Butterick 6757 Birthday Dress

It’s my birthday!! This is 41… So I’m sharing my birthday dress for this year. If you’re new around here, I like to make myself something for my birthday each year regardless of whether it’s a party, dinner, day trip etc. It’s nice to have a new dress to wear. This year we’re having a family dinner at a local Italian restaurant.

This Butterick 6757, an older Butterick pattern I’ve had in my stash for a while now but finally decided to make. It features elasticated channels around the neckline and sleeve cap, plus elasticated sleeve hems and at the waist. There’s a couple of sleeve and skirt styles and an optional tie belt.

This is view A in straight size 12. The construction is very straightforward – it requires a lot of prep of your pieces before you start sewing but once you start there aren’t many seams and the dress comes together very easily. I used my Simplicity Bias Binding Maker to create all the bias tape needed for the inside of the dress. Every elastic channel being made from the same fabric as the outer, makes the dress feel more polished.

I was heavily inspired to get started by Katie’s version on Instagram that I’ve had saved for years and kept coming back to. I should have followed her tip about placing the casings at the hems of the neckline. Oh well… it’s still very wearable. A real, throw-on over your head and go out kind of dress!

The fabric is so fun and whimsical I love it! This Italian Restaurant print viscose satin was from Grid Fabrics by Polytex Stoffen and features different pasta shapes, brie, garlic, tomatoes, oil and everything else you need to make a delicious pasta dinner.

It’s a very lightweight fabric with subtle matte sheen. It was unfortunately, very prone to snagging so I ended up using TWO brand new needles to get through the project. I purposefully chose a dress with no closures to install after seeing how lightweight and delicate it was.

It’s more of a grey background in real life than navy, which is an uncommon colour for me to wear but I think it’s a really cute dress perfect for wearing to dinner. Especially because I adjusted the waist to be a drawstring rather than elastic casing. I prefer adjusting the waist myself, rather than using elastic to fit, which can ride up as you wear the dress.

This meant using a 2cm seam allowance at the waist and sewing two small buttonholes on the front bodice close to the waist seam. Then I topstitched a channel securing the seam allowance on the inside of the bodice and fed a long tie through to fasten.

Want to see how this dress is constructed? Or more of my adventures from my Birthday week? Watch this video!