That Leopard Life – B6758

HEY hey y’all.

Today I wanna talk about one of Butterick Patterns newest drops for the summer – #b6758.  Let me be straight up with you, like many of you in this community, I’m a completely self-taught sewist. Most of my sewing knowledge has come from other sewists: by way of Instagram, blogs and youtube. That being said, usually, before I make a pattern (unless it’s for a pattern test), I like to see what other sewists have done with it, particularly as far as adjustments for fit are concerned. I am very very keen on getting a decent fit on the outfits I make. Don’t get me wrong, things don’t always work out the way I want, but I owe it to myself to at least try. You see, I live in the Caribbean and have to order everything online: patterns, fabrics, notions, EVERYTHING and as you can well imagine shipping and customs fees ain’t no joke… so anything I make is an investment…

Now that I got that off my chest, lets circle back to what you’re here about. I ordered a piece of fabric from fabric.com: a leopard print crepe in beige, orange and black. For me it was love at first sight! Once the fabric finally crossed the oceans, I abandoned all other projects, and thoughts of projects! My focus was purely on this gorgeous fabric and I wanted to find a pattern that would do it some justice. 

As usual, I washed and dried my fabric before working with it. Since this was a crepe fabric, I also starched it before ironing. Crepe is a little challenging to work with because it can be a little slippery (or maybe that’s my inexperience showing out), but I find that starching does make it a little easier to handle.

I had recently received some ‘new’ patterns and after to-ing and fro-ing a bit, I finally settled on #B6758. I searched the hashtag on instagram but came up blank, so I had no idea how this pattern would fit. I chose my usual ‘Butterick sizes’ and made a toile of the bodice portion of the dress. The pattern comes with 2 views and I opted to make view B, the one with the ruffled tier at the bottom of the skirt, but included the sleeves of View A. The pattern also has a casing and drawstring at the waist and closes with buttons down the front. 

I traced a size 14 at the neck, shoulders and arms, and blended down to a size 18 at the waist. Usually, my c-cup requires me to make a full bust adjustment (FBA) to the big 4 patterns but this pattern had a fair amount of ease at the bust so I skipped the FBA. 

I did however have to take out ½”of length from my bodice, but only between the shoulder and bust of the bodice front. This adjustment also had the added benefit of addressing my forward shoulders, by moving the shoulder seam up to the right position. Because this bodice has a grown on or kimono-type sleeve, removing the ½” in length had the consequence of making the armhole smaller. Although it still fits, I think I could have benefited from that extra ½” of ease at the arm, so next time, I’ll have to do a full bicep adjustment on the sleeve. 

I finished the bodice seams with french seams because the fabric was so light and frayed. However, by time I got down to the skirt section I ended up finishing the seams with my overlocker because I HAD to include pockets in my dress… (cas’ everything is better with pockets)! I didn’t want to make a mess of my fabric by trying to do french seams with the pockets as, at the time of working on this project, I’d never done it before and I didn’t think this was the right project for me to ‘try’ that technique!

Choosing buttons is always a difficult task for me. I often don’t feel like I have the ‘right’ ones in my stash…but I had some black, square ones that I thought would be cool, so I used those. I was a little anxious about doing buttonholes on this fabric, but I think they turned out fine. 

The one thing I did struggle with was the drawstring. The finished width of the drawstring is 3/8”. Now, me and my loop turner have never been friends… never ever, and this time was no exception. I had to struggle to turn the loop the right side out, and me tugging at the fabric (which is kinda delicate) resulted in a hole being created at the end of my drawstring. I was so frustrated, but to ‘cure’ the defect, I simply tied a knot at the end of the drawstring. Easiest fix EVER!

All in all I love this make. The dress length is definitely out of my comfort zone (though not by much), as I usually like my skirts either anywhere above the knee or right down to my ankles, nothing in between those two extremes lol. Midi length skirts make me feel dowdy for some reason, but to maintain a little sexy with this dress, I left off a few of the buttons on the skirt portion. That allows me to flash a little leg, if I want to!  And, for the record, I usually do want to!

Now, I can picture styling this dress for ‘fall’ with knee high leather boots, and some bold, gold accessories… but guess what, there is no ‘fall’ in the Caribbean and I definitely don’t own a pair of knee-high leather boots… but one could wish right? 

Gotta luv ya and leave ya until next time,

Xoxo

 

Kris