Butterick 4789 Maggy London dress finished!

I finished this early on Friday evening so plenty of time to spare before the wedding at 11am on Saturday. I'm pleased with how it turned out overall, but it was not what I originally had in mind, nor does it look anything like the pattern.

I have made this twist top dress twice before and the top once so I thought it would be super easy to whip up a new dress quickly. I wanted to use a wildly printed jersey with holographic dots, but tone it down with plain black jersey. I decided to make the top part of the bodice, above the twist, in the print and simply added a seam to the pattern front and back pieces and started cutting away. It then dawned on me that you see some of the reverse side of the fabric when you twist it so I self lined the bodice pieces. Now, anyone can see that means a lot of bulk right where the twist is but I had an image of the finished dress in my head and just ignored the little nagging doubts that were starting to creep in. Of course after much basting, ironing, swearing and fighting I had to accept that it just wasn't going to work and needed a rethink. In the end I decided to forget the twist and simply gather up the extra fabric and form a crossover bodice. There was still the same amount of fabric, but it was much less bulky this way. Also the addition of a piece of velvet ribbon over the join helped flatten everything down. Once I figured this out it only took a couple of hours to finish up. There are many patterns available to get this same look in a much easier way, but it was an interesting (if slightly panicked) process to see how far a pattern can be changed. Here's a closer look at the bodice (I'm no photographer and certainly no model, but you can get the general idea!)

Next I am going to finish the 2 tops shown in the previous post. Realistically that's probably all I am going to get done before Christmas and then we'll be away in New Zealand till the 6th of January when I can plan my first project for 2008.