belt portion of this dress work for me.  I have no discernable waistline on the front of me...babies, age, menopause and a refusal to work out have robbed me of a front waistline...and the only reason I appear to have one in the back is because I've been blessed with the family booty...not all female members of my family have...

So after much fussing with...adding and removing it from the fabric...making a sash and tying it a multitude of ways...my DD echoed what I was thinking when she said I was fighting a losing battle.  Here is my version of the Butterick 5600 dress styled two different ways:

without the sash

with the sash & a tank top beneath the dress

Some stats:

Fabric:
Blue linen border print from Elliot Berman

Notions:
8 blue buttons from GStreet Fabrics in Rockville
White rayon ambiance lining
scraps of pro-weft interfacing from Pams
blue rayon hem tape

I discussed the pattern alterations in this post.  The changes I made to the construction of this dress are:

1.  I underlined all of the dress pieces with lining fabric by basting the fabric and lining pieces together and then serging them.  The linen is a little lightweight and see-through.  Adding the lining gave the finished dress a little heft and eliminated any sheerness.

2.  I omitted the tabs on the sleeves.  To make them work I had to make the sleeves tighter and I liked the looseness of the sleeves.  Which came about because I enlarged the bicep area of the sleeve quite a bit and then I cut the sleeve on the bias thus causing the sleeve hem to have a little more give. 

3.  The band at the neckline was cut from the darker end of the border print.  The original dress also had tabs cut from the darker border but as noted above they weren't working for me so I left them off.

4.  Without a belt this is just a short sleeve button front dress, however, the pattern from the fabric is what makes this special in my eyes.  With the sash, it looks something like the pattern but not exactly.

So while I didn't add all of the components of the dress that appealed to me most, I did end up with a wearable dress...and I guess that's something!  *LOL*

A few more pictures:

the back

a close-up of my shoes

(aren't they fabulous!)

and with The Little Prince

...as always, more later!

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!

Mental Sewing...or why I ain't got nuthin new to show!

Somewhere a few posts back, I mentioned that my next project was going to be Butterick 5600...and nuthin' right!  Instead I use a kewl piece of fabric to make a knit version of my TNT dress (which garnered quite a few complimentss at work, btw!)  I know I shared that I came home from being a fabric piggy with a horrible cold...and I made the mistake of taking the pattern pieces out of the envelope while I was medicated and not feeling...so of course I was overwhelmed...seriously overwhelmed with the amount of pattern alterations that I would have to make so that the dress would fit my body.

I put those pieces back in the envelope and moved on.  Well I've been going to work these last couple of days and those pattern pieces have been haunting me.  Seriously taking up way too much of my thoughts on the way to work and on the way home...when it finally hit me that I should use my TNT dress pattern with B5600 so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Well I was so very proud of myself for coming up with this revelation...and today I shared my heavy revy with Elizabeth (SEWN) who goes...well dayum I thought that was what you were going to do anyway.  Seriously deflated my bubble...but okay I'm gonna let her have that one because I'm busting her bubbles on the daily...so she was due for one! *LOL*  Y'know what I mean!

Anyway, I don't have to work tomorrow...thank heavens for Jesus!  We have Good Friday off and I plan on using my day to celebrate by working on this dress.  I mean I have a packed weekend full of celebratory events and I'm just stealing a little me time to work on this dress...I really think Jesus will understand...don't you!?!

So here is a picture of the fabric, pattern and the buttons I scored from GStreet in Rockville, MD.

The buttons are a little larger than the ones recommended on the pattern envelope but we decided that since there is a little bit more of me...it will be fine to use them.  Tho' I wish you could have seen me and the woman working behind the button counter at GStreet with my iPad checking to make sure that the buttons worked with the fabric.

Hopefully the next post will be about a finished dress...or at least something about the process!

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank EVERYONE especially the silent majority (that's what I'm gonna call y'all now instead of lurkers...sounds better dontcha think!) who left a comment on the last couple of posts!  Gosh, y'all make a gurl feel worthy...truly you do!  But seriously, I read each and every comment and want to thank you for taking the time to write...your comments were so appreciated!!!  There were a few questions and I will address them this weekend, promise! 

...okay...more later!