Butterick 7243 50s day dress in leopard

It's been a while since my last vintage pattern sewing project, well over a month! Yesterday I was feeling the sewing mojo so I decided to tackle a new to me vintage pattern, Butterick 7243. I won this beauty off of Ebay a few weeks ago with plans to make a perfect breezy summer dress using a soft ivory cotton jacquard fabric. But after digging through my fabric stash I unearthed some soft and silky leopard rayon fabric I forgot I had and went with that instead. It is the most lush gorgeous easy to sew rayon I have ever worked with. I bought it at Joanns last year and now I am kicking myself that I didn't get more!

This pattern was easy-peasy. Four dress peices and one for the collar. It did come with an armhole facing but I used satin bias instead. The pattern was marked a size 16/34 bust which is what I usually fit but for some odd reason it ended up measuring out to a 40 bust/31 waist so I had to take it in to make it fit. The only alteration I made to the original pattern is I tarted it up widened and lowered the front bust slit making it more of a keyhole and moved the zipper to center back.

I used black rayon crushed velvet for the collar.

Conclusion- This was a quick and easy project. Other than being bigger than the listed size the overall fit of the dress was good. I give Butterick 7243 two thumbs up.