Beautiful but poor fabric choice

This is a lovely pattern with a few small differences between the views. I chose the longer skirt length with no ties at the neck (view C) but used the sleeves with the longer cuffs from view A. Since this was to wear at a wedding I wanted the fit to be perfect and I made a toile and several adjustments – principally to the placement of the gathers on the bodice.  Rather than having the gathering evenly spread across the bodice pieces I concentrated the gathering in a narrower section at the top and bottom of the front bodice. This helped the bodice look less ‘matronly’ over my fuller bust. The weight of the fabric in the skirt helped to pull down the bodice to create more elegant shaping at the back bodice.

Unfortunately, when I cut out the pattern pieces in my chosen fabric the crepe shifted around so much that my cutting was obviously not as accurate as my cotton muslin.  Add in some weight loss from a bout of covid and the dress was a couple of sizes too big. Since I had to rush to finish this before the wedding at the last minute I didn’t have time to go back and fix that. Never mind.

The polyester crepe I used was, really, too heavy for this pattern because the self-facing and gathering add a lot of bulk. I didn’t interface because the fabric was already heavier weight than that suggested by the pattern envelope. The gathering was really difficult to do in this fabric. It took me a while to work out how the bodice pieces fitted into the yoke and the midriff. There is not much in the way of explanation as to how these pieces fit together.

Final note is that I am short in the waist and not especially tall (5’4”) and this would perhaps be more flattering on a taller, more willowy figure. But that’s probably true of every pattern…