After a summer of sewing for other people and for our new home, I decided it was time to make a dress for myself.  I love gingham and I thought that Butterick B6446, a dress with a large sash tied in a bow in the front, would be the perfect match for this lovely light blue gingham fabric that I bought recently at the Fabric Outlet in San Francisco.

I made view B.   I made a muslin first and I am really glad I did because I made some enhancements to the fit.  I shortened the left panel of the bodice, lengthened the bodice and added curve to the bodice sides.  The muslin dress ensured fit before I cut the gingham and began construction.  The result is a dress that fits me really well and is very comfortable.   An added bonus to making a muslin is that I now I have fabric pattern pieces that I can use to make this dress again and they will hold up well for years. Making the muslin took time and thankfully I really enjoyed the process and the end result.

I lined the entire dress with a white cotton, also from the Fabric Outlet.  I followed the instructions to line the bodice.  This skirt is unlined, however it seemed odd to line just the bodice and not the skirt.  So I matched the pattern for the skirt lining exactly to that for gingham skirt.  Other sewists used the skirt pattern for view A (no pleats in the skirt of this version) to cut the skirt lining.  I may try this when I make this dress again.  In order to perfectly match the gingham at back zipper, I sewed in the zipper in by hand using a prickstitch.

At the same time that I was making this dress, I bought a new camera!   Thanks to Gillian of  Crafting a Rainbow I learned that some sewing bloggers actually take their own pictures!   I don’t know why this was such an “ah ha” moment for me, but it was.  So I decided one day to play around with the camera and take a few pictures of my new dress.  Gillian has tons of great information on photography for sewists.  Visit her blog posts on photography at Better Pictures Project.

It was a beautiful day yesterday, perfect for visiting a local park.

 

This is a great dress pattern and one I will definitely make again.  But now it is time to focus on my next project.

Thank you for visiting my blog!