A New Dress!

"Just what she needs....", I hear you grumble to yourself.  I cannot blame you really, I very rarely (about, ahem, twice a year) wear the dresses I make, dresses are just not practical.  I also think that some part of my brain tells me that if I wish to be seen as 'good' as any man, I must dress like one.  However, it does not seem to work!

Anyhow, back to the topic of the new dress, I actually am making this with a particular occasion in mind.  I intend to wear it to an awards ceremony in a week.  There was a large number of potential dress patterns to choose from but for various reasons I managed to narrow it down to this one only: Butterick B5281, picture below:

I am making view B with the capped sleeves and I will not be putting shoulder pads in mine.  After a trip to Spotlight I settled on some lovely red self patterned drapey jacquard.  The lining is a red lawn to give the dress some body.

Today I managed (in between making a batch of grapefruit pickle with some mouldy grapefruits and taking the dog for a walk) to cut the dress out and assemble the bodice, except for the sleeves.  The dress is fully lined which gives a lovely neckline without the frustration of a facing that keeps jumping to the right side.  Below are some random pictures from the construction.

Tucks stitched into the right hand shoulder.

The assembled bodice without the lining.

The assembled bodice with lining, I am happy with it!

Close up of neckline.

I am using my Singer 306 to sew this dress.  So far it is behaving nicely and making a very nice stitch.  I decided to use the straight stitch throat-plate in a fit of inspiration and it seems to be really helping.

On another note, it was the 23rd (!) anniversary of Freddie Mercury's passing yesterday, I was going to listen to my Queen CD but my CD player has finally given up the ghost so that plan went out of the window.

More updates to follow!