Butterick 5523

Here is my version of this pattern, Butterick 5523. 

Again there is a back story on the photos. The day before Hurricane Earl we had our hottest day ever and my daughter and I  went to the pool with Miss Scarlett to cool off. The pool we go to is a wonderful outdoor pool with filtered salt water - which is nice and buoyant but you come home with red eyes and sticky hair. We decided once we got back to my daughter's place that she was a better photographer than anyone at my house so we put this dress on me and I kept my shades on to make me less raggedy.  That's the story in case you thought I was a different person and had become cool.

 The back view, obviously, showing the belty thing which you don't get in many knit dresses and also the shoulder squaring effect of the inverted pleats at the top of the sleeves.

There are a couple of things I would like to share about this pattern:

1. I am 5'9" and I added 3" to this dress, if it had been an inch or two longer I wouldn't have minded. You might want to think about length carefully before you cut ( I am lazy and usually add 3" to everything.)

2. The bodice is zero ease, i.e. the same measurements as you are and so maybe it looks a bit tight across the back, since it is a knit. It feels fine on but I would be very careful and use a knit with a fair bit of stretch for this pattern. In fact I think the window of suitable knits is fairly narrow. A heavier knit like a ponte would not have enough movement ease, unless you added or cut a size larger, but a lighter knit would not have the body to support the back belt or hold the pleats. I used a fairly substantial rayon interlock and that seemed right to me.

3. Since the bodice is zero ease the instruction to sew a casing between the bodice and skirt and insert elastic is unnecessary since this seam already fits close to the body and adding elastic runs the risk of adding bulk or distorting this seam. Forget this step, you won't miss it.

4. OK this is making me crazy but the construction advice for sewing with knits continues to be out to lunch. What matters when you sew with a knit is that the shoulders are stable (add tape or interfacing) and that the seam stretch. Use a serger or alternately, and this is what I did because I find it makes the most discrete seams in a knit dress, stitch with a very tiny, zig zag.

It is also important, if you don't want your knits to look harassed and tired before you even wear the garment, not to worry the fabric with lots of unnecessary techniques.

So why do the Big 4  keep giving instructions that aren't knit suitable? What is this doing to the success rate among new to knits sewers?

I am sure the folks at the pattern companies know this, so what's with the instructions as if this was being made out of broadcloth? Straight stitched seams, staystitching, notching the seam allowance, twice-basted hems (no mention of twin-needles much less coverhems, or a catch-stitch if you are hand hemming)? These just aren't knit techniques.

Final verdict. Nice comfortable dress, I will be wearing this with tights and maybe boots.

Now two more skirts and then I get to make another dress.

Fall Buttericks and housework, the elephant in the room

I did some extra work in the evenings this week and liberated myself a nice Thursday afternoon to sew yesterday. Thursday is a good day because you can set yourself up for a weekend of good sewing if you get this kind of a head start.

I decided to give myself a snack before I headed off to the sewing room and when I opened the fridge it seemed to have collapsed. Melting ice everywhere. A long distance call to the husband got me good advice "Take everything out, unplug it and plug it in again" (No dear this is not a computer) and to wait until he got home, which means we are going to just go out and buy a new fridge on Saturday.

So one good sewing afternoon shot moving food around to the freezer downstairs and the little back-up fridge we use over the holidays.

Housework is my biggest sewing enemy. 

No one ever says the truth about housework, which is really to do anything at all, really just to do maintenance, it could quite easily be all you do, after the people in your life, and work.

Am I the only one who looks at other sewers standing in immaculate rooms in their new clothes on their blogs and tries to look past them in the pictures for some evidence that their houses are not that perfect too?  Some newspapers on the couch, some dishes in the sink? I mean how do they do it? Where do they find the hours I don't? Two messy males and two dogs don't help I guess, but I'm not ready to give them up just yet.

I also don't find the help I am looking for in statements like "I just make sewing a priority." Sure well so do I but it's floors or darts, cleaning the oven or making that muslin. The truth is I like a clean house I just resent it for being this choice, for making me live in mess so I can do something I need to do.  

Maybe this is why I loved sewing in a hotel room so much - maid service.

How do you negotiate this? How do you get all the sewing time in you need and keep the place looking fine?

The other thing on my mind, apart from my lost afternoon and the fact that I have so many household chores staring me down this morning, is the new fall Buttericks. 

Butterick seems to be increasingly the spark-lite line and I am not sure I get what is going on. More and more of their patterns are all looking like See- and Sews and I don't think that seen-before is exactly the same a classic.

There is the only pattern that I think I might make at all and that is this dress which may be at the end of the empire waist trend but comfortable. The pleats, rather than gathers, the belt at the back, and the advice to make it out of doubleknit would make this more work style than a lighter, clingy, jersey.

As usual though I am counting on other sewers to show me the potential I can't see right now  in this particular round of new fall patterns