Bodice Blues- Ramblings and Notes Butterick 5351

These measurements and sizes are made for who? Surely not me because on the Butterick patterns I am a size 9 (there is no size nine but I am smack dab between the 8 and 10), size 14, and size 16. What!!! If you are self-conscious these numbers will throw you for a loop. Since I love my body the numbers don't phase me to much. What phases me is I am 3 sizes instead of one which means beginner me is in for a treat to make this dress fit properly.

Prep Work
Fabric Prewash- check
Fabric Ironed- check

Pattern Cutting
Didn't cut skirt, taking to long to decide how much extra fabric to allow. Cut bodice. Forgot to cut notches. Actually, I cut them the first time and then rolled right over them with the rotary cutter. Nick in nail polish from rotary cutter. Booo. Sewing is going to be hard on my nails I can tell.


Accidently, popped blade off instead of opening. Took forever to find instructions to put blade back on, thought I was missing a piece since looking at instructions for larger rotary cutter. Searched my sewing area over and over for non-existent missing piece. Dug through trash for instructions. Blade back on, forged ahead.



Pattern Marking
-Don't like tracing paper, will try the pencils. Worked out well once I devised a method using my ruler and folding the pattern onto it to trace mark against straight edge. Uneventful, although later I found out I missed some marks. Not to hard to add them after the fact

Sewing
It's about time, this has taken forever. Not in a bad way though. A lot of prep work before sitting down at the machine. Bobbin wound, needle threaded, let's roll.

1. Sew bodice pieces together. No problem. Next
2. Gather lower edge. What? Gather? Off the instructions glossary, ummm okay. Off to the sewing book, makes more sense now. I have to buy this book. I'll try it first on a scrap. Not to shabby.

Took phone call from hubby. Gathering done. NOOOOO. Sewed the upper edge instead of the lower. Seam ripper in action. Will blame hubby for distracting me. Let's try this again. Did I just do it again. Seriously. I must be getting tired. There we go, lower edge gathered. Lets wrap this around me and see. Uh, there is no way this will fit. Seam ripper undo it all. ALL. Back to step one with some size alterations around the waist. Back to gathering. Wrong edge again. Delerious. Okay why didn't the instructions tell me to press these seams open.

Seam ripper. Wrong edge. Hamster wheel, I must get off. Think and concentrate. Lower edge, yes. Seams down, yes. Sew it, gather it, and hop off the hamster wheel. Did it really just take that long to do that?
3.Elastic Casing. This should be easy. Not to bad. Relatively painless until trying to turn raw edge underneath and sew. Let me draw some lines, press that down, make it neat.

Sew. Not perfect. Undo. Seam ripper. That is better. Insert elastic.

4.Stiching Elastic Down. Uneventful. Used my reverse button. Basted edges of casing. Done!!

I will not tell you how long these steps took but I am taking it in stride because I know I learned a lot in the process. I also cleaned up a little after I was done because it looked like a train came plowing through.