Butterick 5362, a Different Type of Tank Dress

Saturday's project was a dress that I've had on my To Do list for quite a while. Long enough that I actually dreamed about it last night. Long enough that when I opened the envelope, the pieces were already cut out,  and the dart had a FBA that was moved to the correct place! I think I must have had it ready to go, then ran out of time last summer.

This is the pattern. I made View C, the red one in the drawing.

I'm not sure if it's even still in print. The copyright is 2009. The dress consists of a front and a back, and has an unusual shape, with the side seams flaring out to a wide skirt.

I remember some discussion about this dress when the pattern came out, along the lines of its potential emphasis on the hip area. Well, yeah, there is that concern. To me it seemed like it really needed a drapey yet weighty fabric to look its best.

I used some more herringbone weave rayon from JoAnn's. Nice, weighty stuff that cost the princely sum of 99 cents a yard. I never saw it at full price so it must have been hidden in the warehouse or something.  Anyway, it was a dream to sew.

My version looks like this:

The upper part of the dress has a nice fit that lays nicely on the upper body. The neckline is open but not too low and the armholes don't show bra straps. Then it tapers out to the skirt and the lower part is quite loose. It's longer on me than on the pattern, but not really a problem. I cut my usual Small/Medium mix and that worked well for me.

It took the afternoon to make, including laying out the fabric and cutting. I made a few slight changes from the pattern instructions, which called for bias binding the neck and armholes. I just serged the raw edges, turned them under and topstitched, a la Loes Hinse. Worked fine, and a heck of a lot faster. I also serged the upper side seams.

All in all, a nice dress with a beach vibe. I'm going to try wearing it tomorrow with a pair of high wedge sandals and a couple of long chains.