Two more McCalls 7948 dresses

These are both the same, the first is made with fabric I bought a few years ago (I think it's a Kaffe Fassett-designed print?) I love the colours in it.

And the second is fabric which I think I bought last year, or possibly in 2019, with the intention of making it up in a 1930s / 1940s pattern, but it's quilting cotton (as is the blue chrysanths fabric) and I decided it probably wouldn't hang properly - not enough drape - so it's become this.

For both of these I modified the bodice which is now a mish-mash of sizes from 8 (armholes) to 14 (shoulders).  I also lowered the neckline and adjusted the seam allowances at the armholes and neck for bias binding rather than facing.  I may have done this for the blue and yellow striped version as well, I can't remember now!  Both of these dresses also have Bardon pockets and the skirt is 6" longer than the given pattern pieces.

Blue and yellow striped McCalls 7948

This started out in June as a New Look 6352, however when I tacked the sides and shoulders together for a quick try-on it was obvious that I'm not the right shape for this pattern.  The armhole shape needed changing and darting, and so did the back of the dress, there was a lot of spare fabric just being there looking surplus.  I couldn't be bothered with all this, the pattern envelope does say the dress can be made in an hour, so I already had expectations!  Fortunately I had more of this fabric and in July I came back to it and changed it.

I cut two rectangular skirt pieces from the dress I'd already cut out, a McCalls 7948 bodice (using modifications I'd previously made to this pattern), Demeter pockets and additional pieces of fabric to piece into the side of the skirt.  With the remaining fabric I cut a frill, so all in all I used the full 3.2m of this quilting cotton, which I'd had in my fabric stash for a good few years.

I do like the end result, I just wish it had only taken an hour! 

Navy micro-spot dress

So for my first dress of 2021 I wanted to try out the non-tiered skirt option of McCalls 7948 and I've had this fabric stashed for ages so decided to use it for this - although the photo seems to show a slight check pattern, this doesn't notice at all in real life (it's just small white dots on navy), so it might just be a trick of the camera?  I cut this out on New Year's Eve and finished sewing it on Saturday.

I lengthened the skirt by six inches and used the same bodice modification as for this one + pockets from Tessuti Felicia.  This was a quick sew, I didn't do any pattern matching when cutting out - I wanted to see what the minimum fabric requirement would be (2.2m of 110cm wide fabric) and there are no darts or fastenings (or sleeves).

I like how this has turned out, there will be more of these this year I'm sure!

McCalls 7948 version 2

Having spent weeks knitting the fairisle top I wanted to make something which would be quick!  So this is another version of the McCalls dress I wrote about here.  This is made from an Alexander Henry quilting weight fabric which I bought years ago, probably mail ordered from the States because I had 3.2m of it (which is 3.5 yards).  That's not a length I would buy from a vendor who sells using metric measurements.

I used the whole length for this dress.  I recut the back bodice to be in two parts with a centre seam, and also brought the side seams in from the last version I made, and made the neckline a bit wider.  So this is a real mish-mash - size 14 shoulders / bodice length, size 10 armholes and size 12 side seams.  Rather than use the pattern pieces the skirt is two 26" long full widths of the fabric and the frill uses three 13" full widths.  This means there is slightly more fabric in both the skirt and the frill than would be the case if I'd used the pattern pieces, but I didn't want any leftover fabric and doing this meant that I used the entire 3.2m.  I also added Felicia pockets as before.

I'm really pleased with this - I probably won't wear it until the spring, but I'm glad to have finally sewn up this fabric!

Zigzag dress

This is from a pattern which I bought this year which I though would be ideal for floaty dresses for hot summer days.

I modified the bodice because I wanted it to just go over my head rather than have the button closure which is in the pattern.  This necessitated lowering and widening the neckline.  I also cut a larger size than I usually would because I wanted to be able to wear it over jumpers during the winter.  However... when I quickly tried it on having just sewn the shoulder seams, it was clear that there was too much width of fabric across my upper chest, so I cut the armholes two sizes smaller and that solved that issue.  Another modification was that I lengthened the frill  to make use of the full length of the fabric (3m), which I bought several years ago from Classic Textiles on the Goldhawk Road in London.  Rather than cut three frill pieces per the pattern I just used two full widths of the fabric, so in all there was 12" less fullness.

I cut the back bodice in one piece and lined rather than faced the bodice because this fabric is quite fine and I felt lining it would give it a better structure than just facing the neckline and binding the armholes (also, I didn't have any bias binding the right colour).

This meant that I had to pin the armholes together and topstitch them rather than sewing everything inside out and then turning it through.  This was a faff, so next time I make this pattern I'll put a seam in the centre back.  The pattern pieces for the pockets were for the other version of the skirt and wouldn't have worked with this one so I used the pockets from Tessuti Felicia which were what I had to hand.

Other changes for next time I make this - reverse the proportions of the skirt and the frill - I think it would look better with a longer skirt and shorter frill - and take the bodice side seams in.  I'm sure there will be summery versions of this next year.