Butterick 5739 - 1951 Sarong dress in vintage red barkcloth

While so many of you are still bundled up in winter wear, we are having perfect spring weather in southern California. It's sunny, warm in the day and slightly cool at night. Perfection. I've been stocking up on summer weight fabrics and started my first warm weather project of the season - Butterick 5739 dated 1951. For this project I choose to use a FAB-U-LARSE dark red vintage barkcloth fabric I scored for $10 bucks on Ebay. It was for a hair over 4 yards, which is just exactly how much I needed to make this dress and a matching bolero. Yes, awesome deals are still to be found on Ebay though I think the stars were in the right alignment or something because I honestly didn't think I would win the bid for such a low price! 

Looking at this picture I just realized I reversed the side of the sarong from right to left! Woops. Ah well, I think I like it better that way actually. For the skirt of the dress I did not make any alterations to the pattern other then to shorter it. I took 4" off the hem and it's still a little too lone on me. 

On the bodice I added 1/2" length to the torso to accommodate my large bust size. I also added 1/2" to the waist, added in waist darts to help contour the shaped under my bust better and lowered the neckline by 3".  (I'm convinced the models they sketched on the cover of the pattern are 9 feet tall. Every pattern I make the neckline ends up to my chin and the hem at my ankles. Lol. ) I added a white contrast underlay to the neckline to highlight the neat cut outs and to help re-enforce it. 

The original short kimono sleeves just don't work for me. I opted to pleat them which I end up doing to a lot of  dresses I make. I'm sure shoulder pads would have helped fill out the big 'ol shoulder gap that was originally the case but I hate shoulder pads. So pleats it is. 

The flounce on mine doesn't fluff out near as much as the dresses shown in the picture of the envelope. The barkcloth I used in fairly stiff but I guess I should have used interfacing there to achieve maximum fluffage.

I choose to line the dress using cheap-o poly liner. It's all I had on hand. Cheap but it does the job. The white neckline underlay was an after thought to I just top stitched it in.

It's a bit long on me but that's okay.I already took 4" off the skirt and can't be bothered to re-hem it.  Now I just need to decide on what accessories to wear with it.