The Return of the McCalls Shirtdress

Two sewing repeats back to back? Tsk, tsk. Someone needs to plan my life better so this sort of thing doesn't happen. In fact let me just get a ghost blogger so I can focus all my attention on my real loves, cake and toy frogs. :)  But not toy frog cake because that would be weird.

Anyway, let's just blame Roisin for pattern repeat number 2 and move on.  She's been cranking out McCall's 6696 like clockwork and with every post my desire to sew another has increased. There was even a moment where I thought, "My wardrobe really needs a M6696 sewn in Liberty Carline," forgetting that I'd already sewn one. Derp. To be honest though two Carline shirtdresses would not be a bad thing.

Not having any other colors of Carline in the stash, I did the next best thing and chose a Liberty Lawn in a different print.  It's name did not lodge itself in my head, but it's the one with all the different colored pears. When purchasing this fabric I thought, "OOOOHHH FRUIT PRINT ON SALE!" and grabbed 3 yards. This probably would have been more than enough fabric for most garments if a. The print wasn't directional and b. The pears are set up in stripes so you have to stripe match if you don't want the garment to look like a pile of dog poop. I did luck out was able to fussy cut most of the garment correctly  One button band had to be squeezed out without any regard to pattern placement, the inside waist facing is pieced and my skirt side seams aren't perfectly aligned. But the center front looks pretty great which is what's really important...right...right? *twitches slightly when looking at sideways pictures*

This dress was cut out at the end of May, a few days before we took a trip to my in-laws.  The plan was to get most of the machine sewing parts done and then do all that tedious hand sewing at their house. No machine no problem, I'm still making garments!!!  Well the fly in the ointment is that my hand sewing is slow and even with the assistance of audiobooks,  incredibly boring. At the end of that weekend only half of the sewing was done. The stash busting contest started in June and this poor dress sat around in a tote bag for most of that time.  I finally picked it back up during/after? our long term power outage and finished up all the fiddly handiwork. 

There are a few minor pattern alterations to this version. After pulling last year's dress out of storage and putting it on, the bodice length felt too short.  I went back and removed my bodice length alteration of 1/2" and sewed this one as drafted.  The waist hits where I want it now, but it seems like this change makes the back puffer.  That's my current theory anyway since the fabrics are exactly the same.

My preference for skirt length as also changed in a year, so I added 3 3/4" to the pattern to make it 27" long. This change was also made to the button band because you want all those pieces to fit together. ;)  On this dress I gathered the edge to ease in the extra fullness and catch stitched a 1 3/4" hem.

In any future versions I'd tweak the back gathers a bit. They may just need to be distributed over a larger area since I do like the feel of that much ease across my broad upper back. I'd also make the pockets bigger, a change that had to be skipped on this is dress due to fabric yardage concerns.

All in all it was a good stash busting project to crank out since I didn't need to buy a thing to sew this dress. Isn't it nice when all your hoarding pays off in the future. There was even a pear brooch already lurking in my collection. (Somehow not surprising thanks to my brooch addiction.) Though I'd like to go back in time and tell past Heather to buy these sandals in navy too. Still kicking myself about that years later.

In parting I'll leave you with a picture from a different location in the park.  The house in the background is an office space for some of the local government employees, but hasn't lost any of it charm....if we ignore the AC units. It might also amuse you to know that a family found my photo taking entertaining enough to stand around watching for about 10 minutes.  In truth watching me try to climb up this wall before the camera stopped responding to the remote probably was hilarious. Climb overly dressed women, climb!