Anne Adams 4501 - 50s summer dress

I just finished making Anne Adams 4501, a 50s summer dress I made out of black and red cherry print cotton. If you recall my last post about this pattern I discovered that this is not a dress pattern but a 2pc top and skirt. Which is very deceiving since there is no mention of this on the cover of the pattern. I had every intention of making this a 2pc...until I had a good look at the pattern for the blouse. It involved godets. Not happy between two major seams and easy to insert godets, but the kind you have to painstakingly sew in by hand between slit fabric.


Uh, no thank you.

I find it odd that Ms Adams would bother with such details seeing that this top is meant to be tucked into the skirt and you wouldn't even see the pain-in-the-butt godets after all was said and done. So I decided to make this into a dress after all.

Turning it into a dress was easy. All I had to do was cut the blouse pattern along the waist line and add the seam allowance back in. While I usually have the problem of vintage pattern bodices being too short this one was just right and didn't need any altering.

 The bust on the other hand I did have to fiddle with to make it fit properly. The  pattern was a size 14 with a 32" bust which I had to enlarge to fit. I have to to that to almost all pattern so that part was easy but it ended up making the bust pleat sit funny which resulted in over an hour of tweeking to make it sit right. I also had to (once again) add darts to the bodice front waist. Without them the waist area below my bust bagged out pigeon bust style.

I am really pleased with this one and I know I will wear it a lot this summer. Even though the pattern had a weird fit and needed a lot of tweeking I say two thumbs up for Anne Adams 4501.