A new summer dress

Well, summer is starting to wrap up, but I figured I might as well post a summer dress I finished earlier in the season.

A couple of years ago, I started working on the Butterick reprint pattern 6055. After making it up though, I abandoned it because the fit was pretty weird (I think it didn't help that I accidentally cut it a size too big). After some intensive re-cutting, I ended up removing more than an inch of material from the shoulder seam on either side, and it looks a lot better now. The fit still isn't perfect. Lopping all that off the top of the dress made most of the bodice fit better, but has caused some strange little wrinkles along the collar line... Thankfully the fabric print seems loud enough to distract from it!



Another thing with this dress which I didn't know at first is that it looks best with a belt (especially if the fabric is really busy like mine). There is a belt pattern included in the envelope, but I drafted this one on my own and it's a bit different from the pattern that came with it. It's made from some leftover black fabric from my other reprint dress, and a black plastic buckle from the local fabric store. The belt's base is made from several strips of canvas and burlap base that I used instead of belting.

Some black accents at the neck are a cute addition!