Burdastyle 06/2016 112 Dress

Burdastyle 06/2016 112 first caught my attention when we were well and truly intrenched in the cold days of winter.    It appeared on the shelves of my local bookshop a couple of months later in August or September and was quickly snapped up.  There is so much to like about this issue!  First on my list though was always going to be this dress with it's cut outs.  The fabric I chose is a palm print cotton satin that I picked up from Cotura Fashions.

Because I really love this fabric, I was a little weary of ruining it so my first step was to make a muslin.  I used a bit of useless taslon from my stash so this muslin was never intended to be wearable.  I had read the only review I could find for this pattern by The Clothing Engineer.  I did find that although the dress fitted well, the cutout at the back didn't sit as well as it should so for my final version I removed it altogether.    In doing so I think I may have inserted and removed the zip a total of 3 times!  For someone who was inexperienced at inserting invisible zippers, I have certainly nailed it now!  The other change I made was to omit the neck band and use a bias strip instead.  It did take a little fiddling to get it to sit flat but I think it was probably easier than trying to get the tiny neckband to sit correctly.

The bodice called for lining and it took a while for me to work out how I would achieve this in the stretch fabric.  The cotton sateen would have been too bulky as a lining.  I found a piece of stretch georgette in my stash and this worked perfectly.  I particularly wanted a stretch lining to go with my stretch cotton sateen.

I wore my new dress to my husbands office Christmas function at a Waiheke Island Vineyard a couple of weekends ago.    It is really nice to wear and in omitting the cutout at the back, the dress will transition nicely to a work dress further down the track.