Pops for champagne dress

I wanted the first thing I sewed after setting up my new sewing area to use a particularly fun piece of fabric, because it featured champagne! What better way to celebrate a new space than literally celebratory fabric? Not that I reserve champagne for celebrations, because I do not. I am totally on board with drinking sparkling wines any day of the week. But I digress.

This is another version of Butterick B5748, a reproduction pattern from 1960. I made my birthday dress with this pattern and a sweetheart neckline. This time, I went for a slight scoop neck, and I lowered the bodice the 3/4″ I had raised it on my cowgirl dress (a typical alteration), because it actually was too high on me. Now it sits just right. I went with a gathered skirt again because it’s all I had the fabric for, this time.

One thing I decided to try on this dress was an all-in-one facing. I dislike neck and armhole facings as no amount of tacking them down seems to prevent them from flipping out and being annoyed, but in the heat of summer, I don’t love lined bodices particularly, either. But an all-in-one keeps everything in place, because it’s an armhole facing and a neckline facing together. I’ve done it on tops before (like last year’s 1950s sleeveless top) but never on a dress.

Basically, it was just like working a lined bodice… that’s just a lot shorter and doesn’t need to be attached to the waist, so it’s even quicker! I serged the bottom edge (I used orange for fun on the inside), and tacked it to the side seams. Then with a centered back zipper, the facing just got hand sewn to the zipper tape like I’d normally do with a lining. Now it’s like the best of both worlds: tidy and stays put like a fully lined bodice, but with a bit less fabric. Totally going to do this again in the future.

(How much do I love that you can see the fabric through my cutting table when I take a photo? A lot.)

The fabric is by Bernartex, called Happy Hour / Toast of the Town. Sometimes it just takes some creative searching to find exactly what you’re looking for. I wish you could see that all the outlines are actually metallic gold! But the lighting was a real fail the day I tried to take these… which was a lot earlier in the summer, when my peonies were still blooming.

I actually bought this fabric specifically to wear with a champagne-themed Erstwilder brooch I picked up earlier this year. The fabric of course is too busy to wear it directly on the dress, which means I think I meant to use the fabric for a skirt instead, but forgot by the time I got around to sewing. Whoops!

I’ve been of two minds lately about nice and simple dresses like this, because on one hand, this is exactly the style and fit I want a whole armload of and can easily wear anytime, but on the other hand, I’m having ennui about them currently, and am super bored rifling through my dresses at home… although there aren’t many plain, simple dresses in my closet that fit or I want to wear right now, so perhaps that’s part of the problem. I go back and forth sometimes between ALL THE DRESSES and being bored with wearing or making them (not necessarily at the same time). I think every few months I cycle through things I want to wear, or make (sewing and knitting both), or styles I’d like to try… so I think I’m starting to go through one of those right now.

Although I have a bit of a backlog of items to show you in the meantime—shorts, those cheetah print pants I mentioned in my last post, a skirt from vintage fabric that’s been in my stash for ages… that may be it, though it’s possible I’m forgetting something!

We’ll see where sewing takes me next! 😉

outfit details

dress – made by me
shoes – Swedish Hasbeens (via eBay)
champagne brooch – Erstwilder
Bakelite bangles – misc.
Bakelite earrings – Truly Vintage

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