Cher – Butterick 6557 with Hand-Painted Dots
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For Halloween 2019, my department at work chose pop music icons. It took me a while to come up with an idea, but I eventually chose Cher from the 1970s, mostly because I liked her dresses. The one I chose is a basic sheath style, one shoulder, with polka dots.
I looked high and low for fabric with the right colour polka dots. Eventually I decided to paint my own. I got two yards of white peachskin, which has a nice drape, and is thick enough to support being painted. The original dress looks like it is a thinner fabric, and possibly stretch, however I decided not to deal with painting stretch fabric, and the sewing machine available to me at the time did not have stretch stitches.
I chose to use normal acrylic paint mixed with textile medium, since this gave a larger range of colours to choose from. To make the dots uniform in size and shape, I used a foam stippling tool. I chose the 2 inch diameter, which I later realized was a bit large, but it would have taken twice as long with a smaller sized dot! As it was, this was a very time-consuming project. It took about 3-4 hours per colour, with four colours and then another several hours for touch up and going back to add extra dots of each colour as needed. I ‘stamped’ each dot with the stippling tool, and then used a smaller foam tool to smooth out any bubbles and even out the paint. This worked quite well.
I did have help while painting these dots. Feline help. In the form of two pink paw prints! I considered keeping them and cutting the fabric so that they ended up on the inside but still visible. Sadly, this wasn’t really feasible, so I painted over them.
After painting all the dots, I heat set the paint, per the instructions for the textile medium. This is simply ironing over the dry paint, through a pressing cloth, with a dry iron for 20 seconds. I used a tea towel for a pressing cloth. The painted fabric is then ostensibly machine washable, however I have not yet tried this.
The pattern I chose is Butterick 6557, view C with no sleeves. I did my usual grading between sizes, though I did a straight size ten down to the waist and then flared out to a 12 from the hips down. I probably could have done a size 8 at the waist, since it came out a bit big. This is in spite of assembling the lining first and trying it on. More on the subsequent alterations later on.
This is a very simple pattern, and since I was not doing sleeves, there were only two pattern pieces: dress front and dress back. The shaping is all created by the side seams, and front and back darts. When cutting out the painted fabric I took my time with pattern placement. I wanted to avoid having any dots caught in the front darts, and also wanted to avoid any awkward or unfortunate dot placement. There were a few paint smudges to work around as well.
Assembly was very easy, though I ignored the instructions entirely. I did darts and shoulder seams on both lining and outer fabric. With right-sides-together, I sewed, pressed and understitched the slanty neckline-ish section. Then, still right-sides-together, I sewed the armhole. To turn, I pulled it all through the shoulder.
To do the side seam on the side with the shoulder, I opened the whole thing out and did right-sides-together, sewing both lining and main fabric as one long seam. The zip went in next, in the other side seam. That was interesting, because it is an invisible zip, and I did not have an invisible zipper foot for the machine I was using. So, I installed an invisible zip with my regular presser foot. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too difficult. The only adjustment I had to make was to reduce the pressure of the presser foot, which is easily done by a wheel on top of the machine.
To figure out how high I needed the slit, I tried the dress on and walked around a bit. Since I would be wearing this at work, I opted to add a gore, instead of leaving the slit open. This also helped me stay warmer, since Halloween 2019 came directly after three days of snowstorm! I just cut a triangle the right size and sewed it into the opening. I pressed it with a fold down the center of the gore, so that when I stood still it would fold inside and be mostly hidden. Then I sewed in the rest of the lining and hemmed all around the bottom edge.
For the shoulder decoration, mine ended up being slightly more than the original dress, due to the aforementioned alterations. When I tried the dress on, it transpired that it needed three inches taken out of the shoulder! Rather than taking apart the whole shoulder, I put a large pleat, and turned it into a design feature. To make the knot, I cut two long ovals with pointy ends, sewed them right sides together, turned, pressed and tied it in a knot. Then I just tacked this to the shoulder pleat.
Pattern Number
Butterick 6557, View C, no sleeve.
Description
Dress with choice of sleeve and neckline decoration
Difficulty
Intermediate – You are happy wearing the things you make. You can put in a zip and do buttonholes. You have used more fussy fabric such as satin, faux fur, or floppy/silky fabrics.
Fabric and Trim
Main: White peachskin with painted dots using acrylic paint and textile medium
Lining: White Bemberg
Instructions
I did not follow the instructions for this one because I left off both sleeve and neckline ruffle. I needed a method which would put all my raw edges inside: make darts, sew shoulder seams, right sides together sew/understitch neckline and sew armhole, turn through shoulder, open out and sew side seams as one long seam – first outer fabric, then lining. Hand sew lining to dress at hem or hem both layers separately.
Alterations
I left off the sleeve and neck ruffle which meant I had to alter the construction (see above). I also needed to take 3 inches out of the shoulder which resulted in an extra shoulder decoration because I discovered this after sewing the lining in.
Conclusions
This pattern is nice and simple and goes together easily. My problems were created by my alterations since I was trying to match Cher’s dress as closely as possible.
