Butterick 5708 - Salmon Dot Birthday Dress

 

A couple weeks ago, I was itching to make a new dress and figured my birthday was as good a reason as any. :-) I saw this lovely shade of pinkish orange polka dot at the fabric store and it was crying out to be made into a dress. So I looked through my stash, and thought it would be fun to try Butterick 5708, a dress with ties at the shoulders that can be tied many ways.

Butterick 5708  

I knew I wasn't going to be using any of the off the shoulder or one shoulder versions, and I'd read the ties were pretty wide apart when tied on the top. My plan was to use the version in black, tied in front almost forming a kind of cap sleeve. I knew I needed to make a muslin first as I'd read about lots of fitting issues. I could see right away it was definitely necessary!

The front gaped pretty badly, so I pinched out the extra fabric and adjusted the pattern. I went ahead and sewed up the dress in my fabric, and tried to tie the ties...but with double the fabric, I wasn't having much luck. I knew the ties were going to annoy me after a while too, lol, so I finally decided I was just going to overlap them where I wanted them to stay, and top stitched them down. And that's what I did, with some pleats to form around the curves.

I was fairly happy with the results! It was certainly less bothersome to me than the ties. It's not the most perfect sleeve, but it works for me. :-)

The rest of the dress was pretty straight forward, the bodice pieces went together easily!

 

It did end up being a tad long in the bodice, amazingly (I usually have to lengthen bodice pieces) but not too bad.



I included a pocket, of course!

It's not my favorite dress comfort wise (the overlapped sleeves can get a little bunched), but I do love the color and overall shape, and I consider it mostly a success! It's also my second Vintage Pledge make for the year, yay!