The Yellow Rose of Texas Dress - Butterick Retro Pattern 5748

Way back in October I posted about attempting a hand picked zipper for this dress (original post here). The sad part is that I finished this project in August or September and never got around to writing about it. Oops! So to remedy that, I put on my boots this morning and finally took some pictures.                                             

The dress itself is pretty straight forward to sew. It had some finicky details that if unlike me, you use sturdy fabric, won't actually be a problem (e.g. the notched detail along the front and back neckline and the inset side zipper). In my case, I used a light weight quilting cotton and had to reinforce the neckline details and waist to keep things from falling apart. 

Here is the invisible side zip instead of an inset lapped zip.

Bust darts on the bodice.

Be warned: this dress takes 8 yards of fabric if you fully line it. That also means hemming 2 almost full circle skirts for what will feel like days.

Here is the neckline detail. I'm not happy with how it flops over all the time but it's my fault for picking a thin fabric and not thinking through how that would impact the final structure. Another lesson learned.

Despite the little quirks that this dress has, I do love it!

This dress is so girlie and twirls like a dream (although, I'm getting to old for spinning apparently. I spun a couple of times for this picture and almost fell over…lol). When I wear it I feel like I should be doing the Texas two step or line dancing with my fella.

I never know where to look for these types of shots. I always end up looking kind of silly. Oh well, you get the idea.

This is definitely the fullest skirt I've ever had. It's so fun to wear and someday it would be fun to get a crinoline to push it over the edge!

I think I would make this again but I wouldn't add the neckline details OR line the skirt. That would save me a lot of time and potential aggravation :)

The Yellow Rose of Texas Dress (B5748) - Part 1 (Hand-Picked Zipper Attempt)

I finally finished a project but spoiler alert: this post is only about the zipper installation.  

 

 This retro 60s Butterick pattern (5748) has an inset side zipper that calls for a center lapped installation. I don't like lapped-style but since it was a retro pattern I decided to give hand-picking  a whirl to keep in the spirit of the vintage style. It's actually a really easy and quick process that makes it possible to adjust as you go. When it was all stitched up it looked like the first picture on the inside and like the second picture on the outside. If you look really closely on the second picture you can see the little "nips" where the thread came through (it's supposed to look like that). 

 

 On the hanger the zipper looked perfect but gaped at the waist seam when it was actually on (one reason why I never used lapped). I ripped out the stitches and tried again to tweak it but had the same issue the second time. I didn't feel like giving it a third go and instead just installed my good 'ol usual invisible zip.

 

 All of this to say that, while hand-picking didn't work for this particular project, it was a good new process to learn (I found this tutorial from Sewaholic extremely helpful). A stiffer fabric would've worked really well and in the future I would definitely try this again. I LOVE vintage styles and am always looking to learn new ways to add "authentic" vintage-type details to the things I make. This style of zipper is definitely a way to do that and helps me get over my exclusiveness with invisible installation!