Butterick 5559 in wool jersey

If you are thinking of making this dress, make good friends with your iron.  Make sure it's clean and steaming right, because if you want the tucks to turn out well you're going to have to press, press, and press.  The dress front bodice and skirt have darts that are hidden in the tucks (essentially, you need to stitch in the ditch for parts of the front tucks).  You'll need to press those darts well in order to sew the tucks.  When I made my muslin, I thought that I'd sew the darts, then assemble the dress and sew the tucks in order to get perfect matching on the sides.  I found out that the way that Butterick recommends you do this, sew the tucks and then assemble the dress, is better because the tucks chevron on one side.

This dress is also short.  I shortened the pattern by 2" in my muslin and realized that it would not be an office appropriate dress unless I left the hemline as drafted.  The dress in the pictures are a straight from the package hemline length, so if you are not wee like me you'll have to add some length.

There's a lot of up front work with this pattern.  The pattern pieces are cut from single thickness fabric, you need to carefully mark the darts and tucks.  I think that altogether, this took me about 2 hours to do, because I wanted to be sure I got all the markings right.

This is the result.  I made it up in a heavy teal wool jersey that I bought last year from Gorgeous Fabrics.  It was amazing to work with, and I think there will be more wool jersey in my future.  My muslin was a lighter jersey that draped wonderfully but was a pain to sew.  So if you want a slinkier dress, I recommend a lighter jersey but it will be tricky to do the darts and tucks.

There's a little sagging in the upper chest, but this didn't happen with the lighter jersey.

Again, some fabric bulging in the small of my back, but it's the fabric.

Here's a detail photo on my left side, where some of the tucks match and others are a little bit off.  I figured I could drive myself crazy trying to get this perfectly lined up, but that's not the kind of seamstress I am.

Tuck detail at left side seam.

In fact,  what kind of seamstress am I?  I'm the kind who experiments with Steam-a-Seam for the hem and finds out that it's a wonderful way to get out of handsewing a hem!  Yay for discovering Steam-a-Seam!