Big Blooms Print Dress Complete: Butterick 6582
Here is the final result of all that effort. Effort which included altering the pattern, underlining the whole dress, and finally creating a sash to make sure the hint of a fig-leaf got lost in the print as a whole. It has the small waist, and full skirts which were still fashionable in 1960 after a whole decade of being fashionable. Their popularity probably owing, in part, to the ease they had for dancing. By 1960, they had crept up from lower calf to a bit below the knee.
This is a simple sash which you can make yourself by drafting on the fabric. It is 3 inches in width when finished. The fabric can be cut on the bias, or slightly off bias, if the bias is very slippery, or in this case weirdly off bias because I had almost no fabric left. So you need to estimate the length because you will need more or less your waistline, depending on the give of the bias-cut fabric, plus enough to seam. Pinning it around your waist over the dress is really the only way to make sure you are getting the right length; and remember you need to ponder seam allowances, and the placket with the fasteners on each end. I always mark where I think the ends should be, but cut it a bit bigger in case I am wrong. It is easy to cut off fabric, much harder to add fabric.
You will need 12 inches in width plus seam allowances, because you are going to seam it into a long tube. Once seamed it is 6 inches in width and then you will gather the width down to three inches. This will give it some draping. Then you will sew each end to a placket that should be 3 inch plus seam allowances and then as wide as need be to accommodate the fasteners you want to use. One of my plackets here is a larger because I wanted to make sure I could make the whole thing longer if need be. But it turned out perfectly comfortable as is.
I have started work on the silk organza overdress. So there will be more on this coming.
