The Mess of the Dress. Pattern Review: Butterick 5748

I'm currently back in a crazy sewing faze. Months will go by where I feel totally overwhelmed by the idea of making anything and then it takes one little ounce of inspiration to send me into a full blown sewing binge. I had purchased some bright striped fabric at F&M with the intention of making myself a summer dress or skirt. The fabric sat in my sewing room for three months staring at me and taunting me. I belong to Club BMV for the Butterick, McCalls and Vogue online patterns and they recently had a $1.99 pattern sale. There was supposed to be a limit of ten patterns but they didn't stop me when I had 40 in my cart and pressed the pay button. I saved over $400, my friends!! From this group of patterns, I pulled a few put that would work with the fabric and narrowed it down to one of their vintage recreations: Butterick 5748.

The pattern was pretty easy but it was my first foray into full lining and a side zipper. I actually loved the lining part. It made the neckline and armholes so clean and easy to do. The side zipper wasn't the nightmare I was anticipating but I fully admit it doesn't look awesome. I sewed the dress up within a few hours and was pretty pleased with the fit.

                       

These pictures were taken before I hemmed it 2.5 inches as with full skirts they recommend hanging for 24 hours before hemming. I waited 3 hours. I'm terribly impatient by nature and it gets me into trouble as you will soon find out.

I wore the dress to work the next day and loved it. The polyester lining made it so cool and slippery. It felt like summer and everytime I caught a side glance of the colors in a mirror, I would instantly get happy. I got home from picking up the kids and noticed a big brown spot on the back of the dress when I changed. I immediately threw it in the wash. Part of the gamble in buying fabric from F&M is that you rarely know the fabric content. From my textile class at FIDM I learned how to test different fabrics but as I'm impatient I wasn't exactly going to break out the bunsen burner for this. I told myself, it will survive the wash but don't put it in the dryer. Sure enough, it came out the wash looking just fine (although I think part of the pink color bled onto my whites but it could have been a new red t-shirt I washed in the same load. I'm not great about properly separating colors). I held up the wet dress and said, don't put this in the dryer and then I threw it in the dryer! I totally ignored myself in spite of myself and did my own thing. I meant to leave it in there for a few minutes but I forgot. An hour later I ran flabbergasted to the dryer only to discover this:

So long pretty summer dress. Ok, a bit dramatic as it may not be totally ruined. I think I can rip out the stitches (oh that will take forever) and measure from the waistline to make the hem even again. It will be about 8 inches shorter than originally intended but did I mention I quit my job? I won't exactly be needing office appropriate attire. I'm honestly so disgusted with myself I can't even look at the dress and I have about 15 other items I'm working on at the moment so it is definitely on the back-burner. Hopefully I will forgive myself sometime soon and tackle ripping out those stitches as my own punishment.