Vintage Butterick 5033

Have you ever had that feeling where you walk into a fabric store, and suddenly you are stopped in your very tracks by the most perfect fabric ever? You find yourself becoming uncharacteristically shifty, furtively looking around to make sure that no other customer has seen what you see, then you scurry over to the counter (trying, the whole while, to keep your little moans of joy quiet) and ask for an insane amount of meterage, because you must have all this fabric and you must have it now!

It's only afterwards that you realise that you never ever even looked at the price tag. Whoops!

Thankfully this gorgeous fabric from The Fabric Store didn't break the bank, but the cherry on this sewing sundae was finding the perfect colour match lining fabric to go with it! The fabric gods were certainly smiling on me that day.

I think, however, that they may have started frowning - first a little, then a lot - as this dress sat half made on my sewing mannequin for the next 5 months. I have no idea why it took me so long to finish it. Originally I wanted the skirt to hang for 48 hours to sort out any droop, and before you know it was September. Bad me!

However, 'tis finished now, and none the worse for an extra long hanging period. I just love this dress so much - I love the lace, I love the coy little peep hole on the bodice, and I love the pleated super full skirt. The skirt is actually so full and heavy by itself that wearing a petticoat underneath took it to an insane level of fulldom. I doubt there are many door on earth that could accommodate that skirt with petticoat fullness added, so I'm wearing it without.

This dress wasn't too hard to make at all - obviously, having to interline each part made it twice the work it needed to be, but the right lace required that sort of commitment! I did have one rather dreadful mishap whilst making the bodice. I had just finished the peephole and was determinedly ironing it as flat as possible when I realised that the heat of the iron had actually melted some of the fine lattice work connecting the lace motifs. Keeping my cool was a MAJOR challenge, but since I had only just finished handsewing my daughter's ice skating costume I was a dab hand with ye olde hand stitching, so I cut out a wee scrap of lace fabric, inserted it into the scorch hole, then very carefully (and pretty much invisibly, I'm proud to add!) sewed it in. Voila! Magic mending!

Would I made this again? Possible, but not in lace. I think it would smashing in a light cotton for daytime wear. Not that there is anything stopping me from wearing this during the day, but it seriously does weigh a ton, and might be a bit much for day wear, even for me! Anyway, despite taking me forever to finish, I am very happy with it now it is done. Onto the next vintage adventure!

Project Details:
Pattern - Butterick 5033, view A
Fabric - 4 metres of burgundy lace fabric, and 4 metres of cotton lining from The Fabric Store
Notions - Interfacing, 55cm invisible zipper