College reunion dress for my mother - Butterick 5778

My mom was definitely impressed with the dresses my managed to pull off for the wedding. I think she started to see me in a different  light. Like I can really sew something else then kids outfits! Something that is really desirable over RTW. She had her 40 years college reunion at the end of June and she asked me for a dress. She said she wanted to show all her college friends what her daughter can do. And then say that it is just a hobby and she is actually an accomplished engineer...
   She has been wearing some of my makes and I constantly shift to her the ones that turn up to large for me but she never asked me to make her anything before. So it was kind of a big deal. The timing was terrible. I had almost zero sewing time at that point the time frame was short and she could only come for a short visit... I almost told her no a few times and even though she said it was OK I could clearly see in her eyes that she was hurt and disappointed. Something like I made time for everyone else but her... So I pushed through it I convinced her to let me try whatever I think it is OK - pick the fabric the pattern the details and maybe I can make it in time.
  I picked my best fabrics for the dress. I really really loved this piece of sequins of beads that is probably the most expensive fabric I ever got - around 200$/meter and a lace I also picked at the time to match it.
   I really loved the Butterick 5778 and I had a few muslins for it that my mom could try on and I could decided on a size:

The pattern envelope didn't looked like much but after the first mockup I knew this could be a real gem:

The beads and sequins fabric might have been better with a simpler design but I wanted this one. I had to clean up all the edges so I can sew it up on my machine. I contemplated the idea of sewing it by hand but it didn't seemed like a good one. So I spent a long time just preparing the edges.
  As I expected I didn't had it ready by the time my mom's visit was done but i had it far along to have a try out and see if it was a hit or miss:

And I was really happy to see that the colors, the design and the fabric looked terrific on her. So she made an effort as well and made another trip just to have the dress finished few days before the event:

I was happy to hear she wore my dress for her class reunion and got many compliments on it and then she wore it to a wedding next weekend.
   This time I added an elastic waistband covered in lining and lace to get a better definition for the waistline. After sewing the front bodice seams I sewed beads and sequins over it and now it looks seamless. It was a bit of time consuming but it was well worth it. There were also some bad gappings in the back at the armholes so I just made some small pleats to fix that and covered them in beads after to make them invisible.

Sewing 107 - Shopping 87. Bought 10 fabrics lately - the stripes and polka tots contest really inspired me to go shopping. the good news it that it also got me sewing and I already have a quite a few more items to review.