Butterick 4731

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like. An evening dress, in wet-look lycra.

Another one for the “it seemed like a good idea at the time” pile, I suspect!

This is Butterick 4731. It looks a bit odd (relatively speaking) on my dress form because I’m in between sizes. The bust on my larger dress form doesn’t go small enough, and the waist and hips on the smaller one don’t go big enough. Typical. So there will be slightly more curvaceousness (is that a word?) going on in Real Life, but it won’t be quite skintight except at the bust, which obviously is holding up the dress.

The dress went together remarkably smoothly, considering I made such a radical departure from the suggested fabrics. The only change I made to the pattern was to leave out the centre back zip. The fabric is so stretchy that it doesn’t need any fastenings, and I didn’t fancy trying to top-stitch on this fabric. Having said that, it didn’t stick to the machine anywhere near as badly as I’d expected.

I do still need to add a lining or facing to finish it off though – the top edge is just folded over at the moment. The pattern is constructed with a boned foundation made from interfaced lining, but there’s not much point in trying to bone a stretchy dress, and the edges of the bones will show through the outer fabric anyway. Instead I think I’m going to make an internal girdle, of sorts, using powermesh. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to achieve that yet, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out!