Butterick 5873

11 Sep Butterick 5873

I believe relaxing vacations are a fantasy.

 Mine began with a bust as I was greeted at the beach by an exploding water heater leaving everyone with cold showers for three days.  As soon as company left, the painters came w i t h o u t  their drop clothes…….

Midweek I had the pleasure of meeting and spending an afternoon with my blogging and Pattern Review friend, Julie Starr!

I wore the ribbon skirt in her honor 😉  Julie is wearing her beautiful dress with 20 darts!

 The next day my oldest daughter became engaged, and we shifted into high gear! Hubby and I packed up and headed to Charleston for a celebration dinner with both families before attending a football game in the blazing heat the following day.

 Somehow in the midst of the chaos and excitement I made a dress.

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Greetings from Botany Bay, one of South Carolina’s barrier islands featuring a hauntingly beautiful boneyard beach.

I’ve made my first See & Sew pattern in this fun lycra/rayon jersey print from Mood Fabrics.

I’ve said I’ll never buy another wrap dress.  I’ll never buy another faux wrap dress either.

I considered  sewing my jersey with Vogue 1314  for some time. I even went so far as to lay out the pattern and fabric, but the practicality of the Butterick 5873 won out over high fashion 😉

Is there a better pattern – fabric combination for everyday wear? No wrinkles, no wardrobe malfunctions on windy days and the comfort level is sky-high.

I was quite excited to sew a really easy pattern, but who am I kidding? I seem to have a knack for making simple patterns more complicated than intended.

 Justifying that a little extra t-l-c is always worth the end result, I underlined the fashion fabric with a very lightweight tricot knit from my stash.

For the front, I sewed the right sides together at the neckline and turned the fabric. Using this method I avoided sewing a narrow hem finish along the front of the dress. Then I basted the underling to the side seams and sewed as one piece. For the back I sewed the back pieces together down the center seam and basted the two fabrics wrong sides together.

Since the dress is very close-fitting and does not have a waistline seam, the underlining provides just enough weight to keep the dress hanging nicely, preventing it from clinging to all of the wrong places.

Some may understandably consider my latest to be a summer dress. I thought about adding the longer sleeves for about five minutes before concluding that the cap sleeves are more my style … any dress with sleeves fits the bill for Fall in my book!

It’s also perfect with my new fall shoes………

but I’m most likely to wear it with sandals for the next 10 days as I bid farewell to my favorite season of the year.

Until soon!