As soon as I made Simplicity 8085 (8 years ago now!) it became my favorite pattern. Basic sundress in the front, wrap dress in the back, beautiful fit - it was fantastic! I went on to make that pattern 3 more times (and I highly doubt I'm done with it yet!), and it gave me a love for dresses that wrap across the back. Along with versions two, three, and four, of the Simplicity pattern, I also made the Wearing History 1939 sundress with a similar back-wrap feature. These dresses are all summer staples in my closet - getting worn year after year (yes, 8 years later I am still wearing and loving the original green dress.).
Thus, when, at an estate sale several years ago, I came across a vintage mail order pattern with this back wrap feature - obviously the pattern had to come home with me and be tried out!
A mail order Anne Adams pattern from, well, honestly I don't know the exact year, but the postage mark appears to say 1980, so probably somewhere around there. I decided to pair it with a light weight denim from my stash embroidered with rainbow butterflies all over. Someone had given me this fabric several years earlier, and I'd been waiting for the right project to come along for it - something that would look good in butterfly denim, without looking too childish - and I decided this dress was it!
The pattern was a size 16 - possibly not my size, but I didn't worry too much about that. Just figuring "wrap dresses are forgiving" I cut the dress out of my fabric with no alterations.
I sewed up the dress - and it was too big. Better too big than too small! I " fixed" this by just wrapping the dress a little tighter and adding small darts to the top edge of the bodice where it wanted to gape. The waist dart placement does not sit correctly at my bust thanks to this sizing issue, but the dress is comfortable, and looks decent enough from a distance, so I chose not to worry about that.
As for the waist fastening on this dress (the only fastening dresses of this style require), I decided to do something a bit different than I've done before and, rather than waist ties, I made a belt that buckles attached to the waistline of the dress.
I carefully embroidered sturdy eyelets of different colors on the belt to match the colorful butterflies - only to discover that, as the dress was too big, the belt was really too long and none of those beautiful hand-sewn eyelets were at the right place to fit me.
Thus, those original 5 colorful eyelets are now a decorative feature, and the belt fastens off-center (we're calling that a design feature as well) with a 6th eyelet I sewed at just the right location.
There are two lessons I could take from this dress - "double check your fit and adjust accordingly before cutting into your fabric" or "just cut into the fabric, you can always fix things later! (There's always a way to make things work.)"
I probably should have learned the first lesson, but alas, my sewing practice better reflects the second.
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