Butterick 5495 revisited

Butterick 5495 has been on my mind. I know I had issues with this pattern and its archaic instructions, and I know I was mystified by the loose gathering under the bust that came in again, too tight I thought, at the hips.

The thing is that the basic idea was a good one, to gather the fullness with an unattached band of fabric looped through openings in the seams, and so I decided to try this pattern again, the way I thought it should have been drafted.

The results of those experiments are here. For the top above all I did was add 5" to the front centre piece only, 2 1/2" at each side seam and leave the rest of the pattern the same with the changes to the neckline I noted in my earlier review. Oh and I bound the back neck with self-fabric rather than stitch and turn it under.

This extra fabric liberated the front and I think allowed the gathering under the bust to flow more naturally, or maybe I am just happier with a different look.

The next thing I did was sort of crazy. I read once in an old sewing book that your muslins for dresses could be nightgowns so that's what I made here. All I did was change the shaped back seam to something straighter by laying it on the fold and added length and the extra 5" to the back piece too at the side seams - I sort of just cut it all wider and A lined it a bit. I used a soft pointelle knit from Fabricmart is some light cotton that really would be useless for anything but a nightgown. And I made the sleeveless version too which really just produces some loose capped sleeves. I bound the sleeve hems too because it was easy to do when I was already sitting at the machine and I was too lazy to get up and rethread the coverhem machine.

I am pretty pleased with this and think this could make a very nice dress, very comfortable and quick to sew.

Butterick 5488

Once when my next youngest sister and I were 6 and 8 our grandmother went to Hawaii and brought us back each a cotton muu-muu. I remember us sitting on our front step on a hot Prairie night feeling incredibly cosmopolitan and sophisticated, and cool, as in not so hot. In our day summer dresses still had waists and this was our first experience on something so loose that was not a nightie and you could wear out in public, like say to sit on the steps.

Maybe this is why I always always would rather wear a dress in the summer than anything else because they just don't stick to your body.

So I was pretty interested when I saw Butterick 5488 I had some rayon batik hanging around wondering what it was supposed to be and I figured that this pattern and that fabric were a match.

I was both pleased and surprised when I opened the pattern envelope. For a start the whole pattern was on only one sheet, which is nice when you want to sew fast and easy. The second thing I noticed was that this was not just a shift with some neckline gathers but what it really was a wedge dress, a definite wedge, with three large box pleats, front and back and quite a narrow hem. About 44" or so for size medium which really was not much stride room. This had me wondering about the pattern because there was a centre back seam, with no shape to it so I didn't see why this piece was not set on the fold, and I really wonder if they meant to include a walking slit at the back.

So when I made my version I didn't sew this seam right to the bottom, left the last 7" open put it on and decided, yup, I needed to leave this open so I could walk. I mean what is the point of a super comfortable dress that you have to take baby steps in?

The only other adjustment I made was to take in the centre of the back yoke in at centre back, making a sort of French dart with the widest part of that dart at the seam where the outer and inner yoke met. When I tried it on I felt that the neck line gaped too much.

All that said I LOVE this dress. Every once in a while you get a real comfortable dress and you just wear it to a rag. I would do that with this dress if I didn't know I would be making more.