Butterick 5522 for Fall

Edited 8/16/10 to add: Here are some photos of me in the dress....


Also, isn't it funny how sometimes photos will show you things that looking in the mirror does not? For example....this photo shows me that I need to topstitch that center back seam down, because the seam allowance is rolling around under the dress and making my butt look lumpy:


Ok, Ok, lumpi-ER. Thank god for Spanx!!

Posted 8/15/10:

This weekend I worked on Butterick 5522, a shift dress by Muse that was released for this fall:

I don't know if you recognize the dress or not, but if you are a reality TV junkie like me, you know that Tabatha Coffey wore one on her show, "Salon Take-over."


Now granted, Tabatha is about half my size, but Muse did offer the dress in plus-sizes as well:


Wow, that's really short, huh? When the pattern was drafted for Butterick, they did lengthen it slightly...thank goodness.

While the dress itself is pretty simple, the sleeves are a lot of work:


The pattern pieces for the sleeve parts only have notches on the "sides" of the U-shaped pieces. However, I also marked the center bottoms, otherwise it made it really difficult to distribute the ease through the curves of the U.


I also suspect that my fabric has more stretch than what was intended for the pattern, so I stretched the neck binding a bit as I was applying it. I ended up taking up about 5 inches of length that way:


I also eliminated the zipper at the back of the neck. I don't like an exposed zipper, and the neckline is large enough that there is no need to have the zipper to get it over my head. So, I just sewed the back right up. I also sewed the sleeves in flat rather than in the round, which made construction a lot simpler.

Now, for the alterations. I started with a size 20, and graded out to a 22 at the hips since that is what coincided with my measurements. What I ended up with was a potato sack with fancy sleeves. Also, a very, very A-line potato sack. So, I took in the waist at both the side seams and the center back seam, and then tapered the bottom a touch. Here are the changes that I made to the pattern pieces:


The changes to the back pattern piece were even more significant:


Fortunately, the back is not cut on the fold, so the center back seam can be contoured. And here is the final product:


And the sleeve:


And here you can see the contour that I added to the back:


In the end, what looked like a very simple pattern ended up being quite a bit of work. Because of that...I feel like I need to make it again, now that I have the fit fine tuned! Fortunately, I have another knit in the stash:


I was thinking about using this for the main part of the dress, and using what I have left of the black knit from the dress today for the insets in the sleeves. Or....I could use this fabric to make a dress from the plus section of the most recent Burda:


I love this dress!! But, would it be too "va-va-va-voom" for work? So, I will think about it. In the meantime, I bought some brown fine-wale corduroy to make another version of the Hot Patterns coat dress since fall is just around the corner.