Beautiful, classic evening dress

This dress was such a delight to sew and wear. I chose a mid weight satin backed crepe, with a lightweight lining fabric and it worked really well, despite both fabrics being a little tricky to handle.

My measurements put me firmly into the size 16 bracket on the pattern. I made the lining up first, tacked it to a collar cut from lining fabric which wasn’t called for in the pattern and used that as a toile. The fit turned out to be perfect around the waist and hips but way too big around the bust, so I took a wedge out at the side seams.

The only other change I made from the instructions was to use an invisible zip rather than a dress zip, simply because that’s all I had in my stash! I stabilised the zip opening before adding the zip and that worked pretty well.

The instructions were brief but sufficient and I felt amazing in the finished dress