Mail Order 4645 in Silk Shantung

Early September, I had the good fortune to travel to Washington DC to attend a wedding for Felix’s cousin. I really enjoy attending weddings much more, now that I’m married. In not sure what changed between single me & married me – perhaps it’s because I’m older?? No matter what the reason, what I cherish about weddings is the love that emanates from the couple as well as everyone in attendance; it feels like a warm blanket of wonderfulness.

The second best thing of attending a wedding is being able to sew up my own fancy frock. lol

Being an outdoor, garden style wedding I had originally planned on using a lovely, floral linen fabric & Butterick 6935 pattern I’ve been meaning to sew up for just the right occasion.

The bodice was alright – but the skirt in my light weight linen ended up looking frumpy, instead of garden chic. Then I found out everyone was going to be wearing ‘cocktail dresses’ instead of a casual garden style dress – so I ended up changing my plans a week before the wedding. Eeeek!

As a replacement, I pulled out Mail Order 4645 (Teen Sizing). This is yet another pattern & fabric from my stash that I’ve had for at least 3 years and counting.

It’s hard to see in the image above (just look below) but that’s a navy blue silk shantung – very crisp and lightweight – perfect for summer.

Since I was pressed for time, on muslin #1, I went and made my normal bodice changes – shortening the armscye height, and shortening the bodice length, and widening the waistline. After stitching up the bodice, I found that I needn’t have made any change besides adding additional width for my waist. The bodice height & armscye height was perfect as is! Which is incredibly rare for me. I think it’s due to the fact this pattern is sized for a ‘teen’ not a woman.

Even though I was short on time, I knew I needed to underline the bodice so I cut a duplicate of the bodice front & back in a cotton batiste. The shantung really needed more structure in the bodice and waist. Normally, I would have used black batiste but I didn’t have time to run to the store and pre-wash so I just used the white I had on hand.

Honestly the weave of the shantung is so tight that you can’t even tell its underlined in white.

I love the clean contrast of the facing pieces to the white batiste underlining – I hand stitched this all around.

I generally hate wearing a side-seam zipper and move them to the bodice back whenever I can (for comfort & dressing ease’ sake). But this pattern prevented me from doing so. I sucked it up and stitched in the side seam zip.

No matter how little time I have, I do love pick-stitching in my zippers.

The only other addition I included was hemming the skirt with a 1″ horsehair braid. Again, I only had white on hand and didn’t have time for a run to the store for a black braid.

Luckily, I had enough length in the skirt, that it allowed me to cover it up entirely so no one was the wiser.

Upon reflection, I think I could have stood to lower the upper waistband piece & lengthen the upper bodice so it could fit a bit more snug under my bust. It’s not terrible and I’m probably the only one who notices things like this – I have a hunch it would be fine if it were in a cotton.