Making a Cutout Back Lined Dress with a Center Back Zipper

It's Do Over Week over at Sew Weekly, which means a chance to revisit an old pattern, whether a failure or a success. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't have a particular wish to revisit my failures; enough new ones pop up without going back to dig up old ones. So I thought I'd revisit one of my favorite dresses, and incidentally the most-favourited of my projects on Burdastyle. It's based on McCall's 5845; I love the shoulders and collar of the bodice, and the numerous darts, while a pain to sew, make the fit absolutely perfect.

In my Nothing But Blue Skies dress, my favorite feature was the interesting back, which featured a tie knot and was definitely a little surprise when contrasted with the more austere front with its high neckline (as much as a bright blue cloud print can be austere).

High neckline gives no indication of the party in the back.

For my retake, I decided to use my other thrifted superhero sheet, Batman's fellow Justice League-r, Superman. Might as well get all my geekery out at once, right?

I decided to put a cutout on the back of the dress that would echo the shape of Superman's iconic S emblem. After some poking around the internet, I found Chie of Vivat Veritas' heart cutout tutorial and Adrianna of Crafterhour's keyhole back cutout tutorial. However, neither was quite exactly what I was looking for; I wanted a center back zip instead of a side zip. So after some thought and mental spatial manipulation, I came up with the following process.

First, I sewed up the neckhole and armholes of my bodice, right sides together. Then I sketched the shape I wanted on the lining of the dress using a washable fabric marker.

I pinned around the cutout to hold the bodice and lining together, then sewed the outline of the cutout.

Next, I cut out the middle with pinking shears and clipped the corners.

Then I carefully pulled the back pieces through the straps of the dress in order to flip the whole bodice right side out. I pressed the sewn edges to get the nice, crisp look that befits a superhero.

Lining side.

"Fashion" fabric side.

I sewed the side seams by flipping the two sides up and matching them, as shown in this very helpful tutorial by Kitschy Coo. Here's how it looks on Cecily:

Held in place with pins for now.

To finish the dress, I'll insert a zipper in the bottom portion as I normally would, then add a button or a hook and eye to the top little strappy thing. I haven't decided which would be better yet. Obviously, you could do this with any shape -- a heart, a cat head silhouette, or get really ambitious and do a bat signal. Or something. Just saying, you're not restricted to a Superman cutout.

I'm planning on just making a quick gathered rectangle skirt for this dress, and then look out! Crazy geek girl in a superhero dress (but with a cool back detail), the reprise!