Gertie dress with some sisu

Gertie designed a nice 40s inspired dress for Butterick (B6380) and I wanted to try it since I had a bit similar genuine vintage dress that was lovely but the fabric of which was not very good quality.

The floral viscose crepe had been sitting in my stash for a long time waiting for a good project. Since I was a bit unsure of the fit I decided to use this cheap fabric. All in all the fabric fas a nightmare to sew with. The crepe shifted and stretched in weird directions and the seams looked quite wonky. Luckily some heavy work with iron straightened the most of the wonkiness.

The neckline was too open for my taste and my body type so I took in quite heavily from the center front seam. Still, I must admit that the pattern would have worked much better for a bustier girl than me! As the fabric was so horrible and there was lining and the shape of the neckline to consider, I could not really modify the cup size, so it came out a bit too big. Luckily the waist fits well and the gatherings with the busy pattern hide a lot, so the overall appearance is not so bad.

The back part of the dress was a bit easier if not taking the zipper into account. I tried to be clever with the shifty and stretchy fabric and glued the zipper on with some wash-away wondertape that I had just bought. Wrong! Yes, the zipper was easy to sew on but the fabric around the zipper stretched and and the whole back part of the dress hung weirdly. Actually it looked like I had an extra pair of boobs on my back! At this point I had otherwise already finished the dress and it took some extra sisu to rip out the zipper and resew it back.

Despite all the sewing difficulties the dress doesn’t look too bad. I like to wear it with an oversized cardigan and a pair of opaque tights. It may still take time for me to try this kind of fabric again!