January dress finished!

An extra post this week because I've finished Butterick 5748, my January dress for the Vintage Sew A Dress A Month challenge, and I've got something else to post on Sunday.

I finally finished all the hemming, and here is the end result. This is the dress without a petticoat, and just the stiffness of the cotton lining to hold the skirt out.

Demonstrating the added pocket!

The full lining did add to the sewing time, but as well as giving the dress some body it makes for a very neat interior.

In effect, it's two dresses sewn together

It makes the zip especially neat

One thing which I forgot to mention in earlier posts is that the dress back is lower than the front. I was worried that it might be too low on my short torso, so raised it by 2.5cm / 1", and was glad that I did. This is the end result.

Showing the scoop back

I do wish that I'd thought to pattern match the bodice back seam though!

And here is the dress worn with a belt, a net underskirt, my most 1960-ish shoes, and a matching cardigan.

The full look

The cardi was actually the start of this outfit. Because I am such a poor/super-slow knitter, I tend to get very excited when I come across knitwear specifically for petites. Hence I bought this cute bolero, and then realised that it went with absolutely nothing that I owned. So the obvious solution was to buy some suitable fabric - which then sat in my stash for a couple of years. However it finally all came together. It's not exactly a January outfit, but I can see it getting a lot of wear when the warmer weather comes.

Even though I went totally off-piste with the cutting layout, I didn't use any more fabric than the yardage given on the pattern envelope. Which brings me to. . . the Stashometer. Starting afresh felt like cheating, so I decided to carry over last year's deficit. Happily, all that lining means that the overall fabric use for this dress was quite high.

In credit!